LG Turns to Android UI

LG has announced it will  run Android in more than half of its smartphones in 2010. It is a significant change from the company’s current strategy. In 2009, only one LG smartphone ran Android and the rest were running Windows Mobile. It is a big hit for Microsoft as other companies such as Motorola, Samsung and HTC move away from Windows Mobile as well.

About a year ago Balmer dismissed Google as a player on the mobile market. And in 2007 he dismissed iPhone as a threat to Windows Mobile. Now MS obviously is losing its once-dominating market position and doing it very quickly. Both iPhone and Android will likely to dominate mobile markets for the next decade.

Besides the Google business model, which is definitely more appealing to the mobile service providers than MicroSoft’s, user satisfaction is another very important factor. Both iPhone and Android have very well designed, user-centered  User Interfaces.

Apple to Buy Mobile Advertising Company

Apple is about to announce the acquisition of Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Apple tried to bid on AdMob acquired by Google not so long ago. With Google’s Nexus launch tomorrow both companies become direct competitors in the smartphone market. From a UI prospective, it is interesting to see how Apple’s User Experience dedication and strict App Store approval rules will stand against Google’s users-know-better-what-they-need approach.

Android Market and Apple’s App Store

As Android Market has grown to about the 20,000 apps mark, it is interesting to compare two different approaches to User Experience. While Apple sets up very strict approval rules in effort to assure only well done and polished apps get through to an end-user, Google doesn’t set any approval process at all. Aesthetics have never been Google’s concern although it’s nothing-gets-in-the-users-way approach has became a signature style on its own. And it does work very well on the web, but for mobile apps it may not.

In many cases visual aspects of apps and UI become the very corners that are being cut in order to minimize product-to-market time and expenses. As a result, we see less-than-inspiring graphics, confusing User Interfaces and an overall lack of consistency. One of iPhones’s strong points is the well-designed default UI elements that help to assure some level of consistency across various applications. After all, apps are just tools running on a mobile device and shared layout principals help a great deal in minimizing learning curve for users.

Below is a screenshot of Apple Store’s Movies App that uses default iPhone library elements as well as a very similar app from Android Market.

Mobile Traffic at glance (by AdMob)

A few days back, AdMob published a very interesting report on market share of various mobile OS and smartphones. The data suggests that Apple’s dedication to User Experience results in  higher apps approval and user adoption rates. The report is a great read but for those that don’t have time here are the highlights:

Smartphone Traffic by Manufacturer – Worldwide

• Apple – 50%
• Nokia – 24% (Mainly from India, Indonesia, Philippines and South Africa markets where Nokia has 89% of the market)
• HTC – 12%
• RIM – 7%

Smartphone Traffic by OS:

• Apple OS 50%
• Symbian OS – 25%  (Mainly from India, Indonesia, Philippines and South Africa markets where Nokia has with 89% of the market)
• Android OS – 11%
• RIM  OS – 7%

United States Data by Manufacturer

• Apple – 55%
• HTC – 22%
• RIM – 12%

Smartphone Traffic by OS:

• iPhone OS – 55%
• Android – 20%
• RIM OS – 12 %

It is interesting that Apple’s traffic comes from only 2 devices – iPhone and iPod. Android traffic comes from 9 devices currently available worldwide. RIM traffic is a result of their current 11 smartphones and probably some past models.

The full report is available here. http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Oct-09.pdf

Smartphone sales per OS vendor

Stats from June 09 shows Symbian being the clear leader on Mobile OS market, thanks to Nokia and a few Sony Erricson and Samsung devices.

It will be interesting to see what the chart will be for Q2 2010 with new Android phones introduced every week or so, Windows UX-focused Mobile 7 and Samsung’s Linux-based Bada.

Motorola Droid first impression

Android 2.0 looks great. I have to admit. I’m a big fun of iPhone OS but version 2 of Google mobile OS looks sleek and visually polished. I did not have a chance to play with it yet but pictures leave very positive impression. It LOOKS usable enough. Not sure it would beat iPhone’s in it’s simplicity but it is a real rival.

The firsts device available with Android 2 seems to be Motorola Droid. Sadly it’s design doesn’t produce any excitement. Seems very dated and follows Nokia Communicator idea, which judging form how often i’ve seen it on streets  never been very popular device.