Android? Like Marvin the robot? Samsung eclipses Google OS - Gartner
Sammy Galaxy 'a synonym' for Android mobes
Samsung's soaraway successful Galaxy smartphones are starting to overshadow their Google-built Android operating system. That's in the mind of the public at least, who can't tell the difference between an Android mobe and a Samsung Galaxy, according to Gartner.
Gartner Analyst Anshul Gupta explained in the report Mobile Phones, Worldwide 2012 that so many Google Android phones are now made by Samsung - 42.5 percent of those sold in 2012 - that the South Korean brand has effectively eclipsed the American one.
Asking an average shopper about Android is perhaps therefore more likely to stir up memories of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Marvin the Paranoid Android, than Google's OS.
Gupta said:
With Samsung commanding over 42.5 percent of the Android market globally, and the next vendor at just 6 percent share, the Android brand is being overshadowed by Samsung's brand with the Galaxy name nearly a synonym for Android phones in consumers' mind share.
We imagine the news won't have Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt crying into his champagne: the deal has been mutually beneficial for Google and Samsung. Android was the planet's dominant mobile operating system in terms of sales at the end of 2012, and in the final quarter of that year Android mobe sales took 70 percent of global market share.
Google gives out Android licences almost at a loss, but the move is a strategic win for the advertising giant because it nets the search titan a massive share of the mobile web with the associated search traffic and advertising revenue - whether customers know it or not. ®
COMMENTS
The General Public
Can barely tell their collective arse from their collective elbow.
This is good isn't it? Phones are supposed to be appliances, not a religion.
If Samsung suddenly switched its devices to Bada then:
(i) developers would abandon them because a weird variant of C++ (Bada-custom collections, two-stage constructors, etc) is hardly attractive;
(ii) subsequently users would abandon them for the lack of Temple Run or whatever it is next month.
People aren't buying Samsung phones just because they like the word 'Samsung', they're buying them because they like Android — they just don't know what Android is and, as long as the phones continue being high quality, probably don't care.
I've lived in the States for 20 years...
And as far as I can tell, English is not the native tongue of Americans, either.
"according to Gartner"
Can someone review Gartner's past predictions over (say) the last 5 years and see how many they got right and wrong (or how right/wrong they've been) because they do seem to talk a lot of excrement based on spending their time talking to the wrong people.
Re: Welcome back, Eadon
No, we weren't. Everyone knows Wednesday is therapy day.
