Originally Posted by xradman

Thank you for your insight. But I think that demographic is going to change going forward. I've been a loyal iPhone owner from day 1, but it's becoming clearer to me that S4 is a better phone for the money. I think the smart phone market is becoming analogous to PC market, where Android will dominate like Windows and iPhone will cling to diehards like Macs. I am making a jump to Samsung Galaxy S4 as soon as 32GB models become available and abandoning my iPhone. I'm sure I'm not going to be the only upper demographic user that is going to do the same.

Originally Posted by wilfred2k5

I'm curious of your opinions on Windows 8 and Windows Blue (8.1?). If businesses also begin to shift to tablets, and Windows RT/Windows 8 on tablets doesn't take off, Android will kill Windows long before it seriously threatens iOS.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how this will play out, and you seem "smarter than the average bear". Seriously, I'd love to know your opinion...buy you a beer if you're in the Bay Area...

Originally Posted by wilfred2k5

I believe that's beside the point. The issue is that nearly all iPhone owners within the appropriate age group are in the market for luxury cars. Android is more common, and will only become more common, but its typical users are unwilling to pay for apps and, though this may be changing, are far less likely to see high-end luxury cars as a worthwhile value proposition.

Originally Posted by dsteinschneider

A lot has changed in a year. Android accounted for 85% of smartphone sales in 2013. I'm involved in CRM for financial companies, many longtime iPhone users have switched to Android (mostly Galaxy S4's). These people are in the demographic you are describing.

Originally Posted by wilfred2k5

I believe that's beside the point. The issue is that nearly all iPhone owners within the appropriate age group are in the market for luxury cars. Android is more common, and will only become more common, but its typical users are unwilling to pay for apps and, though this may be changing, are far less likely to see high-end luxury cars as a worthwhile value proposition.

I would easily accept that the percentage of Nordstrom/Neiman Marcus shoppers who carry iPhones is at least 80%, approaching the low nineties. I would suspect that at least 60% of JC Penney shoppers carry Android phones

From InvestorPlace: "The average U.S. Mercedes-Benz owner has an income of about $175,000, and 28% of them have a four-year college degree. A 2011 Hunch poll of 15,818 users turned up some interesting clues in the Android vs. iPhone demographics. According to its results, an iPhone owner is 67% more likely to have a $200,000-plus annual household income and 37% more likely to have a graduate degree than someone who owns an Android smartphone."

If I were trying to sell an S class, I would do everything I could to suck up to the iPhone ecosystem, which is exactly what Audi, BMW and Mercedes are doing. Yes, there are a lot more Android users, but if they can't afford my product, it doesn't matter to me. Worse, any incremental effort I can put into the iPhone market is far more likely to get me that next sale than spending a much larger amount to get my Android support up to par. This means Android will continue to lag in features until the target audience more closely identifies with Android, even if there are 10x more Android phones.

Further, while the number of iPhone models is extremely small and I only need to work with one company to get a huge number of potential auto purchasers, the number of Android models is very large, with many OS versions, connectors and feature sets, spread amongst a monstrous number of manufacturers. This is called platform fragmentation. I would be afraid to say "works with Android" only to find that my customer's particular model of phone actually doesn't work well and now I'm being sued or forced to buy back a new car for breech of contract.

I say this as a member of the mobile development community, where nearly all Android contract app development is for free/social applications because (a) it's impossible to test your app on every Android model, (b) piracy of paid apps is near instantaneous, (c) very few Android users buy apps and (d) even with other business models, Android users are difficult to make money from since the Android target demographic tends to be poorer bargain hunters.

I develop for iOS, Android, WP8 and Blackberry, amongst others, so I don't have a horse in this race, and I'm not a fanboy. I'm just trying to provide insight. Depending on how Microsoft plays it, you may see a tightly-integrated WP8 AMI implementation sooner than an Android one. Maybe enough S4's will sell and Audi will invest in doing something special for Samsung...

Originally Posted by rodster111

There's no problem with supporting both.

http://www.opptrends.com/2014/06/aud...-android-auto/


http://www.caradvice.com.au/293074/a...to-audi-honda/


http://blogs.computerworld.com/ios/2...-apple-carplay