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    The Droid Bionic shows why Android isn't dominating

    Despite the fact that the sales numbers are impressive, Android should really be doing much better than it is.  A single device (the iPhone) is still its largest competitor.  Shouldn't the scales have tipped by now, the way they did in the early 80s in the Apple versus PC war?  The iPhone, with proprietary, closed technology scuttling by with 10% market share while Android eats the other 90%?  Why is the iPhone still even a factor?

    Look no further than the most recent high-profile Android release (the Droid Bionic) and the advertising for it:

    2011-09-09_1346
    It's a laundry list of features.  It's trying to show what an awesome piece of technology the phone is.  (By the way, Verizon uses the same strategy to try and sell its 4G network.)  But for 98% of users, they really didn't even know that they are supposed to care about the amount of RAM that your phone has.  It's a phone, right?\

    This kind of stuff scares the crap out of everybody who doesn't love computers.  It's not focused on what those features let you do (easily hook up your phone to show pictures and movies on your TV, stream high-quality video without long buffering times, switch between games and apps quickly without lag...)  It's focused on silicon, metal, and glass.  People aren't buying phones for that.  They are buying them for what they can do.

    Nearly every ad campaign I've seen for Android devices either goes for the "crazy awesome feature list" approach or the "we're just like an iPhone" approach.  Those two approaches are going to keep Android neck-in-neck with the iPhone, rather than dominating it like Wintel dominated Apple in the 80s and 90s.

    • 9 September 2011
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    6 months ago Ben Tiedt responded:
    Ben Tiedt
    When seeing a Droid ad, I told my wife "I'm sure glad that my phone doesn't make me want to fight robots with swords or throw lightening bolts."
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