Google's Android has overtaken Windows to become the world's first-choice platform for accessing the Internet.
Which is 2017, essentially means "the world's first-choice platform".
Google's Android has overtaken Windows to become the world's first-choice platform for accessing the internet, according to number cruncher StatCounter. Android pipped Windows by 0.02 of a percentage point to snatch the title of most popular operating system by internet user, StatCounter said. Android claimed 37.93 per cent …
I'm pretty sure I'm using a PC to type this and not my android tablet or phone (or my windows tablet or phone). I'm also pretty sure I use my PC to play games, or pretend I know what I'm doing with photoshop. Out of interest, how many android developers develop their apps exclusively on their android tablet/phones? None? But you just said it's the world's first-choice platform..........
"Out of interest, how many android developers develop their apps exclusively on their android tablet/phones? None?"
I and probably many many others developed apps for android on Ubuntu
I started with with Eclipse and really loved it, but have since moved over to Android Studio.
You didn't think EVERYONE used Visual Stuido did you ?
I and probably many many others developed apps for android on Ubuntu
I started with with Eclipse and really loved it, but have since moved over to Android Studio.
You didn't think EVERYONE used Visual Studio did you?
Huh? Wherever did he mention Windows or Visual Studio?
Ubuntu=>PC just as Windows=>PC. You still need a PC to run Ubuntu, unless one is going to get some less mainstream hardware together.
The point is that almost everything about Android wouldn't exist unless people had cheap PCs capable of running the OS of their choice. Remove PCs from the equation and Android effectively ceases to exist. Whilst it may be possible to do some small amount of development on Android itself, no one is seriously going to set up an entire CI environment building the whole stack of Android OS and all its apps using Android phones to host it all. They use PCs, that's what they're for.
So if the world's PC manufacturers give up and stop producing them, from where are we going to get hardware to run Android Studio? There's some server-oriented ARMs coming out of Qualcom, AMD, etc. They'd probably make quite good workstation CPUs. No real sign anywhere of them being built into workstations.
But unless someone somewhere keeps the supply of cheap workstations (of whatever flavour) flowing, anyone who creates anything is going to be left high and dry. Which means the things that they create cease to be developed.
OK, so that's not going to happen. There is always going to be a big enough market, but it's going to be expensive. Fortunately if it becomes expensive to own a workstation (or host the virtualised equivalent), that's going to make it uneconomical to develop all those crap ad-stuffed free apps for Android.
Hackintosh is interesting. Quite a lot of the effort behind Hackintosh is iOS / OSX developers fed up of Apple no longer making workstations meaty enough to support the work they do. Apple don't even bother updating their workstation hardware, so people have cooked up their own. Laptops are all very well and good, but there's some jobs for which you need several screens, a ton of RAM, and a big GPU, things you generally don't get in a laptop.
The final irony is that Visual Studio is becoming a good way to do software development for Linux, Android, etc. It's significantly better than Eclipse. I can't speak for Android Studio, but Google would have to go at it pretty hard to make it the equal of Visual Studio.
> Remove PCs from the equation and Android effectively ceases to exist.
You seem to have this idea that 'PC' means something specific when it is just 'personal computer'. The first device advertised as a 'personal computer' was the Apple II in 1978. The most personal of personal computers is now the one you carry in your pocket, and there are now more of them than of all desktop computers (most of them derived from the IBM PC).
Your claim is just nonsense, and pointless. While the Intel/AMD x86-64 box running desktop Windows may decline, there will be newer devices replacing these, as in fact is already occurring: all-in-ones, transformers, phone/dock, ... These may run any of several OSes, even Android itself.
But the format of the current desktop (or mini-tower) 'PC' will not go away, just as mainframes and rack systems have not.
> So if the world's PC manufacturers give up and stop producing them, from where are we going to get hardware to run Android Studio? There's some server-oriented ARMs coming out of Qualcom, AMD, etc. They'd probably make quite good workstation CPUs. No real sign anywhere of them being built into workstations.
