Sunday, January 3, 2010

Nexus One to hot up competition in smartphone market | The Money Times

I agree that the Nexus One phone, running Google's Android operating system, will be a tremendous success.

There seems to be a few variations of this phone, with slight differences for different markets. Apart from the Nexus One, there's the HTC Passion (to be sold by Verizon), and the HTC Bravo (to be sold in Europe).

These phones will supersede HTC's previous effort, the HTC HD2, which ran the aging Windows Mobile operating system from Microsoft. I think the most attrition will come from Windows Mobile, and I personally don't think it will survive to the end of 2010. The reason is that Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Google's Android are aiming for the same market, and need to attract hardware OEMs. The market share of Windows Mobile has been plummeting, whilst Android is experiencing astronomical growth.

This can be seen in the number of applications available for each platform. Windows Mobile has fewer than 2000 apps in its Marketplace, and the number isn't increasing since the software developers have deserted to go to Android. Android has accumulated around 20,000 apps in the last year. While iPhone has around the 100,000 mark.

So the successes of the new era of mobile internet are Google's Android and Apple's iPhone. The loser is Microsoft's Windows Mobile, which is out of the game.

Posted via web from rain13r's posterous

No comments: