Farhad Manjoo writes in the NYT that with over one billion devices sold in 2014 Android is the most popular operating system in the world by far, but that doesn't mean it's a financial success for Google. Apple vacuumed up nearly 90 percent of the profits in the smartphone business which prompts a troubling question for Android and for Google: How will the search company — or anyone else, for that matter — ever make much money from Android. First the good news: The fact that Google does not charge for Android, and that few phone manufacturers are extracting much of a profit from Android devices, means that much of the globe now enjoys decent smartphones and online services for low prices. But while Google makes most of its revenue from advertising, Android has so far been an ad dud compared with Apple's iOS, whose users tend to have more money and spend a lot more time on their phones (and are, thus, more valuable to advertisers). Because Google pays billions to Apple to make its search engine the default search provider for iOS devices, the company collects much more from ads placed on Apple devices than from ads on Android devices.
The final threat for Google's Android may be the most pernicious: What if a significant number of the people who adopted Android as their first smartphone move on to something else as they become power users? In Apple's last two earnings calls, Tim Cook reported that the "majority" of those who switched to iPhone had owned a smartphone running Android. Apple has not specified the rate of switching, but a survey found that 16 percent of people who bought the latest iPhones previously owned Android devices; in China, that rate was 29 percent. For Google, this may not be terrible news in the short run. If Google already makes more from ads on iOS than Android, growth in iOS might actually be good for Google's bottom line. Still, in the long run, the rise of Android switching sets up a terrible path for Google — losing the high-end of the smartphone market to the iPhone, while the low end is under greater threat from noncooperative Android players like Cyanogen which has a chance to snag as many as 1 billion handsets. Android has always been a tricky strategy concludes Manjoo; now, after finding huge success, it seems only to be getting even trickier.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by takyon on Thursday May 28 2015, @10:56PM
soylent preview [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday May 29 2015, @03:21AM
Hmmm, not sure this is fair game. It hasn't even been accepted yet, but you push it (your own submission) into another story?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday May 29 2015, @03:33AM
I just thought someone might be interested in the news before it gets a bit stale.
You, like all, are free to mod me down to a bitter oblivion for it ;)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 28 2015, @10:59PM
The likelihood of power users going to IOS, is about as probable as F15 pilots going to tricycles.
Flame suit zipped up tight. Byt really iPhones are the entry level device.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Friday May 29 2015, @02:49AM
Yea the term means a different thing here, they'll probably patent it at some point and claim they invented it.
If iPhones are entry level devices, how come I can't afford it and paid half the price for a flagship Android from a Korean brand?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday May 29 2015, @03:17AM
If you are old enough to remember, "If he's an idiot I send him to the Mac Store." as a tagline (heck, if you even remember taglines) then you understand the idea here. Entry level is meant as no knowledge and usually a strong implication of a desire to avoid acquiring any. In other words if you recommend they buy anything but the Apple (which you are careful to make clear you don't actually own because you are a power user) it means they will be your new bestest friend for years as you provide free tech support for the product "you recommended" and you will never be allowed to forget the fact you recommended it. Whereas if they buy the Apple you can say, "Don't know, don't have one. But aren't they the computers for idiots? Surely you can figure it out because you aren't an idiot... right?" In the case of an iPhone you can even say "Paris Hilton figured her's out, surely you can."
(Score: 2) by arslan on Friday May 29 2015, @04:29AM
Ah.. he meant entry level from a usability point of view. I was thinking cost.. which is what people normally mean from where I come from. No wonder the post read oddly..
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday May 29 2015, @09:28AM
It certainly has been a long running joke. "Wow, hold on professor! TWO mouse buttons?!?"
