Mobile is dead.… Web & apps are both wrong.
— Matias Duarte, Head of Design at Android
I like Matias’ point of view.
Ben Thompson over at stratēchery:
It’s games like Candy Crush Saga – free, with in-app purchase – that are fueling much of that $10 billion. According to App Annie, for the iPhone:– 95 out of the top 100 grossing apps feature in-app purchase
– 79 out of the top 100 grossing apps are free to downloadThe numbers are broadly similar on Android, with an even sharper skewing towards free: 96 out of 100 of the top 100 grossing apps are free to download.
Facebook Home is a trojan horse designed to steal the Android experience, and the Android user base, right out of Google’s hands.
Via Daring Fireball
Benedict Evans has an interesting view of Google’s strategy:
In other words, Android, like Plus, allows Google to tie searches and advertising to individual people and places. In the long term, the data that Google gets from Android users is probably just as important as Pagerank in understanding intent and relevance in search.Hence, the real structural benefit to Google from Android now comes from the understanding it gives of actual users, and the threat comes from devices that do not provide this data – even if, like the iPhone, they do provide plenty of search traffic.
Via Daring Fireball
Horace Dediu is starting a blog post series worth following.
We need to understand how Google uses Android to make money and whether it is succeeding and if it’s not, why not.
— Android economics: An introduction