Feature creep

In my meanderings through our favorite series of tubes, I ran across a blog post that called into question the analyst report projecting Android will outsell iPhone by 2012. In particular, the author asks: “…please tell me, what are the special, unique selling ponts of Android devices that will see these overtake iPhone?” They’ll be less expensive, available from a wide array of manufacturers, and available on a wide array of carriers. More importantly, they’ll be feature phones. Please understand that, in the grand scheme of mobile device sales, iPhone is a trifle, about 2% of all handsets sold. Smartphones as a whole aren’t a big chunk of the mobile device market (10-15%); the vast majority of sales are for so-called “feature phones”. Feature phones have weaker CPUs, less RAM, less on-board flash, reduced user input options, lower manufacturing costs…and lower prices. The vast majority of models in your local mobile carrier’s store will be feature phones. In the US, with carrier-subsidized phones, the “free” phones you get for signing up are generally feature phones. Apple’s strategy is cemented on being a premium brand. Apple likely will stick with iPhones, of varying shapes and sizes, but all with a similar user experience (supplied by superior hardware), all on whatever carriers Apple decides to allow have the device, and without licensing iPhone’s stack to other handset manufacturers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this strategy. Android stands a good chance of having a chunk of both the smartphone and the feature phone markets by 2012, the timeframe of that one analyst report that has been floating around. That is partly due to feature phone specs climbing and partly due to anticipated work to make Android run on lighter hardware with reduced user input (e.g., no touchscreen, no QWERTY). Moreover, due to the lower costs needed by feature phones, it will take an open source mobile OS to gain traction, since there is no per-handset license fee. In smartphones alone, it is rather likely that iPhone models will outsell any single model of any other smartphone. However, a smartphone OS that can also carve out a chunk of the feature phone market will likely trump iPhone in unit sales, simply due to the feature phone market still being significantly larger than the smartphone market by 2012. After all, though I do not have the sales figures in front of me, Symbian probably outsells iPhone today. Does that mean iPhone sucks? No. Does that mean that the Android user experience necessarily will best iPhone in all areas? No. But the analyst report was referring to handset sales, and it is eminently possible that Android will outsell iPhone by 2012. Not guaranteed, and not without a lot of work, but eminently possible nonetheless.