Category: Apple

While there were a few bright spots, the Android tablet market continued to constrict in the last quarter of 2016 according to Strategy Analytics.  The site Q4 2016 report is out and with it, you see that overall, Android tablet sales dropped by 10% year-over-year with Samsung seeing a 10% drop themselves year-over-year.  Interestingly, relatively new comer Huawei saw a 49% increase in growth over last year as they made their first significant efforts in the tablet space in 2016.  It seems to have paid off – at least for now.  Amazon also enjoyed a nice growth rate of 21% thanks to their Fire lineup of Android-powered tablets.

The news on tablet sales didn’t just impact Android.  Apple saw a 19% drop in iPad sales year-over-year in Q4 2016.

Google has been very clear and vocal that one of the primary goals of the new Google Pixel lineup of phones is to lure iPhone users away from iOS and Apple to Android.  While the success of the Pixel and Pixel XL looks strong and the phones are certainly attractive, users moving from one ecosystem to another as they would in this case have one big challenge:  Data migration.  Keeping all your calendar events, photos and videos and contacts are critical for migrating from iOS to Android.  To that end, Google has launched an all new Switch to Android site which outlines exactly what those who want to migrate need to do to assure all their content is backed up.  The key to all of it:  Google Drive.

The step-by-step site has users first download Google Drive onto their iPhone then use the new Backup Wizard built into the app to backup their Contacts, Calendar events, and Photos & Videos.  Once the content that you want to back up is selected, they are all backed up via Google Drive to the respective Google services.  Your contacts go to Google Contacts, your calendar events to Google Calendar and your photos & videos to Google Photos.  Because of limitations in iOS, in order for the backup to work, you must have Google Drive running and in the foreground on your iPhone (iOS doesn’t allow background syncs) and depending on how much data you have, this process could take several hours.  Obviously, use Wi-Fi to do this as it will speed things up (and be cheaper!).

Over the course of the last 3 weeks or so, really since the Apple earnings call, my Twitter and Google+ feed have been full of posts and articles on how the death of the iPhone, and by extension Apple, is near.  They point to the ever increasing growth of Android across the globe, the poor showing of Apple in their last quarter, the lackluster iPhone SE (which I reviewed for Gear Diary) and the rumors of what may well be a lackluster iPhone 7.  In a word, bollocks.

I’m an Android user.  I love Android.  I left iOS a couple of years ago for a reason.  I didn’t like the ecosystem, I found iOS buggy and limiting and ultimately, after a breach of their 2-factor authentication that left my devices locked forever, I had enough.  I have found a breath of fresh air in Android.  I enjoy the flexibility it offers both as a platform and in devices and while it is far from perfect, it gives me the things that I wanted.  But just because I’m an Android user doesn’t mean that I hate anything and everything iOS.  I have always advocated that users find the tool that works best for them.  If that is Android, great.  If that is an iPhone, great.  As long as it meets your needs, that’s ultimately the goal.  It is not a zero-sum game.

Today Alphabet announced their quarterly earnings and the big news in all of it was that the is now more valuable than the once untouchable Apple.

In their financial report, Alphabet market cap value is $570 billion while Apple’s cap is $535 billion.  This is the first time since 2010, before the iPad, that Google has been more valuable than their Silicon Valley competitors.

Google has officially launched Android Wear for iOS, bringing the option of Android based smartwatches to iPhone users.  The release was announced on the official Google Blog and for those who have an iPhone running iOS 8.2 or higher, you now can sync your LG Watch Urbane with your iPhone and get all the features and functionality that you can on an Android phone.  It’s a big move for Google and it gives iOS users an alternative to the AppleWatch.

Interestingly, the integration of Android Wear and iOS is currently only available on the LG Watch Urbane which means that users of other devices won’t be able to sync up with an iPhone.  Google states in the post that further watches will support iOS.

Today in San Francisco, Apple announced that Apple Music for Android will be coming in July as part of a larger announcement that the company made around iTunes.  The new service is a subscription model where you can pay $9.99 per month (or up to 6 people on the same account for $14.99 per month) will be yet another offering for Android customers but the question will be if it is too late.  There are certainly some advantages to having Apple Music on Android devices, namely the Apple catalog of music which is hard to beat.