> That suggests most the growth in “Android” numbers is coming from no-name vendors selling devices in countries such as China, using devices that don’t support Google’s development of the OS (via ads or search services) nor even expand the platform in any meaningful way that could benefit Android users. > > Samsung, the most noteworthy Android smartphone developer and the only licensee to ship a well-known Android tablet, just [reported](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/28/samsung-idINTOE70O03F20110128) its weakest profits in six quarters, and was hit by reports…

> At a lunch in Sydney today, Patrick Lo said Apple’s success was centred on closed and proprietary products that would soon be overtaken by open platforms like Google’s Android. > > Apple has had unparallelled success by being able to control the entire ecosystem around its products, from the hardware to the software to the acquisition of content and apps through iTunes. > > It has used this to effectively dominate the market and shut out competitors. Consumers have also benefited because they get a consistent experience and products that are easier…

> Obviously, this isn’t the Android users’ faults. The problem is that the OEMs and carriers are holding these updates up for a wide variety of reasons, 99 percent of which are undoubtedly bullshit. [Here’s a perfect example](http://androidspin.com/2011/01/12/breaking-t-mobile-internals-confirm-samsung-is-holding-the-android-world-hostage/). Supposedly, the Android 2.2 update is all ready to go for Samsung Android phones on T-Mobile, but Samsung doesn’t want to push it out so that they can entice people to buy the newly announced Vibrant 4G+ instead. > > Lovely. > > Instead, many Samsung…

> Most people don’t read gadget blogs or even know what Android is. They generally hear about individual phones, without distinguishing much based on operating system. (They don’t know what those are, either.) via [marco.org](http://www.marco.org/2730711751)Marco Arment is on a roll lately. His point here about Android is spot on, as usual. Geeks who love Android have this fantasy that the majority of Android users are like them. They aren’t. Most people who bought an Android phone last year don’t know…

This move makes almost no sense to me. The “open” argument doesn’t hold water, as other codecs are just as likely to be limited by patents as h.264. And there’s nothing open about Flash, which is built in to Chrome. It’s a tired old argument. And we’ve seen plenty of evidence that Google doesn’t really care about open, anyway. So that can’t be the reason. More importantly, all current Android phones have H.264 hardware decoding support built in. They don’t have…