A pretty funny report on TechRadar. Apparently, the UK price of the Xoom has just been updated. Dixons and Carphone Warehouse—who’d cunningly set the pre-order price of the Xoom to the same as the original equivalent iPad—have both realised the device isn’t entirely competitive since the iPad 2 came out. So what have they done? Clearly, sensible companies would realise that there’s still no really compelling answer to “why should I buy something other than an iPad?” and price accordingly.

Dixons has knocked 20 quid off the 32 GB Wi-Fi Xoom’s price, so you can pre-order your “real tablet” now for just £479.99. Meanwhile, Carphone Warehouse has dropped the price of the 3G model to £579.99.

I racked my brain for almost a microsecond before coming up with how they decided on these new prices. On the Apple Store, you’ll be shocked to see the 32 GB iPad 2 come in at £479 and the 3G model at £579. Which still means the Xoom is priced slightly higher, the idiots. But even in a direct comparison, if we ignore the piffling 99-pence extra, it’s effectively the same price for a device offering the vast majority of users an inferior experience, the double idiots.

Personally, I hope Apple changes the price of the iPad 2 three times over the next week, just to fuck with these guys.

Hrn. Henry Blodget over at Business Insider’s having fun with the whole OMG ANDROID IS TEH WIN AND IPHONE IS DEAD thing. In the annoyingly capitalised Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM — iPhone Dead In Water, he spews out lots of exciting tripe that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny when you examine the details.

Google’s Android OS has gained an astonishing 7 points of market share in the US smartphone market in the past three months, Comscore says.

RIM’s market share over the same period collapsed, dropping almost 5 points.

Apple’s iPhone share increased slightly, but is dead in the water and has now fallen way behind Android (in smartphones).

According to Blodget, then, Apple retaining its marketshare (in a rapidly growing market), matching the competition (at the very least) in terms of innovation, and making huge profits is ‘dead in the water’.

Apple’s share was always going to fall once Android became the OS that any hardware manufacturer could weld to a device and then go to market with a shitty product that costs naff-all.

So, to summarise: Apple’s selling more devices each quarter and making huge piles of money, but because it’s not matching the increase in sales of the combination of a whole ton of other manufacturers who happen to use various versions of Android, Apple’s iPhone is ‘dead in the water’. OK, got it.

(If you include iPod touches in the calculation, Apple’s share has actually fallen).

Let’s ignore the iPad, eh?

Why do the Android gains matter?

You tell us.

Are Apple bulls right that Apple has an insurmountable hold on the “premium” segment of the market and that it doesn’t matter who has the other 75%?

Yes. Oh hang, on—I bet you’re going to say ‘no’, right?

The Android gains matter because technology platform markets tend to standardize around a single dominant platform (see Windows in PCs, Facebook in social, Google in search).

No they fucking don’t. PC’s were an anomaly. I don’t see every TV being made by Sony, or every handheld console being made by Nintendo, or every TV games console being made by Microsoft.

There’s also a big difference between standardisation and dominance. Facebook is certainly not the ‘standard’ of social networking—it’s just the current one everyone’s in love with. But we’ve been there before and web users are fickle. Maybe Facebook will be our overlords in a decade, but it’s just as likely to be Friends Reunited 2 and we’ll all be using WeldedToYourBrain.com, or something. Ditto search and Google.

And the more dominant the platform becomes, the more valuable it becomes and the harder it becomes to dislodge. The network effect kicks in, and developers building products designed to work with the platform devote more and more of their energy to the platform. The reward for building and working with other platforms, meanwhile, drops, and gradually developers stop developing for them.

Bollocks. Devs go where the money is—it’s really that simple. And it’s pretty clear right now that Android is not the place to go, as shown nicely in the linked graph provided by Lee Armstrong. He compares sales across Android, iOS and Windows Phone for Plane Finder. If Blodget is right, you’d expect Android sales to be close to iOS ones and gradually increasing. As it is, they’re barely above Windows Phone sales—iOS is way out in front.

Until Google starts encouraging its platform’s users to buy things rather than expect free, this situation won’t change. And even if it does (read: if Amazon’s Android store is a success), that won’t stop iOS from being a profitable platform—and that’s what matters. After all, note how Microsoft and Adobe still see fit to create Mac OS X applications despite the Mac’s marketshare being in single figures.

Further reading:

• Is Android Taking Over?, Jon-Erik Storm
  
• A Successful Failure, Ben Brooks
  

Yesterday, I flagged buckets of stupid poured on to the internet by Dell and Microsoft execs who should know better. But someone then had to go and tell me about Brett Arends and his WSJ SmartMoney masterpiece Is That iPad 2 Really Worth $2,000?

Now, the smart people among you will have noticed the slight problem with Arends’s argument, in that even the most expensive iPad is a smidge over $800, and the cheapest model is $500. Aha! Arends has you there:

If I don’t spend that $500, I’ll invest it.

Right. In the stock market, which NEVER FAILS. And by the same token, we should all stop buying anything and invest the money, because there’s never any benefit in leveraging new technology, thereby investing in your life, rather than the stock market.

By all means argue that the iPad 2 is overpriced if you can back that up with an argument that isn’t “but a cheaper and better Android device will probably be released within six months”; similarly, if tablets aren’t for you and you prefer netbooks, fair enough. But don’t respond to someone asking whether you’re getting an iPad with “even if I did, I probably wouldn’t want to spend $2,000 on one,” because that makes you sound like a dick.

On CIO, Dell’s global head of marketing, Andy Lark, puts his foot in his mouth and keeps kicking until he’s a gummy exec with a mouth full of shards:

I couldn’t be happier that Apple has created a market and built up enthusiasm

“We didn’t have a clue how to do tablets, but we’re glad Apple’s made something we can rip off in a half-hearted and sub-optimal manner!”

but longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary

“I’ve never used an iPad, nor looked at iPad price-tags and compared them to the usually more expensive competition. So now I sound like an idiot! OOPS!”

[Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them.

“I read something about Android winning the smartphone battle somewhere on the internet. Smartphones are tablets, right?”

Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island.

“Like the island of crazy IN MY MIND!”

It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.

“Dell, as you know, is great at making simple things quite complex! … What? What do you mean I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

We’ve taken a very considered approach to tablets, given that the vast majority of our business isn’t in the consumer space

“I hate Steve Jobs. I kick iMacs to death for fun. Also, I have no idea how to win over consumers.”

[A company] like Samsung has to aggressively go after their business, but we’ve got a far more diversified footprint than some of these players.

“We have no idea how to focus. In fact, we have no idea what we’re doing regarding tablets.”

An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600

“Especially if the case is made from solid gold and tiger fur, but then I’ve been reliably informed that’s the case for all Apple cases. And, no, I’m not going to explain my reasoning in saying you’d need to buy a mouse for a touchscreen tablet, nor how the hell I managed to get to $1600 when the most expensive iPad 2 is $829. Look, just leave me alone!”

Our strategy is multi-OS. We will do Windows 7 coupled with Android Honeycomb, and we’re really excited. We think that giving people that choice is very important.

“We think we can mate a turtle and a monkey and get a unicorn.”

I hate iTunes. It’s reasonable as a digital jukebox, but it sucks big-time for dealing with iOS devices, with nasty file management and terrible app management. But Apple gets one thing right with iTunes: if a new iOS upgrade is available, you plug your device in and upgrade, regardless of where you are in the world.

Compare and contrast with Microsoft’s Windows Phone Where’s my phone upgrade? page:

First, look up your mobile operator on the table. Then check to see what stage the update process is in.

Sounds great and not at all far more complicated than it needs to be.

Hat tip: Matt Gemmell.