What If Android is Just a One-Hit Wonder? (Premium)

I’ve often described Android as the new Windows, and that’s true on so many levels. But one of the more overlooked ways in which Android is just like Windows is in its various market defeats: Google just can’t seem to make Android successful beyond its core market.

Like Windows on the PC, Android controls roughly 80 percent of its own core market, which is for smartphones. And that number doesn’t look to be changing much over the next several years, if the prognostications from analysts at Gartner, IDC, and elsewhere are as correct as I believe them to be. Android is simply dominant in phones.

But Android has struggled everywhere else. Just as Windows has historically struggled everywhere else but the PC market.

To be sure, success can mean different things. There’s success in numbers—market/usage share—and then there’s financial (profit/revenue) success, including margin successes, where lower volumes of sales are still incredibly lucrative. And then success in engagement, where people are so taken with a core product that they automatically buy into related products and services.

Apple hits on all of those success points occasionally (iPhone) but it tends to score highly across the board. Google, like Microsoft, just doesn’t do that. And its massive success in one devices market just hasn’t translated to dominance elsewhere.

I can’t explain why this is so, but it’s interesting to watch Google simply flounder along just like Microsoft did between 10 and 25 years ago as it pushed its Windows-centric strategy, unsuccessfully, in other markets.

Consider the following Android offshoots.

Tablets

Winner: Apple iPad

It didn’t take long for Google’s hardware partners to push aside the superior iPhone threat in the smartphone market. But in tablets? Yes, Android still dominates tablets, albeit not at the same heady levels—with 69 percent usage share to iPad’s 26 percent—but no one can name a single decent Android tablet that could be broadly recommended to anyone. Worse, Android—and its apps—are terrible on these larger screen devices despite years of improvements. They’re just terrible. And you can’t say that about iPad.

Wearables

Winner: Fitbit, Apple Watch

Apple went from also-ran to market leader with the transition to its second-generation Apple Watch wearables, but Android Wear is such a non-starter that its biggest hardware maker backer, Lenovo, is simply going to stop making the devices. The goofy thing here is that Android Wear actually has the superior software user experience. But Apple Watch features a nicer hardware design than the messes you see with Android Wear, and the software was much improved this past year.

Living room entertainment

Winner: Roku, Apple TV

When it comes to set-top boxes, there is Roku and then there is everything else. But the iOS-based Apple TV is still excellent, even though it doesn’t support 4K/UHD or HDR. On the Android side, there’s no clear market leader, and Google has stopped selling its own Android TV-based solutions, relegating its living room playing to Chromecast. Which requires a phone, the only market in which Android actually makes sense. The weird thing is, there are in fact excellent 4K/UHD Android TV players, including the Miibox, which costs under $100 (and performs Chromecast double-duty). But few people even know about such products.

IoT

Winner: n/a

Google only recently formalized its Android Things platform for IoT (Internet of Things), which doesn’t exactly put it on the leading edge of the embedded market. That could change, but for now, IoT is a confusing mess of products and services, and Android isn’t part of it.

Laptops/2-in-1s

Winner: Microsoft Windows 10

Like Apple, Google has tried to push its mobile device expertise into a new sub-market for 2-in-1 portable PCs. But it’s Pixel C tablet is a non-event, and it’s efforts to push Android app compatibility onto Chromebook have gone much slower than promised. It doesn’t help that the Android tablet experience is so terrible (see above), I guess: These efforts are all based on a product no one seems to want.

Cars

Winner: Apple CarPlay

I almost called this one a tie, and maybe one could make the case that Android Auto is roughly as popular as CarPlay. But Google’s decision to bring Android Auto to Android-based phones is pretty much all you need to know. And for most people, the car interface boils down to Bluetooth connectivity and, optionally, a USB port. Those technologies just work for most people, and maybe should be considered the real winners here.

Here’s why this is confusing

The one thing that is very different when comparing Android and Windows is that Android has always been a mobile platform. And you’d think that the smaller and more modular Android design would lend itself easily and naturally to almost all of these other device types and markets. Google has done the work, but the success hasn’t really followed.

It’s possible that there are some natural market forces at work here.

But it’s more likely that Google’s dominance is so closely akin to that of Microsoft, that it simply doesn’t generate the enthusiasm we see with Apple products. That is, people see these devices, as they do PCs, as mostly work-related. And they’re less likely to buy into the rest of the ecosystem as a result. Or will simply care less when they do. (Even Samsung probably sees more enthusiasm from its Android device customers than Google does.)

This is the elusive “engagement” thing that Brad and I have written about, and discussed on the First Ring Daily podcast. And I’m not sure that Google is any better poised than Microsoft was to break this curse. Does anyone really think that the Pixel phones, Google Home appliance, or Google Wi-Fi products are going to turn into real businesses? Really?

I don’t. And unless Google can figure this out, it may be doomed to own just this single market, a market for which it generates very little enthusiasm and nothing in the way of appreciable revenues. Even Microsoft figured that out. And it rode that Windows horse to two decades of incredible profits and revenues.