Android is the Fastest Growing Product in the History of Technology

[dgstorm]

Android fans already know that Google's operating system quickly spread across the world, conquering everything in its path; however, this latest analysis suggests it spread even more quickly than we could have imagined. According to Horace Dediu, an Asymco analyst, it turns out that Android is the fastest growing technology product in history! The metric he used to determine this was a comparison of total adoption numbers across specific time-frames after an initial launch. Here are a few mobile stats to put it in perspective:

• Symbian hit 450 million users in 44 quarters (11 years)
• BlackBerry hit 225 million users in 43 quarters (about 11 years)
• Windows Mobile hit 72 million in 30 quarters
• Apple's iOS hit 700 Million users in only 23 Quarters (almost 6 years)
• Android hit 1 Billion users in only 20 quarters (5 years)

The pic above charts some other devices throughout the history of tech. It's interesting to take a glance at the Android & iOS versus PC Sales. The huge spike is something the PC industry never had. Of course, it's not a perfect apples to apples comparison, but it's still worth noting. There's one other thing worth noting in the infographic. Despite the massive acceleration of adoption, there are still quite a few people left in the world who still don't have smartphones. In China we are only 34% into their total market, and even in the United States we are only a little over half way there.

Source: PhoneArena

 

[johnomaz]

And yet so many developers still make apps for iOS only or give Android users some shoddy port that barely works.

 

[mountainbikermark]

Fragmentation. Ios apps only need work on 1 device with different sized screens, Ios 4-7 . Android apps must work on several sized screens , including phablet , work on carrier customized devices after the manufacturer gets done adding its own "enhancements" on different versions of Android that range from 2.3 -4.4 that are, unlike Apple, not just tweaked versions of the former but actually different.
Hopefully 4.4 will actually be the answer to the insane fragmentation by being workable on older less powerful devices.


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s pen aholic in Beast Mode (Notetoo)

 

[MissionImprobable]

Fragmentation. Ios apps only need work on 1 device with different sized screens, Ios 4-7 . Android apps must work on several sized screens , including phablet , work on carrier customized devices after the manufacturer gets done adding its own "enhancements" on different versions of Android that range from 2.3 -4.4 that are, unlike Apple, not just tweaked versions of the former but actually different.
Hopefully 4.4 will actually be the answer to the insane fragmentation by being workable on older less powerful devices.


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s pen aholic in Beast Mode (Notetoo)

Indeed. Remember that after a certain point old iOS devices are considered utterly obsolete and given almost no consideration in development. Android Apps are coded to work over multiple generations of devices to a much larger extent than iOS, and to a much larger variant of devices as a whole.

Good point as well about the forward-looking design of 4.4, though many devices that have only 512mb such as my Droid 2 will likely never see it. This will mean good things for entry-level phones in the future though, they won't be left out in the cold.