Raspberry Pi4 ? (and a whole host of similar SBCs that are as cheap). Just as the Apple II and other microcomputers (later the IBM PC) was a disruptive technology that was sneered at by 'real computer (mainframe and mini)' people, The phones, tablets, SBCs and USB sticks are disrupting the 'desktop micro' market.
Initially, most micro computer software was developed on mini computers such as DEC or Unix using cross compilers. Those developers also claimed that mini-computers would always be needed.
> how many android developers develop their apps exclusively on their android tablet/phones? None?
It is entirely possible to develop on Android, and there are many apps that cater for developing in many different languages. eg AIDE-IDE and
https://android.appstorm.net/roundups/developer/15-apps-for-programming-on-android/
"It is entirely possible to develop on Android, and there are many apps that cater for developing in many different languages. eg AIDE-IDE and"
Yes, and no one said that Android had to be the best device or OS for every single use case under the sun to be the "first choice platform."
Android is the world's most used OS, by a mile. It is the most popular OS for internet browsing, searching.... It depends on the definition of what "first choice" means, but it is clearly a lot more popular for all manner of tasks than Windows and the gap is growing every day.
"Out of interest, how many android developers develop their apps exclusively on their android tablet/phones?"
Awesome logic. By that standard, IBM mainframe is the "first choice platform" because "I'm pretty sure" no bank runs their inter-bank reconciliation systems on a Windows PC.
Specific use cases vs a general use case. If doing things online is the general purpose use case (which it is), then Android is clearly the first choice platform.
"Is facebooking and whatsapping the general purpose case? Surely it's not the business one. Actually, more valuable tasks are still performed on PCs, 84% of which still runs Windows."
Depends on your definition. Most of those people with PCs also have iPhones/Androids which they probably use as much as the PC for business tasks. Aside from some corner cases (Photoshop), there is no business app which requires a PC... SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, IBM, etc are at pains to show how mobile friendly their apps are, everything now runs in the browser so you can use a MacBook, Chromebook, or anything else... can't remember the last time any business ISV bragged about being optimized for PC, or mentioned PC at all. Even MSFT is at pains to tell people that Office isn't just a Windows thing, it works on your smartphone! They understand the way the wind is blowing.
People in offices tend to use Windows PCs, but that isn't because they think Windows is in any way superior. It is because they bought a ton of licenses back in 95' and enterprise IT generally moves slowly... very slowly. Few people care about Windows, it was just that MacBooks were considered to be too expensive and, until Chromebooks recently came out, Windows was their only real choice. Put it this way - If you took your average office running Dell or HP PCs and told them that in the future they would be moving to MacBooks, would the reaction be "MacBooks? How I am going to be able to 'achieve more' with Windows?" or would it general applause and cheering the IT department.
None? (1m downloads)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui
Also:
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/03/android-studio-for-chrome-os-devices-could-be-in-the-works.html
And of course the grown up real development ide (android studio) is about as platform agnostic as it gets, infact i find it runs much better on Linux than windows, and rarely boot into Windows these days since the 8/8.1/10 trainwreck
Not really. As in all statistics be careful as to what the data actually shows.
1. This is analytics from a company that is on 2.1% of all websites, but we don't how representative those sites are. They claim to report as they see if which gives a report that is only useful in telling you how many people visited their sites. Extrapolation beyond this subset is risky.
2. Adblockers are fairly common on Windows, and very rare on mobile platforms so their tracking codes will not get loaded and not be counted. ( I won't exist for one in their analytics.)
3. This shows percentages and not raw numbers. You can't tell the underlying trends. Did Windows rise, fall or stay the same?
Before opening the comments I already knew there was going to be some (probably valid, I agree), criticism of the choice of StatCounter's data as a proxy for metering web client platforms. Followed by a "Linux doesn't get enough credit here" intervention.
"Easy to say", you're going to object, "all you did was read the comments and then post this".
See, more prediction. But, I am ahead of you there as well. Just to show you that I've beaten the old "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." quip:
I also predict that the El Reg's next programming language usage article will result in some brilliantly argued refutations about the use of the TIOBE index as a proxy by the commentards.
