Is 'Quadroid' the New 'Wintel'? 150
CWmike writes "'Wintel' is the term that for years defined Windows-based computers running Intel chips. Now a similar expression is emerging for smartphones: 'Quadroid,' a term that refers to the Qualcomm chips used inside smartphones running the Android mobile operating system. The term, recently coined in a report by the PRTM consultancy, could catch on, largely because Qualcomm provides 77% of the chips in phones running Google's Android, which is expected to take the No. 2 slot in 2010. And the Quadroid alliance is expected to grow. Like Wintel has for PCs, Quadroid could push down profit margins for smartphone manufacturers, some analysts say. That might seem like a good thing to consumers, but may not be so good for many phone makers."
SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop it you motherfuckers. Just fucking stop it. Stop with the ass-grabbing buzz-wording over-hyping bastardizing-jargon based marketing bullshit! I'm sick of it and you all need to police yourselves from now on because I simply don't have the resources to slap the shit out of every last one of you like you deserve.
FUCK.
Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this moniker is dumb and pointless. Wintel meant two things - you were buying x86 compatible hardware preinstalled with Windows. There were multiple OS options when the term was coined, and it concisely meant that the machine was not preinstalled with OS/2, just MS-DOS, etc, but Windows specifically. Intel meant that the machine was Intel x86 compatible, which, again, was important at the time when the architecture of the machine mattered because many x86 programs did not even run in Windows.
So for starters, "Qualcomm" is a misnomer, because it is actually an ARM chip, and that is the important part. Android doesn't run on only Qualcomm chipsets, but on ARM compatible devices.
Second, people don't get a choice of OS and / or CPU architecture when they purchase a phone. There is no mixing and matching. Thus referring to the phone by its chipset is totally pointless.
Third, just because it's Qualcomm doesn't give any idea of the actual hardware. Does it have a FPU, GPU? What's the processor speed? We don't gain any important information from knowing that it is a Qualcomm chipset.
Everything that a consumer needs to know can be described in the name of the OS at this time when it comes to Smartphones, which is why "Quadroid" is lame and useless.
Re:bad for consumers as well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is this happening?
Samsung, LG, HTC, Moto et al. seem more interested in a race to the top providing the best high end phone. Even in Wintel land, its a race to the top with Dell, HP, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and so forth competing for the best product in each price category. Heuwei and others seem more interested in providing the best low end phone possible.
Sorry but your argument is bad.
Competitive environments don't support races to the bottom, only highly restricted environments support products that are deliberately underpowered, striped of features or just not fit for purpose
No, it isn't good for certain one-size fits all competitors. It's excellent for Android customers. UI's sort themselves out as some thrive, some die and orders establish themselves in the same way that various technologies fought on Windows, all can co-exist but one or two become dominant. I'm not a liberatard but the market really will sort this one out.
Try saying fragmentation a few more times, at least you wont sound like more of a fanboy. The fragmentation myth has been disproved time and time again, I mean tweetdeck had all of two android developers for the hundreds of handsets (in reality they coded for 4 versions of Android, 1.5, 1.6, 2.1 and 2.2). If you don't know how interpreted code works and why android uses this model you shouldn't be participating in this conversation.
In the end it still comes down to "do or not do". Wintel is still on top because it does more then any other OS (Linux rules the servers because it does more then any other *nix). Windows does nothing, well lets not kid ourselves, its a bloated, buggy, unreliable piece of crap but it runs all my work programs, games and anything else I throw at it. This will be the same on mobile OS's, in a years time there will be a lot that Android does that other mobile OS's don't do, already my Moto Milestone w/Android 2.2 is more like a desktop machine in a form factor that is convenient to make phone calls on.
Actually Windows/Android situation is very similar (Score:5, Insightful)
In a few more words: we're not going to see what we saw with Wintel because people actually have to go out and select Android. Wintel was what you got when you walked into a store and walked out with a computer; most people didn't even know what an operating system was until it was far too late.
You are skipping the early history of Windows. Many people were very much aware of Windows, just as many are aware of Android. It was Intel that they didn't really know about, much like they don't know about Qualcomm. Windows 3 caught on because of huge marketing efforts and a high public demand to turn people's DOS boxes into something graphical and easier to use. People initially had choices, stick with DOS, move to OS/2 1.x (+ Presentation Manager GUI if interested), or buy a Mac. Well I guess SCO Unix and Microsoft Xenix were options too. :-)
As for your thesis that people just wanted a computer and got Windows without really knowing about, well the same is true for Android. Some people want a smartphone and buy some Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc phone without being aware of Android or Google.
No not really (Score:4, Insightful)
A race to the bottom for margins doesn't mean quality as well. In most competitive industries you find that will it does allow for cheap, crap, items it also allows for reasonable, good, items. Look at desktop PCs. Graphics cards are extremely cutthroat. Prices are wonderful, consumers can get a powerful midrange card that does great on modern games for less than $200, and even approaching $100. However those cards can be perfectly well made. You can find cards with lifetime warranty in that range. You can get cheap, ultra low end cards of course, that are neither very powerful or well built, but you don't have to. Higher send stuff is still made, including some ridiculously high end stuff.
Consumers benefit when manufactures are encouraged to lower profit margins. After all, from a consumer point of view, profit is just money wasted. The best situation for a consumer is that a company earns no profit, all money is going to cover the cost of the good. It is not good when a company can charge a massive margin for no reason. That is just wasted money for a consumer.
Also for the most part with cellphones, relatively low quality is ok since they aren't things people keep. Technology progresses too fast and people want the new gadget. Fine, but that means that building a phone to last 10 years when it will be used for 1 is silly.
Now when phones settle down, when they stop changing at such a breakneck pace, then yes, would be nice to maybe get a phone and keep it for many years. However I don't see that happening any time soon, particularly since phones are partly fashion and thus you need ot be new and trendy all the time in most peoples' minds.
Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the sense that it's a retarded portmanteau word then yes, it most certainly is.
Re:bad for consumers as well. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where is this happening?
Samsung, LG, HTC, Moto et al. seem more interested in a race to the top providing the best high end phone. Even in Wintel land, its a race to the top with Dell, HP, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and so forth competing for the best product in each price category. Heuwei and others seem more interested in providing the best low end phone possible.
The race to the bottom is about the platform itself, not about a few individual manufacturers and their high-end models based on Android. If it turns out in a few years that you have 95 craptastic el-cheapo Android phones on the market for every 5 high-end ones, you guess what most people will be buying. The cheap craptastic ones. It's would be just like Wintel land, where the vast majority of laptops sold are sub-$700, and all of them have crappy build quality, crappy batteries, crappy screens, etc. People buying a laptop just look at the GHzs and the GBs and then choose the least expensive option they can find. That's a race to the bottom for you: flooding the market with so many cheap options that price and volume become the leading factors in the design of your product.