Can we all please agree to stop lumping smartphone sales with tablets and PCs?
I HATE articles like this. It is pointless. While it is perhaps worth noting that PC sales are shrinking. There is absolutely no value in indicating that Windows will run "on 3 of every 20" phones, tablets and PCs.
While smartphones are indeed some people's primary computing device, by and large that market is still owned by PCs. But, even if you want to include tablets in that picture, it doesn't become as grim as the picture people paint. The problem arises when you add smartphones into the mix.
There are SEVERAL problems with lumping smartphones in with tablets and laptops. But the biggest is sales model. Smartphones aren't the biggest tech segment for any reason other than subsidies. And those subsidies COMPLETELY change the landscape. But that isn't the only problem. The way the devices are used is also drastically different, but that is a much more holistic point.
Brief interlude. This isn't an argument to buff up Windows. If you make it just about phones, they are doing worse than 3 in every 20. It becomes more like 3 in every 100. This commentary however is often used by pro-Android or iOS groups to paint Windows in a poorer light across the board than it deserves. It is also pointless and disingenuous. And while Windows 10 may also run on phones... it won't. Or rather, it isn't the same Windows 10 that runs on desktops. Also, neither iOS or Android run on laptops or desktops, making the comparison even more ridiculous.
So, the business model! Contracts and subsidies are what made Android and iOS possible.
Lets start with the obvious. If phone subsidies didn't exist the average person would NOT be buying $600-1200+ phones (and that is what an off contract flagship device costs). Families wouldn't be letting their kids and teens have high end phones. And the market would be a very different place. The proof? I couldn't find a study which details what the average upfront cost is that the average person pays for a smartphone, so I'll instead resort to contract prices for phones. It isn't hard evidence, but cellular providers are incentivized to sell you a phone for as much as they can. They hate subsidizing and many have talked about scrapping the practice (but their market is so heavily dependent on it, no one is willing to pull the trigger first). So, you can basically assume that their research has proven that the costs are near as much as they think they can claw out of people and remain profitable.
Looking at Telus' website (my cellular provider here in Canada), iOS phones for current generation start at just over #350CAD and most high end Android phones start at $200CAD. Some of this pricing is competition, so you can maybe call this $250-400CAD. This is probably a pretty fair estimate of the upper ranges that the average person would be willing to pay for a new phone ever 2-3 years. Take away those subsidies and see what falls within or below that range and you should start to see what I mean; No iPhones (at all. No really, not even the 5c!). No flagship Android phones (not even the galaxy S4 which is 2 generations old now), but certainly a lot of cheaper ones. And some Windows Phones and a BlackBerry device.
Now, Android on a budget device is still not usually a very good experience. Even now. It is still laggy in the UI if you take away the 6-8 core processors and higher end GPU's. The OS level customizations aren't as well polished as they are on higher end devices and OS upgrade support is non-existent. If these were the typical Android devices sold, the prevailing consumer opinion of the OS would be much lower.
If a subsidy-less world existed, the comparison between smartphones and tablets/PCs would be much more justified as the business models would be much more similar. But as you can see, it would also likely look substantially different. Apple phones would be out of reach of pretty much everyone and the average Android handset sold would be a buggier, slower, lower end model. In that same price category you have BB phones and Windows Phones which function just fine despite the gimped hardware.
That is also somewhat of a pointless argument. iOS and Android might have evolved differently (and same for Windows Phone and BBOS) in a world where smartphones aren't subsidized. So you can ignore the speculation on how things might look in that world.
The point is, smartphones are only as big as they are because people don't have to pay the full price for them upfront. It gives the entire class of products an unfair advantage against any other class of product. I don't even like Tablets being included in that category even though both Android and iOS (originally phone OSs) run on those devices. And, tablet sales are dropping like a ton of bricks as well without having ever come anywhere near surpassing phone sales I might add. And while I'm willing to accept the growing number of similarities between phones and computers, we are still at a point where those are completely disparate markets. And, pointing to the fact that people are opting to buy phones not just over PCs but also in place of them is also a weak argument. If that is all it takes then we should be lumping watches, alarm clocks, MP3 players, TVs, DVD players and a whole host of electronics into the mix as well. In many of those scenarios the smartphone is actually better as a wholesale replacement than it is for a PC.
At the end of the day, articles like this just cherry pick stats that support whatever they want to write about. And, I want to re-iterate, if the report was done correctly and focused on phones, Microsoft would actually look worse. And I would have been fine with that. This really isn't about defending Microsoft. This is about misleading stats and articles. The stats probably aren't wrong. They are just pointless for just about any practical application.
