Android/Linux Numbers at Robert Pogson

I love numbers. They can be measured and specified with arbitrary precision. They can bore, dampen or exhilarate one’s feelings.

Android/Linux latest numbers really are great:

850000 activations per day,
300 million installed devices,
450K apps in Android Market,
1 billion app-downloads from Android Market per month,
more than 800 Android/Linux products have been manufactured so far, and
more than 100 are on display at MWC 2011.

See Android at Mobile World Congress

Those numbers are astounding. I read recently that there are 1500 million x86/amd64 PCs operating. With these numbers and this growth, Android/Linux will be in that ball-park in a few years. That FLOSS is now in the hands of so many who enjoy it is the foot-in-the-door for FLOSS. At some point, the tipping point, FLOSS just cannot be denied its place in IT. No FUD will hold FLOSS back. No lawsuit will hold FLOSS back. FLOSS has become the elephant in the room.

The tipping point was a few years ago for GNU/Linux and last year for Android/Linux. On the horizon is very widespread adoption and presence on retail shelves for both.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

9 Responses to “Android/Linux Numbers”

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1 Phenom Feb 27th, 2012 at 9:56 am

It is not important how many wares are on sale on a market. It is the turnover of the market that counts.
2 Robert Pogson Feb 27th, 2012 at 10:00 am

Phenom, if I offer to the public small, medium and large anything am I more or less likely to sell more stuff than if I sell only one size? Of course variety matters. Too many annoy consumers, of course, but consumers respond with brand-loyalty. It all works. When there is competition in the market some consumer will find what he wants.
3 oiaohm Feb 27th, 2012 at 3:13 pm

Phenom if turnover counts MS should have lost to Unix back in the day.

Turnover is a very poor metric long term.
4 kozmcrae Feb 27th, 2012 at 4:01 pm

The desktop market is tired of “turnover”, better known as The Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill. People are not going to simply “turnover” because Microsoft wants more money. That business method worked okay for the first few releases but its time has come and gone.
5 Phenom Feb 28th, 2012 at 4:56 am

Quote:
“Android has generated just 7% of the revenue the iOS App Store has generated for developers. Android has generated $330 million for developers compared to $4.9 billion from Apple’s App Store”

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-21/tech/30424434_1_ios-android-free-apps

This is the turnover I speak of. Lucrative for developers, lucrative for Apple. The number of applications on the market is basically irrelevant.
6 Phenom Feb 28th, 2012 at 4:57 am

Spam again. Probably because of the link in it. Pogson, thanks in advance for undigging it.
7 Robert Pogson Feb 28th, 2012 at 9:23 am

That took two clicks. Once to “unspam” it and another to approve it… Sigh. You were already on the second page of spam.
8 Robert Pogson Feb 28th, 2012 at 9:26 am

$330 million towards developers of Android Market apps may be smaller but still important. That’s like 1/3 of the investment IBM made in GNU/Linux back in 1999 and that shook the world.
9 oiaohm Feb 29th, 2012 at 2:34 am

Phenom there is a problem history tells you the turnover figure means nothing. Short term effect nothing more.

At the start of dos. Making applications for Unix or Apple was more profitable than making for Dos. Many OS’s that are long gone it was more profitable to make applications for than dos.

This is the reality there might be higher profit for people now.

The key factor long term is the bums on seats. Remember when apple had all the desktop publishing applications and so on.

There is a question you are not asking this is the most import question.

How much money has the android phone and the iphone made the owner of the phone.

If applications developers are eating into the owners of the phone profit. This reduces the means of the owner of phone to upgrade or replace there phone if it gets damaged.

So the $4.9 billion might be a sign that iphone/ipad users are getting financial life sucked out of them.

Phenom some stats are useful. Turnover is not one of those useful stats. Return on investment to the owner of the phone would be a really useful stats.

Yes a 100 dollar phone requires less benefit to be a profitable choice than a 400 dollar phone.

Remember a developer who builds a app for a platform that has no users has wasted there time. You cannot sell to a market with no one.

This is why number users is a very critical metric.

Turnover is a grey metric. It can show good profit for the developer it also can show bad profit for the owner of the phone. Bad profit for the owner of the phone normally leads them to being forced to take the cheaper option next time.

How profitable the phone is to the owner of the phone is the most critical metric of all.