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by goody on Friday May 29 2015, @02:53AM
I don't agree either that these people are necessarily power users, but I think you're conflating "user friendliness" and "entry level". An entry level phone would be like those elderly phones they used to sell (and maybe still do) which let you make phone calls to a few preset numbers and nothing else. The iPhone basically has all of the same functionality as an Android phone. Arguably the iPhone is more user friendly and has a lower technical entry barrier from a new end user perspective. Android phones tend to have a lower financial entry barrier as they tend to be cheaper phones. So the case can be made that the Android is an entry level phone for those with lower incomes. I'm not sure where you're located, but here in the US, the iPhone has essentially replaced the Blackberry in business. These business users want stability, consistency, and usability, and they're certainly not new users looking for an entry level phone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Friday May 29 2015, @03:02AM
I find giving either phone to a new user, their about the same, with some operations being easier on one and some on the other ... it depends on the person. For me, the lack of a "back" button in iOS drives me nuts, while the contextual behaviour of back would probably annoy an iOS user. Once you get past the basic you can keep tweaking Android to be more like *you* wish it to be, if you choose. Me, I like choice.
On average Android phones are cheaper phones because Apple *only* sells expensive phones. For some reason a lot of Apple fans seem to be very proud of how much profit Apple makes, which I really don't understand.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by goody on Friday May 29 2015, @03:26AM
Likewise a lot of Android users seem to be proud of Android's market share. However market share doesn't put food on the table, profits do. If you're in business to make money and you can delight customers while doing it, you have the quintessential money-printing machine. Apple has this figured out. Google delights customers as well, has more of them, but doesn't have the revenue thing figured out.
Apple only sells expensive phones because manufacturers using Android make cheaper phones. See what I did there? :-) But seriously, Apple made a conscious business decision to sell more expensive devices because they didn't want to compete on the low end of the market. It seems a lot of Android users can't wrap their heads around this and can't understand why anyone would want an iOS device when Android is cheaper. Android is ideal for lower end devices, and arguably its cost appeals to phone manufacturers not wanting to invest in developing an OS, like Apple has done. It also appeals to manufacturers making cheaper hardware to begin with, those attempting to compete on the lower end of the market where margins are thin. Android does and will continue to get the short end of the stick when it comes to any sort of business analysis. It's a given considering how Google has positioned the OS.
Undoubtedly some people do mindless buy Apple, because it's Apple. But is that wrong if they get a usable, stable, and consistent device and OS, it works for them, and they can afford it? In these Android versus Apple debates, it reminds of the Linux versus BSD debates of years past. Linux users hate Windows, BSD users love Unix. Android users hate iPhones. iPhone users love their phones.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday May 29 2015, @04:30AM
However market share doesn't put food on the table, profits do
There are plenty of profits in Android. It funds 4 or 8 of the largest electronics companies in the world.
And dozens of other companies as well. But Android is an Alliance, not a single company [openhandsetalliance.com]. And all members fund software development at different levels.
That all of those profits do not flow to Google, is somehow portrayed as some observers as some kind of flaw or weakness. An awful lot of people seem to find that concept hard to grasp. They suggest it should be some other way, that Google should get all the profit.
So yes, Android is cheaper, because cooperative efforts spread costs. Those costs are passed through to end users. The BOM of many android phones exceeds that of the iPhone.
The question isn't why andorid costs so much less. Its why an inferior phone that is cheaper to build, costs so much more.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by goody on Friday May 29 2015, @11:42AM
That's a pretty broad and unsupported claim that the iPhone is inferior, and empirical evidence flies in the face of this. The claim doesn't pass the smell test. The iPhone is used by everyone from housewives to businesspeople day in and out, most being quite satisfied with it and they continue to buy new models. Perhaps it's inferior to you because you can't put widgets/applets on the screen or change the OS font, but the fact is it has the same core functionality as an Android.
I don't think anyone expects Google to get all the revenue. I don't. Google developed an advertising eyeball delivery machine, and that's what they got. But even using that metric, according to the article, Android is second to iOS which is delivering more ad revenue. That's a weakness. Also, despite alliances or cooperative efforts, Android suffers from forking and upgrade issues. That's a weakness.