While smartphones are indeed some people's primary computing device, by and large that market is still owned by PCs. But, even if you want to include tablets in that picture, it doesn't become as grim as the picture people paint. The problem arises when you add smartphones into the mix.
There are SEVERAL problems with lumping smartphones in with tablets and laptops. But the biggest is sales model. Smartphones aren't the biggest tech segment for any reason other than subsidies. And those subsidies COMPLETELY change the landscape. But that isn't the only problem. The way the devices are used is also drastically different, but that is a much more holistic point.
Brief interlude. This isn't an argument to buff up Windows. If you make it just about phones, they are doing worse than 3 in every 20. It becomes more like 3 in every 100. This commentary however is often used by pro-Android or iOS groups to paint Windows in a poorer light across the board than it deserves. It is also pointless and disingenuous. And while Windows 10 may also run on phones... it won't. Or rather, it isn't the same Windows 10 that runs on desktops. Also, neither iOS or Android run on laptops or desktops, making the comparison even more ridiculous.
So, the business model! Contracts and subsidies are what made Android and iOS possible.
Lets start with the obvious. If phone subsidies didn't exist the average person would NOT be buying $600-1200+ phones (and that is what an off contract flagship device costs). Families wouldn't be letting their kids and teens have high end phones. And the market would be a very different place. The proof? I couldn't find a study which details what the average upfront cost is that the average person pays for a smartphone, so I'll instead resort to contract prices for phones. It isn't hard evidence, but cellular providers are incentivized to sell you a phone for as much as they can. They hate subsidizing and many have talked about scrapping the practice (but their market is so heavily dependent on it, no one is willing to pull the trigger first). So, you can basically assume that their research has proven that the costs are near as much as they think they can claw out of people and remain profitable.
Looking at Telus' website (my cellular provider here in Canada), iOS phones for current generation start at just over #350CAD and most high end Android phones start at $200CAD. Some of this pricing is competition, so you can maybe call this $250-400CAD. This is probably a pretty fair estimate of the upper ranges that the average person would be willing to pay for a new phone ever 2-3 years. Take away those subsidies and see what falls within or below that range and you should start to see what I mean; No iPhones (at all. No really, not even the 5c!). No flagship Android phones (not even the galaxy S4 which is 2 generations old now), but certainly a lot of cheaper ones. And some Windows Phones and a BlackBerry device.
Now, Android on a budget device is still not usually a very good experience. Even now. It is still laggy in the UI if you take away the 6-8 core processors and higher end GPU's. The OS level customizations aren't as well polished as they are on higher end devices and OS upgrade support is non-existent. If these were the typical Android devices sold, the prevailing consumer opinion of the OS would be much lower.
If a subsidy-less world existed, the comparison between smartphones and tablets/PCs would be much more justified as the business models would be much more similar. But as you can see, it would also likely look substantially different. Apple phones would be out of reach of pretty much everyone and the average Android handset sold would be a buggier, slower, lower end model. In that same price category you have BB phones and Windows Phones which function just fine despite the gimped hardware.
That is also somewhat of a pointless argument. iOS and Android might have evolved differently (and same for Windows Phone and BBOS) in a world where smartphones aren't subsidized. So you can ignore the speculation on how things might look in that world.
The point is, smartphones are only as big as they are because people don't have to pay the full price for them upfront. It gives the entire class of products an unfair advantage against any other class of product. I don't even like Tablets being included in that category even though both Android and iOS (originally phone OSs) run on those devices. And, tablet sales are dropping like a ton of bricks as well without having ever come anywhere near surpassing phone sales I might add. And while I'm willing to accept the growing number of similarities between phones and computers, we are still at a point where those are completely disparate markets. And, pointing to the fact that people are opting to buy phones not just over PCs but also in place of them is also a weak argument. If that is all it takes then we should be lumping watches, alarm clocks, MP3 players, TVs, DVD players and a whole host of electronics into the mix as well. In many of those scenarios the smartphone is actually better as a wholesale replacement than it is for a PC.
At the end of the day, articles like this just cherry pick stats that support whatever they want to write about. And, I want to re-iterate, if the report was done correctly and focused on phones, Microsoft would actually look worse. And I would have been fine with that. This really isn't about defending Microsoft. This is about misleading stats and articles. The stats probably aren't wrong. They are just pointless for just about any practical application.
Comments
Post a Comment