And, since I am on a roll, the next article criticizing Presidente Trump will include some trenchant rebuttal by someone with BJ as initials proving that the Orange One is saving the universe.
Hah!
daystogo:1388:
To expand upon Micheal B's list of reservations:
Are the websites used in the poll evenly spread around the world? The very affordable nature of cheap Android phones allows people in poorer territories to get online, sometimes in places where wired internet never really caught on.
Also, I suspect that the better the device you have, the more time you spend online (on the reasoning that viewing websites is less irritating on faster phones with bigger screens, but I have no evidence for this). If this is true, it would then stand to reason that the more someone uses a device, the greater the chance they have of stumbling upon a website that is a part of this survey.
To find trends, the data set has to be internally consistent over time. Use the same websites (or type) over time will you a trend. The trend is more important than exact month Android became the most used OS for browsing. The trend is mobile OSes are going up and Bloat is sliding. This has implications for web designers as to the devices they need to consider as well as the browsers. Also, it points to another problem for Slurp, most users are comfortable with using a non-Bloat OS for many activities. This breaks a crucial psychological barrier that users feel that they must have Bloat or they can not function.
"As in all statistics be careful as to what the data actually shows."
Well, it isn't just StatCounter that says that Android is way more popular than Windows (as is iOS). It is every single tracking website in existence.
Also, if you don't like tracking websites, you can look at device sales or activation. Android has about 4x the number of Windows and growing rapidly. Windows PCs have been declining in total sales for years. Android has been skyrocketing. This isn't even a question. Android has waaaaay more devices actively being used than Windows. iOS just has way more than Windows.
MSFT themselves says that they have 11% share in end user OSs. Mainly to get the EU off of their anti-competitive practices in PC OSs, but they still say it.
"As in all statistics be careful as to what the data actually shows."
Well, it isn't just StatCounter that says that Android is way more popular than Windows (as is iOS). It is every single tracking website in existence.
Well it really depends on what is meant by 'popular'.
I still use a Windows desktop for import stuff such as tax returns, banking etc. the Android/iOS devices get used for 'casual' web browsing, which I tend to do more of now that I can do it almost anywhere - which is a great help when as a parent you are providing the taxi service and hence spend quite a bit of time waiting around...
So it's questionable how much this reflects the real world where even computer novices are starting to filter what gets into their webbrowsers.
However in this case it might not make much of a difference, as both Android and Windows are overrepresented when it comes to ad servers, as both are used mainly by novices.
"both Android and Windows are overrepresented when it comes to ad servers, as both are used mainly by novices"
Surely you can't be implying that non-novices use Apple, as that's even more beginner-oriented than Windows or Android. There's nothing left of any significance in smartphones, and GNU/Linux only reaches about 2% on desktops... that's a lot of novices!
" GNU/Linux only reaches about 2% on desktops... that's a lot of novices!"
I don't think you intended to imply that most Linux users are novices, but anyway I suspect that most penguinistas are not, and I equally suspect that most of 'em use blockers. As will the "novices" we've moved over from other oses. 'Cos we will have installed blockers for them as a matter of course, for our own peace if for nothing else.
I've often wondered what the real Linux desktop penetration is.
>Cos we will have installed blockers for them as a matter of course, for our own peace if for nothing else.
Adblockers and fake agent strings.
Why risk malware for your platform when you can request malware which won't work and avoid deliberately hobbled versions of websites?
I wonder how much of a grudge the guy who wrote that had against MS.
Feels like he's been waiting a while before a chance to publish that sentence.
Not that it is any less true, of course. MS failures have been many, and their combined weight has finally dragged the behemoth down. It will still wallow in the mud for while, bleating loudly before silenced by sheer exhaustion.
Then we'll dress up the bones in a museum, and Life will go on.
You might want to look at the history of his articles: for years Gavin was one of Microsoft's cheerleaders on the site, though when not chatting with Mary Jo Foley he was mainly rehashing PR pieces.
His one sentence per paragraph style is fucking abysmal.
Nokia got MS to pay billions for a division it didn't want, and kept all the IP and name.
They re-invented themselves as Networks and Infrastructure before the phones tanked.
