Google: Android will outsell iPhone, we still love ya Steve
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Mar 14th 2008 4:47AM
posted Mar 14th 2008 4:47AM
Watching Google tiptoe around its relationship with Apple as it rolls out Android is one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching the industry these days. This is perfectly illustrated in the words of Rich Miner, group manager for Google's mobile platforms, who said, "there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone." A truthful statement in all likelihood assuming that the OS is robust upon its global release later this year and available on handsets from HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and LG as expected. Miner then took a few shots at the iPhone SDK saying, "There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone at least at the moment." He then noted that the SDK had been downloaded 750,000 times (compared to Apple's 100k in 4 days) as of February. Naturally, he then applied a thick, brown coat of public relations salve saying, "[If I were a developer] I'd certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I'd be developing for both platforms." Kumbaya my BossEricSchmidtSitsOnTheAppleBoard, kumabaya...
Apples and oranges. Saying "Android will outsell the iPhone" is like saying "Windows Mobile will outsell BlackBerry."
One's an OS, the other is a hardware/OS combo.
The real question - and the only fair comparison - is whether or not a single smartphone model running Android (a "G-Phone", if you will) will outsell the iPhone. And in my humble opinion, the answer is a resounding no. Thoughts?
Asking whether one Android phone will outsell the iPhone is hardly a fair comparison. When someone wants the iPhone's OS, they have to get the iPhone. With Android, there will be dozens of handset options for whatever someone wants.
The ace-in-the-hole that no one seems to be talking much about is native Google support. Gmail has such an enormous market penetration (I dunno, millions? bazillions of users now?) that just having built-in Gmail and calendar stuff will be huge for a lot of people (like me).
Gmail actually isn't anywhere NEAR as popular as most techies think. To be sure, it's one of the largest and fastest growing webmail platforms for sure. But it still trails more established email services like Yahoo/Live by a WIDE margin when it comes to user base.
http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/rankings.php
But I do agree with your general point. For those looking for tighter integration with their existing phone it'll be a nice feature. It's always been frustrating to me to not have YahooGo-like platform for Google (although Android will obviously have much more in-depth integration.)