“HTC has become the top seller of smartphones in the US with a strategy that’s precisely the opposite of Apple’s. Where Apple is secretive, HTC is open. Where Apple is exclusive, HTC works with all carriers. Where Apple is proprietary, HTC is collaborative. Where Apple customizes for no one, HTC customizes for everyone. It’s the anti-Apple and, so far, it has worked.” I’m not enamoured with HTC’s product design as of late (too soft, too ’rounded’), but as far as companies go, HTC is one of the good guys. Amazing to see such behaviour rewarded – and once again proves what I’ve been saying all along: in the end, openness and choice always wins.
Funny. Apple “broke open” the smartphone market by wresting device control away from AT&T.
HTC is reaping some of the rewards here by having found a middle ground between absolute carrier control and absolute vendor control.
Now nothing has stopped apple from doing the very same thing HTC has done…except apple of course.
Edited 2011-11-10 15:52 UTC
Do we want any carrier control? I certainly don’t. The carrier doesn’t give a shit about my user experience. They want to lock me to their carrier, put crap on my phone, and then not upgrade it so that I go out to buy another one soon.
I much prefer that the carrier has exactly no say in my phone. Doesn’t matter whether it’s iPhone or Android, either way you’re way better off with the vendor in control.
Let’s take a look at my iPad. Bought straight from Apple.
* Photo Booth
* YouTube
* Notes
* Maps
* iTunes
* Game Center
* Reminders
* Messages
* FaceTime
* Music (iPod)
All crap I don’t use, don’t need, and don’t want.
You were saying?
There is a big difference between sponsored crapware and apps that you happen not to like. http://www.tested.com/news/crapware-on-android-minor-annoyance-or-m…
Yes it would be better if everything was removable, but seriously, your complaints are somewhat ridiculous. Who in their right mind buys an iPhone but wants to remove maps, SMS capability, facetime (not even an app), music capability, or youtube?
Do you also get upset that you can’t remove the phone app?
Edited 2011-11-10 16:08 UTC
iPad. I said iPad.
These apps are all crapware to me. Yet I can’t remove them. So, how is the situation different?
Right, sorry, iPad.
There’s a big difference between real crapware (ie, apps that are sponsored by companies to advertise a service or product on your device) and an app that you happen not to use.
Like I said, it would be nice to have them all removable, but I see that since a lot of them provide the base features of the device Apple chose to not have them removable to avoid accidental removals (and associated complaints).
Edited 2011-11-10 16:32 UTC
So seem like a guy who books a holiday to a sunny country and then complains it’s sunny.
Crapware is crap. It’s programs that are light versions of the paid original or virus scanners that last 30 days. What you get on an iPad is what you paid for.
If you don’t want it don’t buy it.
Then most carrier installed apps are not crapware by that definition.
See, Thom stretched the definition creating discomfort, I shrunk it and solved the crapware crisis.
Good job
Well, if the only way the application interferes is by showing its icon, then I wouldn’t call it crapware.
Not the best definition of crapware.
I would posit:
Crapware: Applications installed prior to purchase that are non removable, and require additional money to use.
AT&T is pretty horrible in this regard. Google provides free applications on the phone, but AT&T also includes their own version of maps, navigation, radio, video, ect which all are non removable and all require an additional ~$5 per month to use.
But what about pre-installed software on Windows laptops? They pollute the “Open with” menu or the desktop with icons. Worse, they auto-execute putting strange icons in the systray or bug you with “About to expire”, “Upgrade now” or “Remind me in 1 week” dialogs.
The default iOS and Google apps provide basic product functionality. Most if not all dumb/feature/smart phones have basic apps/functions that can not be removed. I wouldn’t call those crapware, it’s part of the product.
Stuff vendors install and can’t be removed is just pure evil. It’s also stuff you probably are not aware of before you buy the device.
If using it doesn’t cost you money or you can remove it easily, its not crapware, IMHO.
Then it has to be bugware or annoyware, but I feel there is already too much *ware.
If it bugs you, remove it.
You can remove preinstalled apps on windows PC machines
Not always. Just recently I uninstalled the crappy Asus EeeManager program from an all-in-one computer and it took the drivers for the buttons on the front with it. So in effect, I can’t uninstall the crapware without removing hardware capability. Same with sound drivers, they’re often bundled with a proprietary sound applet.
Tho you can still remove them just tho and i bet if you tried harder you could just install the drivers for the touchpad and sound srivers
Edited 2011-11-11 02:15 UTC
Necessary crapware to sell you a cheaper phone.
I could easily create a list of crap on my HTC Sensation that I don’t use AND can’t remove without rooting it.
For starters,
Twitter
Facebook
An MP3 player that starts up for no good reason. (Even when the phone has not been touched for hours)
etc,etc,etc
What I’m saying is that pretty well every PC/fondleslab and smartphone has stuff on it that you don’t use.