In the past they did paper, welly boots, TV sets, satellite boxes etc before surprising people with phones.
Nokia might be making starships or stepping discs when Microsoft and Apple are memories. But who knows, Who'd have thought DEC, Digital Research, Wang, Westinghouse (Electronics), Zenith, RCA, Bell Labs[*], Motorola, Telefunken, EMI/HMV would be gone and Hollerith (IBM) still with us?
[*]AT&T / Bell Labs / UNIX is owned by .... Nokia!
"They re-invented themselves as Networks "
Not quite, I used Nokia modems around 1974, to quote a part of the Wiki on Nokia:
"In 1967, the three companies Nokia Aktiebolag (Nokia Company), Suomen Kaapelitehdas and Suomen Kumitehdas (by then renamed from Suomen Gummitehdas) merged and created the new Nokia Corporation, the current form of the modern communications company. Nokia Corporation now boasted many industries including rubber, forestry, cable, electricity and electronics. In the 1970s, the newly formed conglomerate started entering the networking and radio industry."
"In 1979, Nokia went into a joint venture with television maker Salora, to create Mobira, which would lay out the foundation of Nokia's future mobile phone division. In 1981, Mobira launched the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service, the world's first international cellular network and the first to allow international roaming".
The network part simply survived the phone era.
Everyone's been saying that Microsoft has lost the plot with many of their recent decisions and now they should be able to see for themselves the outcome of their poor product range and inability to listen to what real customers want..
They have a choice - give people what they want, no not what THEY WANT, what they, the customer wants. Its either that, or you are heading to the next chapter of the history books.
Given that Android is Linux based under the hood, then is now proven that is the year of the Linux client, its just not in desktop form, its the smaller cousin.
Yes and no, Android is Linux in the kernel space, but basically not like Linux in the user space. That's why you can't run Linux executables (technically GNU/Linux, Stallman fans) on Android or Android executables on Linux (without significant emulation). Google is currently working on their own kernel to replace Linux in Android. Should they ever manage to pull that off all the apps written for the Android SDK will still run on the new OS, even without Linux underneath.
Indeed.
Linux "winning" is only important if it enables other Linux solutions which users want. A closed Linux system is just a closed system.
All the evidence (replacing the kernel, restrictions on the Play store) points to Google wanting more lock-in. As Google's hold on the market increases, I have no doubt we'll see more monopoly-type behaviour.
> As Google's hold on the market increases, I have no doubt we'll see more monopoly-type behaviour.
There is no "hold on the market". It is not Google killing off Android competitors, it is Microsoft. They have killed Symbian, Asha, Meltemi, Maemo/Meego, Nokia X, WebOS and Windows Phone (by incompetence). They attempted to kill off Barnes & Noble (by 'investing' $350million to get them to use a MS OS). They planned toinvest in Cyanogenmod.
Now, if you go to buy a phone there is only Android and iPhone, but that was not caused by Google anti-competitive behaviour, it was caused by Microsoft killing what it could, dead-ending its own products, and not producing what the buyers wanted.
Linux "won" a long time ago. It is embedded in almost every web interfaced device I come across. I haven't seen a new WindowsCE/Windows Embedded etc device for quite some time.
Does it make any difference? No. Does it make users more likely to load Mint/Ubuntu/etc onto their desktop? No.
In more practical sense, has it stopped Microsoft from being arrogant idiots and force feeding users their vision rather than allowing consumers a voice? No.
So winning is a victory without rewards.
"Google is currently working on their own kernel to replace Linux in Android. Should they ever manage to pull that off all the apps written for the Android SDK will still run on the new OS, even without Linux underneath."
So in a nutshell, Torvalds and team out, Big G in.
Why does a cold shudder go down my spine?
> That's why you can't run Linux executables (technically GNU/Linux, Stallman fans) on Android
Yes you can. You just need some GNU libraries, such as provided by Terminal-IDE or many others.
> or Android executables on Linux
Technically _all_ Android executables run on Linux (the kernel). You probably mean something like: "or Android apps on RedHat or Ubuntu ...". Whether Android apps are useful on a desktop system with no typical phone sensors (location, motion, compass, touch, camera, ...) is arguable.
