Mobile installed base and supporting stats..
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Saw this via the Code Project newsletter, and thought I'd comment: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506=[^] Now.. I have a science background (chemistry and biology). So whenever I see nice pretty graphics, I tend to think in terms of statistical confounds and how people can accidentally (and sometimes on purpose) leave things out that affect a statistical analysis. After reading the article, it seemed clear to me that what is NOT being considered is phone and desktop 'death rate'. All systems have an inherent lifetime.. and based on my casual and very non-scientific observations it has seemed to me that the 'death rate' for phones is much much higher than for desktops (how many folks do you know that have upgraded their iPhone more than once?? Now.. no one get me wrong.. there is a shift going on in the marketplace and 'phone-tops' are obviously here to stay and making a huge impact. I'm just keenly aware of how these types of things can be skewed by not paying attention to the whole picture. My take is that although there is a big shift underway, most folks are overstating it by not taking into account phone turnover (un-connections or un-installs if you will). Ok.. let the banter begin :-D
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Saw this via the Code Project newsletter, and thought I'd comment: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506=[^] Now.. I have a science background (chemistry and biology). So whenever I see nice pretty graphics, I tend to think in terms of statistical confounds and how people can accidentally (and sometimes on purpose) leave things out that affect a statistical analysis. After reading the article, it seemed clear to me that what is NOT being considered is phone and desktop 'death rate'. All systems have an inherent lifetime.. and based on my casual and very non-scientific observations it has seemed to me that the 'death rate' for phones is much much higher than for desktops (how many folks do you know that have upgraded their iPhone more than once?? Now.. no one get me wrong.. there is a shift going on in the marketplace and 'phone-tops' are obviously here to stay and making a huge impact. I'm just keenly aware of how these types of things can be skewed by not paying attention to the whole picture. My take is that although there is a big shift underway, most folks are overstating it by not taking into account phone turnover (un-connections or un-installs if you will). Ok.. let the banter begin :-D
article wrote:
1.27M mobile devices sold or activated per day
According to statistics, 5 billion people have a mobile phone on Earth, so about 75% of the planet's population. This put this figure in perspective : this means 1 out of 4000 changes his/her mobile phone every day. Sounds plausible.
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Saw this via the Code Project newsletter, and thought I'd comment: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506=[^] Now.. I have a science background (chemistry and biology). So whenever I see nice pretty graphics, I tend to think in terms of statistical confounds and how people can accidentally (and sometimes on purpose) leave things out that affect a statistical analysis. After reading the article, it seemed clear to me that what is NOT being considered is phone and desktop 'death rate'. All systems have an inherent lifetime.. and based on my casual and very non-scientific observations it has seemed to me that the 'death rate' for phones is much much higher than for desktops (how many folks do you know that have upgraded their iPhone more than once?? Now.. no one get me wrong.. there is a shift going on in the marketplace and 'phone-tops' are obviously here to stay and making a huge impact. I'm just keenly aware of how these types of things can be skewed by not paying attention to the whole picture. My take is that although there is a big shift underway, most folks are overstating it by not taking into account phone turnover (un-connections or un-installs if you will). Ok.. let the banter begin :-D
Thank you for this Richard, people are born once and die once, but a person buys and kills a phone every year or so. I feel the same way about many articles/infograms and probably look like an ass on facebook for correcting some fallacies. People tend to overlook things and misinterpret to prove their point. I commonly see survivorship bias and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy (not related to John) in many articles from even well reputed sources.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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Saw this via the Code Project newsletter, and thought I'd comment: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506=[^] Now.. I have a science background (chemistry and biology). So whenever I see nice pretty graphics, I tend to think in terms of statistical confounds and how people can accidentally (and sometimes on purpose) leave things out that affect a statistical analysis. After reading the article, it seemed clear to me that what is NOT being considered is phone and desktop 'death rate'. All systems have an inherent lifetime.. and based on my casual and very non-scientific observations it has seemed to me that the 'death rate' for phones is much much higher than for desktops (how many folks do you know that have upgraded their iPhone more than once?? Now.. no one get me wrong.. there is a shift going on in the marketplace and 'phone-tops' are obviously here to stay and making a huge impact. I'm just keenly aware of how these types of things can be skewed by not paying attention to the whole picture. My take is that although there is a big shift underway, most folks are overstating it by not taking into account phone turnover (un-connections or un-installs if you will). Ok.. let the banter begin :-D
If you look at where the guy was getting the data you'll see a different chart. Units Shipped* Per Year. That graph shows PC shipments as leveling off (maybe a slight drop off) in the past few years. It also shows the amazing rate that iPhone, Android and iPad have shipped. What I get from that isn't that these mobile devices are replacing PCs**, it's that most people want both. *That's units shipped, not units sold, though we can assume that most of the units shipped were sold, those aren't necessarily the same number. **I think mobile devices will eventually replace PCs. We'll plop them in a docking station and have a full keyboard, mouse and dual screens. But obviously they need to be more powerful before that happens.
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If you look at where the guy was getting the data you'll see a different chart. Units Shipped* Per Year. That graph shows PC shipments as leveling off (maybe a slight drop off) in the past few years. It also shows the amazing rate that iPhone, Android and iPad have shipped. What I get from that isn't that these mobile devices are replacing PCs**, it's that most people want both. *That's units shipped, not units sold, though we can assume that most of the units shipped were sold, those aren't necessarily the same number. **I think mobile devices will eventually replace PCs. We'll plop them in a docking station and have a full keyboard, mouse and dual screens. But obviously they need to be more powerful before that happens.
