iOS vs. Android – Too many cooks.

Google must take control to improve the experience.

• Despite being available for just over one month, adoption by the Android installed base of Android L (“Lollipop” or Android 5.0) is pathetically low at less than 0.1% of the installed base.
• By contrast, Apple managed to upgrade 46% of its user base to iOS 8 within one week of the update being made available.
• Furthermore, the previous version KitKat (version 4.4) has only reached 34% penetration despite being available for over 1 year.
• To make matters worse, this data only includes handsets that are compliant with Google’s Mobile Services standard.
• If all the non-compliant devices were included, I suspect that these figures would be meaningfully worse.
• The biggest problem here is the fact that Google does not have control of the update process like Apple does.
• Most users are at the mercy of operators and OEMs and will not be able to update their devices until the operator or OEM in question is good and ready.
• This will not be until their own services have been updated to support the new software.
• Given how long it has taken to roll out KitKat, I am not hopeful that the penetration of Android L will be any different.
• This is a major problem because it increases fragmentation for application developers making it more difficult for them to develop apps for Android devices.
• Most importantly, it is negative for the user.
• Google has made many updates and improvements to the user experience and to its own ecosystem that runs on top of it.
• However, the vast majority of its ecosystem users are unlikely to see the improvements before at least one year has passed.
• This gives the upstarts like Microsoft and Yahoo! more time to get their respective houses in order and take market share from Google.
• Google is well aware of this problem and this is why I suspect that it is moving to take control of the entire Android operating system.
• Once it has complete control and open source has been reduced to kernel, it will be able to improve the user experience as it sees fit and critically deploy that experience to users without delay.
• This is easier said than done and I think it will be at least 2016E before Google will be in this position.
• In the meantime, Apple is under no real threat and Microsoft has a real chance if it can just get its message across in a much more user friendly way.