In the first quarter according to Gartner 8

IPhone 4 Apple is in the stores since yesterday.And Google reply has not been waiting for: the internet giant was presented as early as Wednesday its new smartphone, designed in partnership with Motorola, Droid X. Of course, it is not an accident of the calendar. Apple and Google, who shared administrators even a year ago and whose head offices are separated only by a few miles in Silicon Valley, now compete in the field of motive. For Google, the goal is to dam the buzz created by the release of the iPhone 4 and his fans, these "Apple-maniacs."

The Droid X has yet unlikely to overshadow the Apple smartphone, at least in the short term. His predecessor, the Nexus One, manufactured by HTC, has been a flop. In France, the Nexus One is sold "in negligible quantities" according to a mobile operator. But for Google, it's to print its mark in the long term by multiplying the models of smartphones equipped with its Android operating system. From this point of view, Droid X, even if it includes the latest version of Android, is only a stone of the building that the Californian search engine seeks to build in mobile telephony.

For the moment, Apple is the winner of this confrontation.First because it sells more iPhone than Google does flow equipped smartphones of Android. In the first quarter, according to Gartner, 8.4 million of the Apple brand phones were sold, against 5.2 million smartphones taking Android. Then, because Apple has made the release of its products an event. Yesterday, a thousand people waited patiently in the Apple Store fifth avenue in New York to the fourth version of the iPhone. In Paris, Orange had opened his store of the Champs-Elysées at midnight and hundreds of consumers were present... Never another phone caused such a buzz. Perhaps because in addition to the ergonomics, ease of use, Apple developed package applications, these small software intended to facilitate the life.

Different models

Shop online for Apple, 225,000 different, free or paid applications, are available. They do not report anything to Apple. Moreover, it is not the objective. In two years, the company of Steve Jobs returned to developers $ 1 billion. The economic model of Apple provides developers of applications receive 70 of the sales and brand Apple, 30. Financial analyst Gene Munster, the Pipper Jaffray broker, Apple would have won a gross operating income of 189 million in 24 months, that is to say less than 1 per cent of its profits for the period. Clearly, the purpose of the computer firm is to make its products more attractive applications... that it does not develop itself. Google and its partners well understood. The message conveyed by the Motorola Droid transatlantic advertising is clear: "droid does apps" (applications are available on the Droid). Implication: it is not the iPhone y... What the ComScore Institute summarized by a lapidary formula. "The reality of the iPhone in Europe, is a low penetration rate but a huge impact."

The Institute estimates that with "only 4 of market share in Europe, iPhone users are but 12 of all users of the mobile media." Hence the response from Motorola, HTC, Samsung and other Google. Free and open while the operating system of the iPhone is not available for other manufacturers, Android should take advantage of the game this. Google has opted for a totally different model but that in the long term could be winning. "The Android user displayed a very high level of consumption of the media mobile, slightly lower but just behind that of Apple", according to ComScore. The battle looks daunting.