If the BOM cost of a cheaper Android phone exceeds that of an iPhone, it speaks to a business decision and not malice on the part of Apple. The Android phone vendors are targeting the lower end of the market, with smaller margins. Additionally, Apple has mastered the supply chain. People tend to joke when Apple buys a supplier, but there's a reason for that. That's how they get lower raw material costs and can have a most consistent supply chain. They're getting their cake and eating it, too.
I don't understand all the angst against the iPhone from Android users. You've got marketshare and a cheaper, more customizable phone. Life should be good. Does the success of Android depend on the failure of the iPhone? I don't think so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @03:12PM
Their lack of huge Apple magnitude profits help put food on my table. Who the heck cares if HTC or whoever cxos get sacked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @03:25PM
Yeah ios was too restrictive for the CEO at my work place. So he switched to android and passed his iPhone to his wife. Then even she switched to Android later.
For me ios has nothing really like tasker. And even I find having to root my phone a bit of a restriction.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:02PM
compare the online advertising you see these days, with what you saw ten or twenty years ago. For quite a long time a single static 468x60 banner ad worked really well; now we have videos that play automatically, with sound and everything, javascript popups and so on.
While the gentle soylentil will use adblockers most people don't.
The problem I see is that there are more and more websites, with their number growing far out of proportion to the population. Many sites cost a great deal of money to operate. Quite commonly they are supported by advertising, but I see that advertising becoming less and less effective.
The advertisers and ad publishers respond with increasingly glaring, shrill advertising but what they don't clue into is that there is only so much money to be spent on actual products and services. While yes the economy is growing somewhat it's not growing as fast as the growth of websites that subsist on ad revenue.
I expect the online advertising economy to collapse.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:21PM
In principle, if mozilla.org was a neutral body dedicated to helping the public, browsers could be delivered with blocking by default.
But then the lobby groups of corporations and probably the govt, makes it only good enough to be a "value delivery portal".
In otherwords to sell you stuff.
Hence, no ad blocking and they added DRM to HTML5.
Too paranoid?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:40PM
whether ad blocking could be enabled by default is orthogonal to my argument.
The problem I see is that a large fraction of the world's economy depends solely on advertising. It's not hard at all to start a website then publish some self service ads on it, such as adsense. For many people this represents what at first appears to be a realistic way out of their lives of desperation.
But the number of ad-supported websites is growing far out of proportion to the number of people who visit the websites. While the economy does - loosely speaking - grow over time, the advertising-supported sites are growing far faster.
For this to work, someone at somepoint has to spend real money.
What I am saying, is that a crash could be coming when those ads aren't producing anymore.
What we have now are increasingly obtrusive ads. At some point even the obtrusiveness isn't going to produce sales of products and services.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday May 29 2015, @01:54AM
I guess I agree. But in a thought experiment I imagine a model of advertising like this.
There is a distribution of items for sale, for given prices, and given saturation.
For example, within day to day expenses there are consumables. If you drink soda, all those soda ads might work, but when was the last time you bought *anything* base on soley an ad?
The sales space is saturated because there are many items in each slot - artifical scarcity (e.g. Apple), simply competes on brand. You either will or wont buy a brand, because brand's short-circuit spec comparision.
So in this saturated space, the model suggests the only place ads will have an effect, are when you actually go to purchase something.
Does this make sense? Or is my viewpoint to restricted...?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday May 29 2015, @03:08AM
I am reminded of an article on Soviet television in TV guide, from the early seventies. In the US a TV commercial will say "Our tea is better than their tea". Under Communism the ads will say "Drink tea, it's good for you".
Advertisements that sell a specific product or service in a minimum number of clicks actually work pretty well. It's not hard to build a successful eCommerce site. You don't even need to purchase inventory is you sell products that are amenable to drop-shipment directly from their manufacturers.
It's far more difficult for brand-name advertising. While I agree that we don't make purchase decisions based specifically on advertisements, brand-name recognition does make a difference. For brand advertising to be effective, it has to be pervasive.
I expect that many small website operators don't understand the distinction. My father kept bees as a hobby. Suppose he started a popular blog about beekeeping. I expect such a blog would work well to sell bottles of his own honey, but it would not work well to promote a mass-marketed honey brand.
What the brand-advertisers do is commonly known as "A/B testing". Run a specific type of ad in a specific geographic area then look at how sales increase or decrease. Now run a different ad. With some time, patience and investment, you can create very effective ads.
Unfortunately for those whose livelihoods depend on advertising, not every advertiser understands testing. Even Apple computer once dropped a million pieces of direct mail without testing the mailing in any way.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday May 29 2015, @08:06PM
I guess from my viewpoint (attempting to be objective) there are 2 forms of adverts. Novelty and Brand. Novelty is "this is new in someway" and Brand is "We exist as the option for $THING".
I would say that web ads are nearly all Novelty and not Brand. Physical ads are nearly all Brand and no novelty. There are subtleties of course, but this is a model.
Hence, it would seem logical that most ads will not do anything because it would require the viewer to be a) receptive to novelty b) be able to afford $THING.
The perception of this is that ad revenue > $0 gives >$0 sale increase. The problem is it is stochastic and becomes saturated, hence the correlation between revenue and sales is random.
Any of this hand waving maths making sense?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @02:13AM
no crash. this is the natural evolution of all things. the smaller ad companies will get gobbled up by the larger ones as the 'advertising economy' shrinks. at some point in the future, there will be just 3-5 big ad companies. smaller ones will pop-up from time to time but most of those will bust. not enough food. a very small few will survive, thrive, and become a new big player that eventually gobbles up an old big player. how? diversification. theme and variation. advertising won't be the only type of food they eat. free markets are very much like a natural-world ecosystem.
this is why we have 1%ers and all the rest. this is why we had monarchies. wealth and power have mass - and they have gravity to attract more mass and increase their gravity. but yes, when most of the towers in all the kingdoms and all the lands get too tall, the whole system colapses like the tower of babel. a better analogy are trees in a forest. plant a forest worth of trees. the ones that grow the fastest will dominate and make it harder for newer trees to reach the same height. fortunately, trees are prone to dying of old age and thereby allow new trees to grow forth into the light. also, mankind - the forest regulators - will cut down the larger trees.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday May 29 2015, @03:17AM
The problem I see is that there are more and more websites, with their number growing far out of proportion to the population. Many sites cost a great deal of money to operate. Quite commonly they are supported by advertising, but I see that advertising becoming less and less effective.
I expect you over estimate the cost of running a web site. You can literally get reasonable quality hosting for $12 bucks a year.
And you if you can collect some random content and attract some friends, and you can literally make a website for pine tree enthusiasts, and attract a following of campers, foresters, tree farmers, and assorted squirrels.
But overall I agree. I think advertising works far less well than a lot people think it does.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:32PM
Sure - I can completely believe that 90% of people switching to iOS are switching from Android. That's because, once you remove Apple from smartphone statistics, the market is 90% Android and Android forks. There's simply not enough Windows Phone or Blackberry users out there, period, for them to make a significant number of new users for Apple. I completely expect the inverse to be true - the vast majority of people switching to Android are doing so from iOS. Particularly if you sneakily interpret "switching" to exclude people who have never owned a smartphone.
As further abuse of statistics, the article uses claims that Apple is making the biggest profits to somehow claim Android is doomed to fail. Guess what? If you make exactly zero profit, if your expenses exactly match your income, you will stay in business infinitely. Apple might be pumping more and more gold into their dragon's hoard, but Android manufacturers are the ones growing the market, and they're making enough money doing it to keep doing it.
Which brings up another point - how many new smartphone owners are buying iPhones? How do you think that compares to Android?
Apple covers the high end of the market only. Even their "cheap" model is relatively expensive. Android is competitive on the high end, but their explosive growth is coming from the low end. Lower profit margins, sure, but still profitable, and they're the ones making new customers to sell high-end models to. I think without Android growing the market for them, Apple would be in a much worse place themselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tramii on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:51PM
Guess what? If you make exactly zero profit, if your expenses exactly match your income, you will stay in business infinitely.
Not if you are a publicly traded company, you won't!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @03:06AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @07:56AM
He wasn't talking about growth, just profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:56PM
> If you make exactly zero profit, if your expenses exactly match your income, you will stay in business infinitely.
That presumes you don't lose all your customers to some other product.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @12:58AM
If you make exactly zero net profit or loss how can you stay in business. I might as well get a minimum wage job as I would then be making more. Business exists to make profit or else why exist unless they are non profit organizations.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday May 29 2015, @02:20AM
Profit is after payroll.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjwt on Friday May 29 2015, @12:38AM
What is this dribble...
"the "majority" of those who switched to iPhone had owned a smartphone running Android"
well, with 78% of the market share being Andriod, and over 18% being IOS, with Windows account for 2.7%, its not hard to see why the majority of users switching to IOS come from Android.
http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp [idc.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday May 29 2015, @12:41AM
So much wrong, hard to see where to start.
First off, Google didn't care about making money off of Android when they bought it out and probably still don't. Their motivation was survival. They saw the mobile revolution becoming an Apple walled garden where they would have zero control of their destiny and Apple (like Google and Microsoft, etc) has a habit of destroying any competitor they can, and had Apple monopolized the smartphone/tablet space they would have been in such a position. Keeping the market open means the web standards stay open. And with the majority of traffic being not-Apple, Apple pretty much has to be willing to play ball with Google so long as all that not-Apple traffic keeps Google's mindshare where it is.
Second, it is the financial health of the handset makers that count, they are obviously making plenty of money or they wouldn't be competing so frantically to bring out ever more features, new players wouldn't be entering, etc. No they aren't, and never will, make Apple style insanely great profits since they aren't selling high end luxury goods. They are instead in the high volume, low margin consumer electronics business. But Samsung, LG, Sony, etc. know how to survive on that model in all of their other product lines so it isn't anything new for them.
Third, of course the high end will go to Apple, always been that way. Do you think rich people will use normal products vs instantly identifiable luxury brands? Do they drive GM cars and buy handbags at J.C. Penny? I'm just amazed they still consider Apple elite enough considering the subsidized phones even 'normals' can readily afford. See next point.
Fourth is the whole carrier subsidy model. So long as you can get a iPhone for $99 the Apple premium isn't hurting adoption of phones nearly as much as it used to retard Mac sales. Haven't done it but I suspect a market share by area vs whether they do lease/subsidy phones vs outright sales + SIM would be instructive.
Fifth, the observation that wealthier people who can afford Apple products tend to be wealthier people who buy lots of other overpriced crap isn't exactly a groundbreaking discovery. If success is going to be defined as finding a way to get people who don't have that kind of disposable income to start spending like U.S> coastal elite Apple users the game has been rigged to assure a preselected result. The only goals Android must meet is selling lots of handsets at a profit to the vendors, making sure the owners use enough airtime that the carriers are getting sacks of cash and that they view enough ads for Google to see the value in paying the developers. Unless of course another handset platform were to be offered to the handset makers or carriers that offered more revenue -for them-.
Sixth, even if Cyanagen/MIcrosoft get traction with their swapout of Google Services for Microsoft ones, it isn't all bad. If Microsoft essentially becomes downstream from Google and adopts an Android based system over Windows 10 as their mobile solution (like Amazon's mutant Android) then it is still hard to see how Google is badly hurt.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @01:02AM
If Google pays apple money to make Google the default browser then not having Android means more iOS devices and so more money paid to Apple (and perhaps others) for default status.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @02:35AM
Why should they still be paying Apple?
Google is well known already.
