It doesn't matter why this person's experience sucked with Android, it still did. An iPhone 'just worked' for this same person.
I know exactly what I'm getting when I get an iPhone no matter where in the world I get it. There's no carrier specific crap. All the models have well known limitations and features. I can trust, for the most part, any apps I get from the app store.
It's great that you can go onto eBay and get a used phone (or possibly new), but how scalable is that? Would you trust your mother or grand mother to do the same? How much effort did it take between bidding, paying and activating compared to the effort that most people are willing to put into getting a new phone?
I don't think Android is going to be a failure -- the phones will always be around. They have basically taken the place of Nokia's feature phones.
At the end of the day, Google should have maintained more control to guarantee a better user experience. They had an opportunity to follow in Apple's footsteps and put another nail in the carrier's control coffin.
Google having more control over Android would make a better UX and platform, but it would not have allowed for Android to take off as it has. One of the key reasons it's selling is because it's not an iPhone. It's open, and comes with all the pros and cons that openness entails.
Normal customers don't care that a phone is 'open' any more than a non-gearhead cares if a car is user-serviceable. They don't even really know what that means.
Tech folks need to stop thinking of 'open' as a selling point when it comes to consumer products and focus on the actual experience for a consumer.
It isn't a selling point for the customer. It is a selling point for the vendor, which is frankly much more important than user experience when it comes to getting phones in hands.
Tech nerds need to stop thinking that UX is anything more than at best a bonus when it comes to a platform's success.
I know exactly what I'm getting when I get an iPhone no matter where in the world I get it. There's no carrier specific crap. All the models have well known limitations and features. I can trust, for the most part, any apps I get from the app store.
It's great that you can go onto eBay and get a used phone (or possibly new), but how scalable is that? Would you trust your mother or grand mother to do the same? How much effort did it take between bidding, paying and activating compared to the effort that most people are willing to put into getting a new phone?
I don't think Android is going to be a failure -- the phones will always be around. They have basically taken the place of Nokia's feature phones.
At the end of the day, Google should have maintained more control to guarantee a better user experience. They had an opportunity to follow in Apple's footsteps and put another nail in the carrier's control coffin.