Wired has a nice piece entitled, Six Reasons iPhone Delivers Where Android Won’t. To summarize:
- Celebrity Skin
Early gadget adopters were on it like a seagull on Fabio. Fans, internet junkies and gadget hounds have been lining up outside of Apple stores for weeks and have all signed their name on AT&T’s dotted line.
- Contracts
Millions of them. In America, they’re two-year slammers which cost about $175 to break out of, courtesy of AT&T. Who’s left wanting a phone in the mobile marketplace?
- A Stable SDK
The iPhone SDK is smooth and polished. Compare Apple’s SDK to Android’s last out of date SDK and its skimpy documentation?
- Profitable App Store
Software developers can make money easily on the iPhone. Write up an application for Android and you’ll be lucky to get any exposure at all, let alone figure out how to get paid for it.
- Bold Experimentation
We now know the HTC Dream will work with Android, but we’re also promised Android can be ported to any smartphone device. Without a decent headstart, we’re looking at another year or so of gradual adoption across other devices. Apple’s hardware features have enabled plenty of accelerometer, internet, GPS and touch screen ideas.
- Developers
Apple has a SDK, developer support and profitable App store. Meanwhile, without any new software, development or hardware support, many Android developers have jumped ship. Less developers mean less applications, less functionality and more reasons to buy an iPhone instead.
In other news, Apple has acknowledged iPhone 3G reception issues and says it has a software fix.