Just get on with it… That’s Life.
So, why did you buy an iPad if you don’t like the included apps?
Actually, FaceTime is an app on the iPad, but otherwise I agree with you… There is a big difference between the crapware that the carries install on phones and what Apple provides as a “Minimum User Experience”… I have to agree that it would be nice to kill them off.. But putting anything I don’t use into a folder is simple enough…
Really? I use all of those daily, and woul on Android too.
So if you don’t use notepad or paint in windows, you’ll blame microsoft for including it?
Actually I use most of your “crapware” list on iPod. All is nice and usable tools.
Why do I need to download some crappy player if there is reliable standard tool?
If you need an illusion of “freedom” why do you stick with iPad in the first place? Build your own Android OS and include any unique crapware you want.
Edited 2011-11-10 18:00 UTC
I never said I blamed Apple for anything.
That’s the point I’m trying to make: what is and isn’t crapware is in the eye of the beholder.
Things like the incredibly annoying New Stand thing which not only cannot be removed but can’t even be stashed in a folder is proof enough that Apple engages in the same kind of “crapware” behaviour carriers do – and it’s even worse in The Netherlands since there’s only foreign crap in it. Same goes for iTunes.
FaceTime is useless here because I know like two people with an iPhone 4, and due to the size of the country, using video chat is entirely pointless. iMessage – same thing. We already use regular SMS, email, and WhatsApp – why add yet another useless piece of crap? Why am I forced to keep Maps on my iPad when all my iPad does it sit at home?
The point I’m trying to make is this: what is crapware to one person, is a nice app to another. My definition of crapware is simple: pre-installed stuff I can’t remove, even though there’s no technical reason why I shouldn’t be able to do so. I don’t care if other people find it useful or not.
I’d call crapware to applications that cannot be deactivated and are wasting your ram and cpu cycles for a task you are not interested.
I think you are being to demanding.
I don’t agree. There’s a big difference between bundled programs and real crapware. For example, Windows comes with Internet Explorer, and it is essentially impossible to completely remove.
I don’t use it, but IE is not crapware.
However, I buy a new computer and it comes with a 30 day trial of Norton Antivirus, or it comes with a bunch of links to some online gaming service. That is crapware. It is only there because some other company paid the computer manufacturer to include it on my computer.
The reason it’s there is because if you buy a newspaper subscription, that’s where it will go. I know you’re annoyed because you won’t ever buy one, but this is not crapware.
Fine, you don’t take advantage of a lot of the things that the iPad provides. But it isn’t the same as real crapware. Have you used every single utility that comes with Windows? Does it make you angry that you can’t remove some of them? Why not just put them out of sight (ie on their own page at the very end) and forget about them?
What is wrong you the Youtube app … I can watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlicWUDf5MM
from the comfort of my sofa.
Why would you want to remove that? That’s like complaining you can’t remove Notepad from a default Windows install.
The apps that come with iOS are the ones I use the most. And I’m glad it comes pre-bundled with them.
You CAN remove Notepad from Windows. It’s pretty damn easy: select Notepad.exe, press delete. Or drag it to the trash.
Done.
Oh, please, Thom, I always valued your opinion.
Just stop being ridiculous now.
Crapware is crap. You may not like and not use those apps, but let me tell you something: just because you don’t use them, that does not qualify them as crap. Quit trolling already.
Edited 2011-11-13 11:50 UTC
once again proves what I’ve been saying all along: in the end, openness and choice always wins.
If that were true Linux would dominate.
No significant part of the market cares about openness. Yes, an entire array of products will sell more than just a couple aimed at one segment of the market, but that’s just common sense and sort of pointless to compare. Ie, Honda/Acura will sell more cars than Infiniti. Is that surprising?
uhoh, not cars again. you do realize you lose almost all credibility when you try to compare totally unrelated industries (yes i know today’s cars have computers but that’s not the point).
Way to miss the point entirely. Read again. An entire array (or range if you wish) of products will sell more than just a few. Has nothing to do with cars and can be extended to any product line out there.
For example: Blendtec sells high-end blenders. Cuisinart sells all types of blenders from cheap to expensive. Guess who sells more?
However limited they usually are… OK, lets go with your own car analogy.
One in which you skip over the basic realities of that market: Acura is a luxury brand of Honda – and one with relatively limited geographical reach; most of the world knows, say, NSX as Honda car. Just like Infinity is a brand of Nissan (so also in alliance with Renault)
Most luxury car brands are under more versatile “volk” manufacturers nowadays; the resources of the latter push innovation and technology forward.
Not merely a case of “luxury sells less” – it is an integral, small part of larger whole, a subset. On its own, it usually just couldn’t compete, long term.
So, I guess, you are arguing that, quite soon (considering this field is much more volatile, evolving much faster than automotive one – just look at Apple history), Apple will likely be up for grabs by the likes of Samsung…
You also almost state, yourself, that Apple products are primarily… positional or even veblen goods – that’s what luxury car brands (luxury items, in general) largely are.
BTW, I loved how Porsche almost-kinda-tried a takeover of Volkswagen – but then realized in horror how their financial valuations and assets are worth much less than previously imagined; essentially, in practise, they led themselves to takeover by VW.
Wu..hot? Even in the market that you described people do care about openness. In the automobile market it’s the third party supplies of parts = cheaper maintenance.
Some tech segments aren’t mature enough to be simple enough for people to care about openness.
PS: Windows is closed source, but open.
Plus, HTC isn’t really open… as mentioned already, apps I can’t remove, plus I can’t wipe the phone and install cyanogenmod without voiding my warranty.
They’re open enough (or, really, the ecosystem they’re part of is). No need to go towards perfect solution / nirvana fallacy, or B&W thinking.
Edited 2011-11-18 00:00 UTC
Like in Internet servers, point of sale systems, routers, set top boxes/PVRs, high performance computing, stuff like that?
Or were you thinking of something else? (0;)
We’re talking about consumer market here.
Ah. So smartphones, tablets, netbooks, that sort of thing?
Except that you are confusing “openness” and “open source”. Windows is not open source, but it is still sufficiently open, you can install it on very different type of hardware and you can install and uninstall almost anything on it. There is no lock-in in Windows. In fact, Windows’s openness (or Ms Dos…) is the very reason it has taken over all the other desktop oses (ie Amiga, Atari, Comodore, Mac OS…).
It is true that linux is more open, since you can also make modification to the system itself, but lets be honest, how many people have the knowledge to hack the kernel ? Compared to how many people want to be able to install whatever they want on their system ? The second one is the openness that matters to capture the market. And since Windows/MsDos was first to deliver that, they got the market, no matter if an even more open player came after.
I think that’s quite right, as much as I like open standards, no DRM, no locked down devices etc. 99% of the market does not care, or even know what we’re talking about.
If everyone cared about open standards and open development, we’d all be running *BSD or Linux on SPARC, but in fact we’re running one of two closed source Operating Systems on a non-open hardware platform.
HTC’s success in selling phones is because they have a good range at different price points and wide availability. There may be correlation with their “openness”, but there is no causation.
99% don’t know what openness is, and 99% of the 1% don’t care.
The two closed sourced OS are quite open, as a platform (don’t confuse that with code openness), in standards and development; likewise the hardware on which they run (even sort of on the “locked” fruit side – which greatly benefits, draws from fairly open hw ecosystem, too)
OS and platforms which were very clearly much less open, generally didn’t survive, they lacked “a good range at different price points and wide availability” – so it very much appears to be a causation.
People might not care about (reasonable) openness per se, but they care greatly about the results of it, what it gives them.
Among the factors cited in the article one seems missing..
IMHO better affordability played a major role in HTC favor…
Normal people I frequent do not care about openness.
That’s true, I don’t know anyone who actually initially chose an HTC phone… Of the people who got one, only got it because it was free on their contract.
One of them subsequently bought a better Android phone, as he loves the fact all the software can be had for free if you know where to look
Edited 2011-11-10 16:47 UTC
And the ~half a dozen HTC owners I can recall all chose their device. So there…
(well, a “hand-me-down in the family” handset in once case – but, very much chosen by its original user)
Around half of them not even on contracts, but using prepaid and truly owning their phones (plus in a place where they are – relatively speaking, per purchasing power parity / Big Mac Index and such – around 3x more expensive at least)
I think people should care about openness which could use.
I’m realy dissapoint that Samsung doesn’t offer Samsung Kies for Linux.
But if talking only about phones we have OS, hardware manifacture, local mobile operators with different offers and some geographically services. Isn’t easy for normal or not normal people to use and change them like they want, is it?
(emphasis mine) It very much seems like the latter strongly influences & results in the former.
Really, only us geeks care about openess. My friends don’t care as long as it just works.
Choice doesn’t always win and it certainly it’s much more evil than you think.
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.ht…
If you are going to use luxury car analogies learn something about the car business.
There is only one company that is a purely premium car company – BMW. They make BMW, Rolls Royce ands Mini.
Every other luxury car is simply a premium brand owned by a mass produced car company.
Mercedes primary business is buses, trucks (including Freightliner) and vans. They make cars as a sideline.
Infiniti – Nissan
Lexus – Toyota
Acura – Honda
Lotus – Proton
Audi, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Porsche – VW.
Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo – FIAT.
Jaguar and Range Rover – Tata Industries
Luxury cars serve two main purposes. The first is to create high profit margins. The second is to act as technology development platforms for the cheaper mass produced models. Luxury cars share many components with cheaper models.