Android apps do run on ChromeOS - another desktop Linux.
Google is currently working on their own kernel to replace Linux in Android. Should they ever manage to pull that off all the apps written for the Android SDK will still run on the new OS, even without Linux underneath.
And with that, Android becomes even more proprietary, which hands Google an actual monopoly. They're making handsets too these days, so Samsung, etc (who are all now competitors to Google, not partners) will be told to go hang themselves, or pay up.
They're clearly not paying attention to the mood in Europe. There's already a couple of EU investigations into Google's dominance of search, Web advertising, and Android (Play Services). Proprietary Android would simply make it impossible for the EU to find in Google's favour, and might finally perturb the moribund US regulators into considering action against them too.
It's like there's no communication between the senior management in Google and stock holders. It feels like someone in control of the technical side of Google is driving this expansion towards a monopoly position knowing that for a brief time they will "own the world". That'd be a good time to sell the stock. Once the regulators get involved and start dismantling the monopoly, the remaining stock holders are going to lose out. No wonder some of their shareholders are suing the company.
> They're making handsets too these days, so Samsung, etc (who are all now competitors to Google, not partners) will be told to go hang themselves, or pay up.
That is not quite true. In fact Google sold Motorola so it was _not_ 'making handsets'. You may be referring to the Nexus range which are not made by Google. My Nexus 10 is actually made by Samsung. Other Nexus devices are made by several other makers.
Microsoft contracted with Nokia, and later bought them, which along with Surface made them competitors to their own OEMs. They had the advantage of 'loyalty' discounts so they could force them to continue doing their bidding.
> There's already a couple of EU investigations into Google's dominance of search, Web advertising, and Android (Play Services).
Mostly because Microsoft (and lackies) have been whining and not winning. It is not Google that is shutting down competitors, it is Microsoft*.
* Microsoft killed Symbian/Belle, Asha, Meltemi, Maemo/Meego (all by contract with Nokia), Nokia X, WebOS (by waving WoA/RT and 'loyalty' discounts), and Windows Phone (by incompetence).
A decent phone costs more than an a supermarket laptop. Though a decent laptop (unavailable in any retail bricks & mortar?) costs more than a decent phone.
Also I, family and friends all use Linux Mint on Laptops. At the peak I was installing over 400 Windows workstations in a month. Now thankfully I write novels instead of IT support.
Since Android runs a modified Linux kernel and technical people with a choice now often chose Linux laptops (Macs are a small percentage of iPods and some are running Linux, and both iOS and MacOS derived from BSD), the Year of UNIX I was promised in 1987 has arrived, but as Android, iOS, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, OpenWRT, etc.
A lot of set boxes, NAS, Servers, TVs, Routers etc are based on Linux or Android too.
Sage, SAP, Adobe and Retail sales etc are keeping Windows alive?
Not the year of the cat but the Penguin? Actually just as the death of Symbian was inevitable due to Nokia internal politics, killing of Nokia Touch R&D long before there was even start of Apple phone R&D as well as S80, Crystal, messing up Maemo/Mego, Trolltech etc, the decline in Windows was inevitable with the train wreck of Vista & Office Ribbon and MS management from 2004 onwards
You may want to review the relationship between FreeBSD and macOS. While there are parts of FreeBSD in macOS, macOS is not derived from FreeBSD.
Anyway the reason why all this stuff is based on Linux is just greed, not technical excellence. It's free, so it keeps costs down - and we see in the IoT space what it means - lots of bad libraries and implementations leading to huge vulnerabilities.
Less competition is bad for Linux as well.
It's been here for far longer than you think. The desktop's just about the last wall to start to crumble.
I suspect that overall on the computing scene even Beastie is giving MS bad dreams.
Note to self: If I ever get some time when I finally retire, get to know a bit more about the BSDs.
"Doctor Android, tell me the truth! Is it corporate cancerism?"
Just the obligatory weak joke, but the topic is much deeper. I can't decide whether or not this is a good thing.
