“Google Now” launched last July. The personal assistant does exactly the sorts of things McNamee wants from his iPhone, like warning users about traffic delays in advance. It ultimately won Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year award in 2012.
“Android is great for techies”
McNamee tempers his Android criticism by remarking that the OS is “great for techies.” Android has faced this criticism before, most notably from Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s CEO Steve Ballmer.
“You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone,” Ballmer joked at a summit back in 2011. “And I think you do to use an Android phone… It is very hard for me to be excited about the Android phones.”
If that’s the case, there are many more “techies” out there than people would’ve believed. Google’s Android maintains a solid 52% of the US smartphone market, according to comScore’s January 2013 numbers; Windows phone remains a distant fourth-place, with just over 3% of the market.
However, Ballmer’s criticism seems to make more sense than McNamee’s. After all, Ballmer’s competing directly against Android.
With Android, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) adopted the model that made Microsoft so successful in the PC space. Rather than control both the hardware and the software (like Apple), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) opted to let Android run on a variety of different devices — just as Microsoft did with Windows. Now, Ballmer wants to bring that model to the phone space, but Android has already occupied that niche.
McNamee doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to smartphones
The tech investor predicted that Palm’s Pre would crush the iPhone. The Palm Pre was released two years to the date of the iPhone’s launch. McNamee argued that “not one” of the people who bought the iPhone at launch would stick with the device over the Pre when it came time to renew their phone contracts.
Of course, the rest is history. The Pre largely failed, and Palm was acquired by
Hewlett-Packard
in April 2010. Yet, things only got worse: about a year and a half later, HP stopped producing Palm’s webOS devices.
Understanding the mobile OS wars
Without proper background knowledge, someone listening to McNamee — who appears to be an authority figure on tech — might be inclined to conclude that Google is a doomed company (at least from a mobile standpoint) and that Apple has the mobile space in the bag.
Yet, McNamee has a poor track record when it comes to predicting the success or failure of mobile OSes. What’s more, the type of innovations McNamee wants to see from Apple are the sorts of things Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s been doing for months.
Perhaps McNamee should try an Android before attacking the product.
The article When It Comes to Google’s Android, Roger McNamee Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Salvatore “Sam” Mattera.
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