Is Android Only Surging Because Apple Is Letting It?
This weekend, I've been catching up on some reading. One post that was of particular interest to me was David Beach's article from last week about developing for Android. Beach, who is a product manager at eBay Mobile and a co-founder of 12seconds …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two and a half years after Outside the Lines revisited Apple's iPhone strategy in March 2008, TechCrunch is asking the inverse question: whether Android's rise is Google's achievement or a byproduct of Apple's own choices. The prompt comes from David Beach — an eBay Mobile product manager — writing about what developing for Android actually looks like from inside a major app shop.
The timing matters because Apple just reported its strongest cumulative position to date: 120 million iOS devices sold as of September 1st, including 59.6 million iPhones through June and 3.2 million iPads, with the iPod touch making up 37.7 percent of all iOS units. Against those numbers, the claim that Apple is merely 'letting' Android surge reads less like alarm and more like a stress test of how much of Apple's lead is structural.
First-order effects
- Shops like eBay Mobile are now funding real Android development alongside iOS, splitting engineering resources that until recently went overwhelmingly to Apple's platform.
- Apple enters the fall holding 120 million cumulative iOS devices sold — an installed base that still gives developers a primary reason to lead with iOS regardless of Android's unit momentum.
Second-order effects
- If Apple's own distribution and control decisions are what open the door to Android, then handset makers and carriers aligned with Google gain market position without having to out-build Apple on hardware or software.
- Every developer that goes dual-platform raises the value of whichever ecosystem makes shipping easiest, sharpening the contest between Apple's curated App Store review process and Android's looser model for the same app launches.
Third-order effects
- The argument crystallizes the structural fault line of the smartphone era: whether a single-vendor controlled stack or a multi-vendor open stack sets the terms for developers — a textbook instance of the SDK governance gap between Apple's gatekeeping and Google's openness.
- If the pattern holds, the market splits into an iOS economy optimized for monetization on Apple's installed base and an Android economy optimized for reach, forcing every serious mobile company to run two strategies rather than one.
The trend: Smartphone competition is shifting from counting handsets sold to whose platform governance — Apple's control or Google's openness — decides where developers and their economics land.