Excellent point. I've been aware of this for a while, but it always seems that most folks only see what they want to see in the numbers. This is, of course, the entire point behind scientific peer review. To ferret out those inconvenient snippets of information and thinking that affect our view of things. I also tend to agree with your statement about the eventual takeover of PCs by 'palm tops' The issue of power is an ever present one.. but each generation sees better efficiency in smaller packages.. so I can't think of a reason why what you say wouldn't be true.. its just a matter of sufficient power and the right package. We aren't there yet.. but I think its just a matter of time.
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Thank you for this Richard, people are born once and die once, but a person buys and kills a phone every year or so. I feel the same way about many articles/infograms and probably look like an ass on facebook for correcting some fallacies. People tend to overlook things and misinterpret to prove their point. I commonly see survivorship bias and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy (not related to John) in many articles from even well reputed sources.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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Excellent point. I've been aware of this for a while, but it always seems that most folks only see what they want to see in the numbers. This is, of course, the entire point behind scientific peer review. To ferret out those inconvenient snippets of information and thinking that affect our view of things. I also tend to agree with your statement about the eventual takeover of PCs by 'palm tops' The issue of power is an ever present one.. but each generation sees better efficiency in smaller packages.. so I can't think of a reason why what you say wouldn't be true.. its just a matter of sufficient power and the right package. We aren't there yet.. but I think its just a matter of time.
There's also cost to consider though. A smaller package and lower weight mean a lower performance / cost ratio. There isn't "some point at which the ratio becomes good enough", because there is no "good enough" except PositiveInifity, and the big heavy things will have a better ratio for the foreseeable future.
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Excellent point. I've been aware of this for a while, but it always seems that most folks only see what they want to see in the numbers. This is, of course, the entire point behind scientific peer review. To ferret out those inconvenient snippets of information and thinking that affect our view of things. I also tend to agree with your statement about the eventual takeover of PCs by 'palm tops' The issue of power is an ever present one.. but each generation sees better efficiency in smaller packages.. so I can't think of a reason why what you say wouldn't be true.. its just a matter of sufficient power and the right package. We aren't there yet.. but I think its just a matter of time.
We've seen glimmers of these 'palm tops': So far we've had a phone docking in a laptop [^] Ubuntu running in Android [^] And of course Microsoft is starting to standardize it's OS between desktop, tablet and phone. Probably 2-5 years before we really have a workable device, which will probably be put out by Apple first :(
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There's also cost to consider though. A smaller package and lower weight mean a lower performance / cost ratio. There isn't "some point at which the ratio becomes good enough", because there is no "good enough" except PositiveInifity, and the big heavy things will have a better ratio for the foreseeable future.
This is actually the rate in question we are talking about.. and why the graphs in the article I posted are a fail. The question everyone is trying to answer is 'at what point does one platform completely dominate the other'... and poor statistical analysis certainly ain't gonna answer that question. Another thing which I didn't comment on is one of 'rate of change'. The article posted seems to assume a constant rate of change of phone uptake over time.. but that is probably NOT what is going to happen, since the points you bring up affect peoples decisions. It also seems to me that the phones are filling a completely new niche usage-wise.. which causes the rate of change to look excessive at this point in time. The real question is.. what is the saturation point for this new niche and when do we see the real rate of change between the competing technologies (without the confound of a new niche being opened up and the 'vacuum being filled' effect of the new technology)? The fact that all this isn't even discussed in the base article is an indicator of the flawed thinking behind the statistics, hence my initial comments.
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Excellent point. I've been aware of this for a while, but it always seems that most folks only see what they want to see in the numbers. This is, of course, the entire point behind scientific peer review. To ferret out those inconvenient snippets of information and thinking that affect our view of things. I also tend to agree with your statement about the eventual takeover of PCs by 'palm tops' The issue of power is an ever present one.. but each generation sees better efficiency in smaller packages.. so I can't think of a reason why what you say wouldn't be true.. its just a matter of sufficient power and the right package. We aren't there yet.. but I think its just a matter of time.
On the "power issue to size" point I think this development is very relevant: http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs[^] Raspberry Pi - a credit sized $25 (US) PC capable of running Fedora (pre-installed) or ARM Linux (install yourself). Pretty impressive and the hardware actually launches roughly around now (they've just done the Software ARM bit of the launch looking at the site). Seems that while it doesn't incorporate keyboard/mouse/screen interface which rely on being big so humans fumbling fingers can use them, it does show that you can make decent hardware small and very cheaply :) Just thought I'd point it out, Ed
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Saw this via the Code Project newsletter, and thought I'd comment: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1506=[^] Now.. I have a science background (chemistry and biology). So whenever I see nice pretty graphics, I tend to think in terms of statistical confounds and how people can accidentally (and sometimes on purpose) leave things out that affect a statistical analysis. After reading the article, it seemed clear to me that what is NOT being considered is phone and desktop 'death rate'. All systems have an inherent lifetime.. and based on my casual and very non-scientific observations it has seemed to me that the 'death rate' for phones is much much higher than for desktops (how many folks do you know that have upgraded their iPhone more than once?? Now.. no one get me wrong.. there is a shift going on in the marketplace and 'phone-tops' are obviously here to stay and making a huge impact. I'm just keenly aware of how these types of things can be skewed by not paying attention to the whole picture. My take is that although there is a big shift underway, most folks are overstating it by not taking into account phone turnover (un-connections or un-installs if you will). Ok.. let the banter begin :-D
richard_k wrote:
it seemed clear to me that what is NOT being considered is phone and desktop 'death rate'.
This is an outsourcing calculation, how many new units commissioned #n, how many decommissioned, what is this decommission thing, sorry our system does not allow the decommissioning of a unit.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH