1) China. what you say is true. China will just take Android and fragment it. They will rip out everything and replace it with its own stuff. In fact HUawei and Baidu are doing precisiely this. They wont say if its Android or not but its linux based and I bet it is.

2) Android will continue to grow but only really in the show me markets. Usage is very low and its a very cheap option. If poeple want more from their devices they will be willing to look at other options.

3) Nokia. Wrong. Nokia should have killed Symbian LONG before it did. The software was end of life and there was not much one could do with it beyond a basic smartphone. all the apps were written in native and so porting would hev been very difficult. Dont get me wrong Nokia screwed this up in many many other ways but killing Symbian was not one of them.

I dont think you have debunked anything you have stated a reaosnable and well argued opinion. Its just not one I share.

Android and iOS have saturated the mature markets and should achieve relatively static share there until some truly disruptive new technology emerges. In emerging BRIC and Africa markets that aren’t saturated Android is trending 90% because “fragmentation” allows for smartphones that are within reach of the lower budgets of the people there. So much so that the Chinese government is concerned that Android has become too powerful – and Google doesn’t even have a presence in China, nor any way for the government to impact them there, nor any way to influence adoption of Android in China. Google gave that up after the spying incident, when they abandoned Windows PCs and China both. They had to replace Eric Schmidt as CEO as well, because he was not OK with abandoning the China market. iPhone is a status symbol in China and if you can afford one, you must have it – but the people who can afford an Android phone are far more numerous. By making Android free and open, Google is breaking down the Great Firewall of China and while the Chinese government is concerned about the issue, there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do about it.

China being China, if Windows Phone worked better they would probably steal that. They don’t have a lot of respect for IP rights in China. So obviously Android both works better and doesn’t have to be stolen because Google gives it away for free.

People go from iOS to Android, or the reverse generally. Or from some other to one of those two. They don’t go from iOS or Android to some third option. If this wasn’t true, iOS and Android would not now control over 90% of all global mobile sales, trending up.

Because Android dominates the growth markets, not only will its stellar expansion continue – it will continue to grow, continuing to squeeze Apple out of global share (but not units or margin), and the Apple/Android pair will continue to demolish everyone else until by the end of the year the two will own 96% of the entire mobile device market – and more then 3x the entire Windows PC market by both units and dollars – and definitely profits. Everyone else will be eking their bit out of their leavings – the crumbs that fall from their table, not eating their lunch.

And that brings us to Nokia. Nokia killed Symbian at the height of its glory – if they still sold Symbian phones they would still have 20% market share. People loved Symbian more than was reasonable and the Symbian app market and developer ecosystem was at its peak almost as large as Android’s and the iOS one is now. But Nokia went Windows Phone, and Symbian users weren’t willing to do Windows Phone no matter how much they loved Nokia. Nokia was unable to convert a significant number of their Symbian customers to Windows Phone – and now they’ve lost them all and there is no hope of converting them in the future. If you polled former Symbian users for their satisfaction with Symbian now, it probably still would give Android a run for its money. But no matter how much the customers liked it, it’s not available now because Nokia’s CEO had to kill it to establish he was committed to Windows Phone. If Nokia recanted and re-issued Symbian then Nokia Symbian lovers would still buy it, people would still develop apps for it, it would rise again from the dead. But they won’t and they now can’t as they’ve killed it dead and then sold the corpse to Accenture. That’s not Symbian’s fault, and not going to recur with any other mobile OS.

Most of the web usage and app usage stats I see are either tools that don’t fully expose what’s happening or have so much time lag in their reportage that they don’t reflect that the Android installed base only passed the iOS installed base in raw numbers last November and it will take a while for the reportage to catch up with the facts now that Android is outselling iOS on phones by a ratio of 3:1. iOS had a head start, so of course it had a considerably larger installed base until it didn’t.

I’m not biased agains iPhones. They’re great phones, media players, app machines, personal connectivity devices. I’ve bought three of them recently for my kids and one for my wife because they prefer them and my kids adore them. My wife prefers it for the status. That means in my house iPhones outsell Android phones 4:1. If my house and wallet were typical it would be all over but the crying for Samsung. The Apple cathedral isn’t for me. I prefer the bazaar as a technologist and nerd – but that’s a personal choice and I respect the choices of others. There’s nothing wrong with Apple’s cathedral other than I don’t prefer it. It lacks the choices, or if you prefer, the “fragmentation” that I crave. And apparently I’m not alone in this preference. But no, I think highly of the iPhone. I think it’s a great device, reasonably priced, and Apple is making them as fast as they can, selling and making good profit on every one! Definitely more economically successful than all Android phone sellers. It’s just not for me as I require more control of my gear and am capable of handling more control of my gear.

I can’t find fault with the iPad either other than I don’t prefer the Apple Cathedral. Certainly there is enough demand to meet Apple’s ability to build the thing so any fault I could find with it would be silly. How could I dare say that I could improve on a thing a company can’t make enough of to meet demand? What is the point of improving on the product at that point? To cause riots? But the Android tabs are sufficient to my purpose and suit me better as they include things like SDHC that iPads will never have.

Now since I’ve thoroughly debunked the “fragmentation” issue and the “loyalty” issue, and the “history” issue – and even the “bias” issue, it’s time for you to dig deep into your playbook, move the goalposts yet again and bring up malware. We may as well make the grand circuit, hit all the bases and make the discussion complete. Don’t you agree?

Usage of Android devices is still lagging far behind that of iOS on a comparative basis. Why?..because engagement is lower. If engagement is lower then loyalty is lower as these users are less wedded to their devices. Hence more likely to switch given the option of something better. That to me is a far better indicator of real satisfaction with an ecosystem than a survey that measures devices and what has been shown to be a very fickle statistic.

Another one from On Device Research: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50773483/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ Summary: 4 Android smartphones beat out even the iPhone 5.

So what you “think” appears very much at odds with the professionally published satisfaction surveys. Care to comment on that? Have you got some survey results to share with us?

its not a massive problem now as a large part of Android users dont buy apps. I can see that changing over time. Also, I have seen a trend back towards native especially for gaming and in Native the fragmentation is a real problem just like it was for J2ME

This is when functionality and fragmentation will start to affect the appeal of this ecosystem which frnakly I think suffers from very low loyalty

Agree at the moment the tail is very unattractive…but I suspect that it miyght get a bit more attractive with time. These are users who just want the largest screen possible…next time round they may realise they bought a LCD paperweight and want something more.