Well, Google was better prepared to do it since their main source of income is not product sales but advertising. They can give Android away in order to lure eyeballs to the ads they serve.
To do the same Nokia should have changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size. Also worth noting, Google bought Android. It was not "complete" at time of acquisition but it wasn't a "lets begin from scratch" kind of project.
The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over.
On top of that add that Google is getting in the hardware game and arguably the best Android devices will come from them. Even for Samsung the Android strategy might prove to be a bad idea in a couple of years.
All of them. When you put them next to the wide variety of sizes and designs of Android phones, iPhones look pretty similar to each other. It's still one company with a short catalog vs 5 companies with huge catalogs and better deals with networks to push their phones into the hands of people (2x1, free on contract,...). I think its pretty impressive.
Did Gruber made your Android phone cry? lets keep the "tool" part out, please. Completely unnecessary.
Gruber's point is obviously biased towards Apple but it doesn't lack truth or facts. NPD report is sketchy at best and gives a distorted view of the current scene, which is the opposite of what this kind of reports should do.
As for the marketshare it's interesting because so far what we are seeing is that the iPad is not behaving like the iPhone but more like the iPod. It makes sense, after all. The phone market its heavily subsidized and people choose phones based on carrier availability and special deals. A lot of the growth of Android can be attributed to 2x1 deals, middle range phones that are not used as smartphones and the lack of iPhone on Verizon and Sprint until recently. Im not saying that Android isn't a great OS or that Android phones can't be awesome and cutting edge -lots of them are-, just that when you analyze the Android growth you cannot discount these things.
To do the same Nokia should have changed their whole strategy, focus and expertise in less than 5 years, simply impossible for a company that size. Also worth noting, Google bought Android. It was not "complete" at time of acquisition but it wasn't a "lets begin from scratch" kind of project.
The problem with Nokia and Android is that Samsung will always, in every single case, have cheaper and more powerful devices. Maybe Nokia could've keep themselves in the game with a lot of marketing and a bit of luck, but eventually, down the road, Samsung would take over.
On top of that add that Google is getting in the hardware game and arguably the best Android devices will come from them. Even for Samsung the Android strategy might prove to be a bad idea in a couple of years.