Don't give me the casual users reason when we all know anyone who goes for Apple products most likely change the default engine to Google anyway
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @08:23AM
Who tells you that if Apple no longer gets that money from Google, it won't start its own search engine? And how many Apple users would switch to Google if they had an Apple search engine preinstalled? And who tells you that Apple won't make switching to another search engine hard? Not impossible (that would just ask for antitrust lawsuits), just hard enough for the average non-geek to avoid the trouble.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday May 29 2015, @10:23AM
Point #1: Apple has conceded the low end. Apple wants the top 15-20% of the market. They ignore the rest. They're after the people who can afford the iPhone (or whatever) without any problems. Apple wants to keep a small but profitable niche for themselves. The hoi polloi can do whatever they like with Android or dumb phones. If you are a competitor and play in Apple's niche, they'll destroy you, but if you don't, they ignore you. (To prove what I mean, look at the number of iPhones in the USA as a percent of the population and you'll see who Apple's market is.)
Point #2: Google and Apple don't compete directly. So I don't know what this article is about. Companies which use Android could add value to it so people would choose their products over Apple or other competitors.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday May 29 2015, @11:31AM
Apple vacuumed up nearly 90 percent of the profits in the smartphone business which prompts a troubling question for Android and for Google: How will the search company — or anyone else, for that matter — ever make much money from Android?
I'll tell you how. Because 10% of a massive shitload of money is still a shitload of money, that's how.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by Celestial on Friday May 29 2015, @12:18PM
Android has another problem... the size of the phones. Now, I admit this may just be me. I'm a dwarf IRL with very small hands. Android smartphones simply have become too large for me. I've been an Android user since approximately 2010, and have upgraded my phone every year since. I found 4.5" and 4.7" about the largest I can handle comfortably. 5" or larger is simply too big, but that's all Android smartphone manufacturers make now, at least at the high end. I upgraded to a LG G3 a few months ago (5.5"), and it's simply far too large. It's uncomfortable to hold and my hand and lower arm actually start to hurt if I hold it for longer than five minutes at a time.
For me, I'm simply going to have to switch to an iPhone the next time I upgrade because I'll actually be able to use it comfortably, unlike Android phones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @10:27AM
Try Sony. They have a Compact line that is almost similar to their flagship huge phones, apart from size.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @03:15PM
The fact that Google does not charge for operating system, and that few phone manufacturers are extracting much of a profit from Android devices, means that much of the globe now enjoys decent smartphones and online services for low prices.
Your definition of "decent" and "low prices" leave something to be desired.
I think Android is horrible crap. It's porting a desktop paradigm to a smartphone form factor. Horribly ill-conceived. It's permission system is shambles, you either accept all or deny all what an application demands (and no, "but but CM" is not an excuse, we're talking Android here)
If you briefly set aside that Windows Phone is made by MSFT and consider it just on technical grounds, you'll quickly find that it is actually superior to Android (although I give you that the permission system is also horribly broken).
The price you pay for these 'decent' online services is not low, in fact, it is very high. It isn't USD you pay mind you, you pay with your privacy, which I value at an incredibly large amount of USDs.
All in all, I wouldn't be sadned by a quick and horrible demise of Android. I think the world would be better off without it in fact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @09:00PM
Comparing Windows Phone and Android on technical grounds then Android comes out miles ahead for me, because I greatly value Android being largely open source. While I don't look at or hack the source myself, others do and I benefit from it.
I don't think Android permissions is horribly broken, at least not at its core. It is just how they Google choose to let the user handle permissions that is broken, they could fix it, but they don't seem to want to. However, because of it being open source, great things are possible for real power users, like the Xposed framework, and particularly relevant here is the XPrivacy Xposed module that allows me to manage app permissions on an incredibly fine level, not just the groups of permissions like what you are presented with when you install apps.
There are lots of things I don't like about Android, but if you want a relatively open platform with decent app support, then there isn't really any other option.
And can you explain how Android is porting a desktop paradigm to a mobile device? I just don't get that comment, Android makes for a horrible desktop UI, so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.