Posts tagged: parislemon
In my last post, I linked to something that First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman wrote in 2007. His post was prompted by — wait for it — a New York Times piece declaring that “Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.” We were in a BUBBLE! Ahhhhh!!!!
Reading over that post now, it’s pretty awesome.
As Brad Stone and Matt Richtel reported in October of 2007:
Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.
No, that wasn’t written yesterday — but it sure reads like it was.
In my last post, I linked to something that First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman wrote in 2007. His post was prompted by — wait for it — a New York Times piece declaring that “Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.” We were in a BUBBLE! Ahhhhh!!!!
Reading over that post now, it’s pretty awesome.
As Brad Stone and Matt Richtel reported in October of 2007:
Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.
No, that wasn’t written yesterday — but it sure reads like it was.
Remember when Charles Arthur looked at the numbers based on early court documents and extrapolated that Google may have made 4x off of the iPhone versus Android? Remember when some jumped on it as likely being bullshit? Looks like he wasn’t far off at all.
As you’d expect, Google is still trying to spin this, but the court documents don’t lie. In 2010, Google itself projected making $278.1 million off of Android. Of that, $158.9 million was expected to be on ads versus just $3.8 million from app sales. They were making much more off of the iPhone.
And the overall projections may be high if the horribly off projections Google had for Android Market music sales are any indication. Reports Nilay Patel:
Google was also planning on boosting all these numbers significantly with its music service — Rubin listed “behind on music, video, books” as one of Android’s “lowlights” — and predicted that it would do $738m in music revenue in 2011 and nearly $1.5 billion in 2012. Those numbers have proven to be hugely optimistic…
I’ll say. Google still doesn’t even have a deal with Warner to sell their music. They’ve been trying to get that deal for a full two years now and have failed for a full two years now.
Citing the fact that the iPhone now accounts for just about 60% of smartphone sales at the top three U.S. carriers, easily besting all of the Android phones out there combined, Jay Yarow writes:
This very well could be the beginning of the end for Google’s mobile operating system.
In September 2010, I wrote “Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?” I followed this up in June 2011 with “The Verizon iPhone Halted Android’s Surge. The iPhone 5 Could Reverse It.”
Both posts were extremely controversial when they were published. But looking back, they sure seem to be pretty spot-on (well, except for the iPhone 5 part, just sub the iPhone 4S in there). Android was “winning” in the U.S. market because the iPhone was only on one carrier, and not even the largest carrier.
This should not be controversial now. It should be viewed as fact, as the numbers indicate.
But in what may be a shock to some of you, I’m not nearly as bearish on Android right now as Yarow (and by extension, Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt). I think Android will be fine because Apple will never fill every market need.
Apple is smartly focused on China right now, which has a quickly maturing middle class. But I can’t see them competing with all those ultra-cheap phones that Android can enable — why would they?
In the U.S., I think the iPhone will continue to dominate as the single most popular device for the foreseeable future, but Android as a whole will hang around as a popular alternative.
Probably around late summer every year going forward, iPhone sales will dip ahead of the expected new device and some Android manufacturer will find a way to capitalize, rising the entire ecosystem’s share as a result. But it will always be short-lived. The new iPhone will come along and crush it.
Remember too that the iPhone isn’t even on all four major U.S. carriers yet, something which T-Mobile clearly isn’t too happy about. Hard to see how that doesn’t change this year.
A shitty title and an overall crap study/post. If the iPhone was as poor of an environment for game development as Android is, I suppose the title would be: Apps Are For Android, Apps Are For iPhone.
Point is: yes, games dominate the top apps in the App Store. But they would on Android Market as well if developers could make money the same way they do with games on iOS. But they can’t yet, so “Apps” (meaning: non-game apps) are the most popular apps.
Or maybe I’m wrong. As Dan Rowinski writes (in almost quasi-English):
To a certain extent, it makes sense that games are downloaded more on iOS. Game developers tend to go to the platform first hardware on iOS devices makes it very conducive to making great games. Android is not far behind in that field. There must be some sociological reason that games are much more popular with iOS users. Do they have more spare time? More prone to the groupthink and doing what everyone else is doing? More affluent? Bored?
There must be some sociological reason. Clearly. There’s no way it’s because game developers can make money on one platform and not the other. Or because they have better tools to develop for one platform over the other. It’s obvious that gaming is huge on iOS because of groupthink and because iOS users are generally bored.
Groundbreaking analysis.
I agree in all points in MG’s post about the study. First off I’d like to know where this man is getting his info for said study, too me it seems he looked up the top apps downloaded and top games on each platform and started to insert whatever idea made sense. Granted this most likely not the case, but that’s the form you get from it.
Now for my two cents on the matter. Mine will lean more to stereotypes then anything else, I will explain those reason in the end. I spent abit of time in retail and from that when selling iPads and Droid related devices I got a sense of those buying them and what they were buying them for. Most of the people buying an iPad were non techies, families and of course the Apple devoted. Now for Droid most buying them were techies, lower income people(they have lower cost tablets, such as the kindle fire and Kobo Vox.), those who wanted flash(which adobe is no longer supporting on droid), and those who hated Apple. Those looking for flash mostly wanted flash to watch illegal content on the web, now that wasn’t for all but it was a huge chunk.
Just based on those thoughts above it does help understand why the split for apps and games are as they are. droid user in my experience aren’t big mobile gamers as compared to those who use the IPad(alot of families with kids). But those who do game on the droid platform find them lacking, ranging from support to quality. Begs to wonder why games are top on Apple app store.
Now in the end this is all subjective and leans from just one outlook on the whole matter, but it shines more light in the subject which in my option needs more attention.