Similarly most luxury Swiss watch brands are owned by Swatch including:
Breguet, Blancpain, Glash~A 1/4 tte Original, Jaquet Droz, L~A(c)on Hatot, Omega, Tiffany & Co., Longines, Rado, Union Glash~A 1/4 tte, Tissot, CK watch & jewelry, Balmain, Certina, Mido and Hamilton.
Holy crap. You get the award for going furthest off topic.
It is actually a response to the totally false luxury car analogy frequently used by Apple fanbois.
Apple sells tens of millions of reasonably affordable identical products each year. Apple is the exact opposite to a luxury brand.
To use a car analogy. The iPhone/iPod/iPad is the model T Ford of consumer electronics.
Uh, no. The differentiator is price. Apple iPhone has always been a premium smartphone like the Galaxy S and other high end Android phones. They have never targeted the lower cost market (except now they are selling their old models for cheaper).
The only thing “premium” about Apple is their prices. They are nothing more than low/mid-range generic components assembled in Chinese sweatshops and fitted with a proprietary OS and fancy case.
In Australia the Galaxy S2 costs 30% less than an iPhone 4s. The iPhone 3GS still sells for AUD449. Yet it is no better than low end Huawei, Samsung and HTC models that sell for $100-150.
Apple is like Dyson (vacuum cleaners). Both companies sell cheap products made in Asian factories at grossly inflated prices. Both companies wildly exaggerate the technology and capabilities of their products to convince the gullible and ignorant that they are somehow smarter and more sophisticated than average.
Off the top of my head, Tesla and Fisker are both purely premium car companies that are independently owned.
And they are uberniche manufacturers; absolutely relying on, drawing from the established infrastructure, manufacturing resources supplied by “big auto” (heck, even on its assembly plants), and also big battery tech powerhouses.
Plus, at least Tesla seems more like a tech development company (kinda akin to Bosh and their widespread fuel injection, etc. systems): their only sale so far is a Lotus Elise (so Proton) – but with Tesla propulsion.
Probably quite soon Tesla-related tech will already ship in much more EVs of big manufacturers than their own (there’s some collaboration with Daimler and Toyota)
Fisker and Telsa simply assemble components made by other companies.
Add Bentley to the list.
There is one big problem with HTC’s strategy.. and that is that it’s over stretching itself. I have been a HTC Android customer since the original HTC Desire, I then also purchased the Desire HD. Both are fantastic phones and I commend HTC for both products…. However there are so many variations in HTC hardware/software and that is starting to show up by
1. excessive delays in updates.
2. many even very new handset’s never see updates.
There are a number of HTC devices released over the last 18 months which will never get Gingerbread let alone ICS. It is often the case that the hardware can handle the updates (e.g. HTC Desire) but HTC simply claim that they can’t engineer the software to work due to limited flash space.. However there are many aftermarket roms both sense and AOSP that work perfectly. Couple that with the botched security of their “value add” and I really can’t bring myself to buy any future HTC products.
HTC would be better served having a smaller range of devices which get more frequent updates, happy customers == repeat customers as shown by the Apple user base. Unhappy customers are often not repeat customers unless they are locked into carrier’s with little to no options.
HTC have positioned themselves as “cheap and cheerful” products. Most of their customers won’t be worried about a lack of future upgrades.
That’s a weak justification of sometimes poor support – especially when, IMHO, smartphones should become “good enough” much more rapidly than PCs; when the value coming from software – not hardware – improvements can give most to those who can afford the latter the least.
Oh well, hopefully issues of the type mentioned by jimmystewpot will pass – if only handsets platforms would become more common; if only, generally, some manufacturers would push through a ~PC-like modus operandi (yes, it would probably “harm” those clinging to the old model; but I don’t really care if my Android phone is from HTC or from, say, ZTE or Huawei)
Just to add a useless fact to the whole car company intermission.
Audi apparently filed about 9621 patents to bring a previous model A6 to the market.
http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/597521/Audi-campaign-compares-A6-…
Yet you rarely hear about Audi suing left and right to ban certain cars from markets. Maybe it’s more political or maybe it’s because car companies have been around a lot longer and have the wisdom not enter into these senseless MAD patent wars.
Edited 2011-11-10 23:54 UTC
Computer/IT companies are typically created by young, impulsive and immature technocrats with extremely poor social skills – eg Gates, Jobs, Ellison and Zuckerberg.
Car companies are managed by calm and responsible adults typically in their 50s, 60s and 70s.
No car company would publicly criticise it’s competitors.
Car companies readily cross licence technology and almost never sue.
Any car company CEO that had tantrums or abused staff (Jobs, Ballmer) would be instantly dismissed by the board of directors.
I think this goes for pretty much any industry other than IT.