> But Apple has always missed the cue on one critical piece: access to customer data. And that is what Google has always been successful at.

> When you buy an Android phone you sign in to your Google account. Behind the scenes, Google starts recording a huge amount of data about you as a user, your preferences, your routine.

Some would say not accessing customer data is a feature. I am very careful who I share my data with and appreciate Apple's approach.

For me, the problems with Google's latest move to capture more of my data are 1. The value prop to me is minimal compared to the amount of data they are gathering, 2. There is no way to opt out.

1. All of the hardware offerings Google made are subpar copies of other products. They did the minimum viable thing to get your data. Google's Assistant, with all the data and cloud processing power in the world, is equivalent to Siri. Assistant is not a leap forward, just a rebranded OK Google.

I'd had the same feeling in the past about Google's Social efforts. It's more blatant that Google's mining my data when their product offering is just a copy.

Contrast that with Search, Maps and GMail. When those came out, it mattered less that Google was scanning my data because the products were leaps and bounds above the competition.

2. Google has taken over enough of your daily lives with Android, GMail, Search and Maps that it's really hard to opt out.

We've vilified Apple for its closed ecosystem but we ended up with an alternative much worse in Android, one where all of the data you've generated is available for everyone to harvest.

"Apple has always missed the cue on one critical piece: access to customer data. And that is what Google has always been successful at."

This is where it ends with Google and I, enough is enough.

I have to be honest the direction Google is heading in lately feels like dangerous territory, either people are going to like the invasive approach or be scared off by it, time will tell. I get the feeling people care less about search these days, Facebook etc is the Internet for a lot of people and Adblockers have to be doing some damage.

A couple nitpicks:

- Virtual Reality - still hasn't demonstrated mainstream appeal. I'm pretty bearish on it being the next 3d TV's

- Resolution - Does anything north of 300dpi really matter at this point? Maybe for VR, but see above

- Privacy - as data breaches become the norm, where/how do you want your data stored?

> Apple won the smartphone wars a long time ago.

This is a bold statement. On what measure? Last that I've seen is that almost 87% of the smartphone market is dominated by Android.

It might be true for app monetization, but definitely not as a whole.

Good read though.

I think this article underestimates the power of brand loyalty. Tons of customers have almost a decade of iOS under their belt, and convincing them to learn something new is often impossible because they don't care. Their iPhone is working for them. Tech people think they can list off android-only features and convince people, but it usually doesn't work that way. Only when/if their iPhone really lets them down will they look elsewhere. I say this as someone in that situation. I'm not super interested in my phone, and the iPhone works for me, so here I am.

"Apple won the smartphone wars a long time ago"

So no data to back that up? Did this become a topic of opinion rather than fact? YoY sales and market dominance would suggest the opposite is true (http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/11836816/iphone-vs-android-...)

Also (and I know this is anecdotal evidence), in the past 3-4 years anyone I know who jumped ship went from iPhone to Android and never went back. Not a single person switched away from Android.

In my opinion (which is mostly backed by fact, but I'll keep it as an opinion) iPhone is quickly becoming a niche product, and there's nothing Apple can do to change that.

By the logic of this article, Apple won the PC space because Microsoft decided to make a laptop.

And just look at those ridiculous comparison "info graphics"...

> Google is, has always been, and likely always will be, a search company

Nope. Google is and always has been an advertising company.

It affects how they implement search, Android, and everything they do.

All knowing AI, however clever, from an advertising company may start to move some more onto Apple. That Apple isn't putting personalised data into everything is becoming a marketing feature that they should be shouting about.

Edit: Not sure what's controversial to cause lots of up and down votes, I guess some don't believe Google are an advertising company. I wonder where they get their revenue from.

I was looking for a new phone recently as mine is 5 years old. It still works but I was just comparing around mostly for fun.

Besides a bit faster hardware, some more DPI and "assistants" it is mostly the same. My gen 1 Moto G which I got for $170 a while back is still mostly ok. The hardware still looks the same. Anyone remember the jump from flip phones to smart phones? That was a huge difference. Something completely new. The upgrade felt like I was buying something completely different.

I guess I was expecting something more by now. Modular hardware, can plug more memory or more hardware into it. A different shape. A ridiculous battery life.

The only exciting thing I saw is made by a Chinese company I never heard of: Xiaomi (don't even know how to pronounce it). It is this phone: https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/xiaomi-mi-mix/ it doesn't have a bazel, looks square and slick, 256GB memory. I can see buying that. I don't see shelling $700 for a Pixel or for an iPhone.

Then I noticed Project Fi by Google. That would save me money every month. However given Google Fiber winding down, I am worried as soon as I jump on Project Fi, it will be shut down as Google does with many of its products. So the initial excitement there has kind of waned.

Does only one company need to win? I don't think so. 91% of smartphone profits go to Apple! I had no idea it was that high. http://fortune.com/2016/02/14/apple-mobile-profit-2015/ Of course that doesn't account for profits from web activity, which is dominated by Google.

Apple will continue to make incredible profits on hardware, while google will do the same with advertising on the mobile platform.

It's getting to a point that I hate any device prefixed with the word smart. I don't want my device to suggest, hint, or predict anything with regard to my behavior. I don't need an advertisement disguised as a smart phone. I just want a smart phone that lets me search the web, make calls, stream music from shoutcast servers, and take pictures. I really just wished Google and Apple would just stop trying to wall off content they can't monetize.

A long time ago (20-30 years ago) there was a somewhat analogous situation with Microsoft (Apple) and IBM (Google).

IBM was the "diversified" company particularly after it acquired Lotus which was suppose to make IBM compete with Microsoft directly on the office front.

I'm not saying the same thing will happen but I bet Apple will have another revolution in the next 20 years much like Microsoft did.

> Apple won the smartphone wars a long time ago.

This claim is made, but it's not very specific. In what way did Apple win the smartphone wars ?

There was one word missing from that article

   Motorola

In addition, doesn't Google's track record of dalliances make the Pixel something to be discarded and forgotten at the inscrutable whims of higher-ups?

The only race in place here is the one to the $2000 mark. My money's on Apple.

One thing stands out. Google doesn't have multiple streams of income. They have search and a lot of money losing ventures.

The article mentions why Apple is the best: unbeatable hardware. It's that simple really...

If you look at the numbers right now, Google isn't close.

In Q4 of 2015, Apple generated about 63% of it's revenues from iPhone sales [1]. That's almost 2/3rds of revenues for a $605B company. Google is nearly as large in terms of market cap (~$550B) but revenues from Android don't even come close (never-mind hardware sales, which are negligible). It's estimated that Android has brought in around $31B _total_ revenue [2] since it was launched in 2008. The numbers by year aren't publicly available, but even if we're being very generous, it's unlikely that Android accounts for more than 10% of Google's revenues in any given year.

So yeah, in terms of smartphones, one company (Apple) is basically a smartphone manufacturer with a few things it does on the side (laptops, etc.) and the other is a search engine with smartphones as a side business.

Personally, I prefer Android. I've been an Android user for years and I can't bring myself to switch. I broke my Nexus 5x phone recently and I've been using my wife's old iPhone for a few weeks now and I can't wait to go back. But I roll my eyes every time I read an article about how Google is on the verge of taking over the market from Apple. Sure, if you look worldwide, the number of Android phones out there exceeds the number of iPhones, but if you look at the high end of the market--which seems to be where all the money is made--iPhone are still quite dominant. When I start to see Google's numbers get into the same _ballpark_ as Apple's for Pixel sales vs. iPhone sales, then I'll be intrigued.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/253649/iphone-revenue-as... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...