Obviously it's basically driven by Moore's Law. We can now pack enough computing power into a smartphone that most people don't need a full-sized computer for their daily tasks. Microsoft sort of saw it coming, but on the distorted and twisted foundation of their cancerously overgrown OSes and bloated applications, they never figured out how to do small things. That left the increasingly important small world to Apple and the google, but I think they are evil, too.
More or less evil seems like a difficult trade-off, but that seems to be where all our shopping decisions arrive these days. If you can point me at a really large and successful company that is not tainted by the evil, please do so. I'd feel much better.
I think the real problem is that American capitalism died years ago. What we have now is corporate cancerism. We basically take it for granted that the rules are written by the most cheaply bribed politicians and the bribers are the most dominant and hugest companies working to get rules that eliminate all the "loser" companies. Per my sig, the real EVIL is the resulting loss of freedom as competition is eliminated.
Do we still have any meaningful freedom in smartphones? At least two choices would be better than one, if you think Apple is competing against the google. However my impression is that relatively few people consider both options. The customers seem to live in like separate, not competing, worlds. Or maybe the choices within the Android world count, even if the google has all of those choices by the balls?
--
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{~5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech | Trade)
The tragedy here is that all those who are whooping and hollering about "the demise of Windows" are basically overlooking one key thing: the driving force behind this is Google.
The same Google who requires integration of their services in what was once an open source operating system...
The same Google who have (ab)used their monopoly over search results to make their browser the #1...
The same Google who has built their entire business on "spying on people"*...
A Billy Connelly sketch springs to mind - he's talking about a preacher delivering a sermon about people in hell looking up at god and wailing "We didn't know!" - and god replying "Well, you f***ing well know now, don't you?!"... well, in about 20 years time, we'll definitely know.
* I always loved the way with the anti-Microsoft-brigade that it's "spying on people" when it's Windows 10, but with Google it's "that's the way their business works and I'm happy to exchange my privacy to use their services"...
> The same Google who requires integration of their services in what was once an open source operating system...
The usual misinformation. Google does not require any Android maker to use their services at all. This is evidenced by Amazon, Nokia/Microsoft X, and many Chinese makers who sell Android phones with other services. It is only when the OEM wants to include Google services that they are required to follow Google's requirements. Users, of course, can access Google services or not, even if the maker did not include them.
> The same Google who have (ab)used their monopoly over search results to make their browser the #1...
I am not sure of the relationship that you are attempting to draw here. Google search is widely used because it gives the best results. There is no requirement to use any particular browser to access any search, nor does Chrome do a Google search any better than any other browser. The only reason that people choose to use Chrome is because it is better for their needs than the others. I use Firefox because it happens to suit my needs.
> * I always loved the way with the anti-Microsoft-brigade that it's "spying on people" when it's Windows 10, but with Google it's "that's the way their business works and I'm happy to exchange my privacy to use their services"...
That is a personal choice. There is no requirement to use Google services, no lock-in, there are many other similar services that can be used. Google data collection and ads are easy to block if that is preferred.
This is somewhat unfortunate and expected. We techie users may still want to keep desktop OS but the mass amount of common users just go with whatever they feel like. This is mainly because most common users don't need a full desktop or laptop environment for their everyday work/ life.
I estimated the amount of common users to show more numbers.
I first took last year’s stackflow survey (probably mostly web developers... so DISCLAIMER: This is biased) to estimate how many techie users based on the percent of Linux users (both Windows and macOS have more common users. Linux should have the least in comparison). Along with a few statistic websites like statcounter, there are 1% Linux users in the global OS (2% for desktop OS).
The result is 5% users in the global OS are techie users (10% for desktop OS). Assuming that each techie users still use a smartphone, we take out 10% from the global OS (5% for mobile and 5% for desktop). The result is there are 90% are common users with only one in ten mobile users is techie user (based on 38% android, 13% iOS, 17% Win7, 13% Win10, 5% macOS, etc.).
This is the unfortunate truth where what is popular rest on the mass of common users. Even if we exclude India's and China's mobile share, we likely won’t like what comes next. It might be better to start looking further (When time comes, a kickstarter funded pc might be nice too).