7 Reasons Why Apple Ecosystem Must Fear Google's Play

It is not an easy task to end Apple's domination in technological arena. And with every passing year, Apple continues to innovate and excel in the ever growing market in terms of software and hardware. However, those days may be coming to an end as Google is all set to pull up even bigger assault in the form of Google Play.

Google's authoritative raise with Android mobile platform is already touching sky high as Apple and other OS makers in similar platform are finding it hard to keep up with the search engine giant. The Android operating system now powers devices such as smartphones, tablets and televisions. Moreover, the future may see Google making inroads into areas which apple has been dominating.

According to ComScore, Google Android has taken additional market share and is cruising along the road with 48.6% of the market for smartphone subscribers while Apple stands at 29.5% share in the last quarter. As Google and Apple go head to head in mobile OS, advertising and countless other markets and with continuous raise of Google in years ahead, Apple's stay at the top will receive a fatal blow.

From iPod's launch to iPhone and iPad, the California-based company has reinvented the computing world and led the show in highest level with its competitors. Many analysts also predict that Apple will continue to be the leader for some more years. However, it's just matter of time before others reinvent what Apple does and offer similar or better innovations in near future. And Google seems to be heading in the right direction.

If one carefully observes, both the rivals have nothing much common in between them. Google's openness is exactly opposite to Apple's cult-like secrecy approach.

The Cupertino giant has maintained a high for 34 years compared to Google's 13 years of excellence. The crowded technology battle field has now become a battle between two juggernauts where everyone can be discarded as circuits on the side of the road.

Google has now brought their diversified offerings in a single set and branded it as Google Play directly aiming at Apple. Google Play offers services similar to Apple's iCloud, in that users can move files between computers by endlessly syncing across different devices.

Interestingly, with the inclusion of Google+ service, friends can be informed of the things each user is reading, watching or listening. Users can now store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks, download more than 450,000 Android apps, access the world's largest selection of e-books and rent thousands of films, including new releases and HD titles, according to Google.

Meanwhile, here is a look at seven reasons why Apple's eco-system must fear Google's Play.

Google Innovates Differently Than Apple: Google has implemented various innovations in different fields as the age we live in has sharp technological and cultural bifurcation. And the acceleration and multiplicity of change is producing a world of extraordinary complexity. Various corporate establishments are struggling to keep up pace with the new development for over a decade and have tried changing their business models to accommodate them. However, Google has been able to keep up the pace and delivers every time. The ideas flow from every direction in Google's organization and the best thought or project is picked up, creating something new or reinventing what already exists.

Google's policy of allowing people 20% of their time to pursue their own independent projects is a well-known fact. Innovating in this kind of circle where everyone shares all types of thoughts is only going to bring out something new. The systemized innovation of Google continuously scales up a computing system the likes of which the world has never seen before. By applying new inventions and ways of seeing through the existing systems, Google has ended up being on the top.

Google Has a Loyal Following: Google is already a technology giant with their popular operating system, search engine, along with cloud-based email service, documents services such as Google Docs office suite and their own social networking service.

Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications such as the Google Chrome Web browser, the Picasa photo organizing and editing software, and the Google Talk instant messaging application. And their move to become a big player in the digital music industry is not that easy. It is a difficult business sector to enter today with Apple and Amazon as dominating powers, but if anyone can do it, it is only Google.

Google has a very large following in the technological world, and music lovers would be glad to make the switch where in the past iTunes was the only simple option. The reason for the company's large following is the fact that it has an easy to use architecture and remarkable relevant results.

Android Devices are Everywhere: Android is listed as the best-selling smartphone platform worldwide for the last two years. According to Google's Andy Rubin, as of February 2012 there are over 850,000 Android devices activated every day. The activation rate continues to increase rapidly and it is now up a whopping 250% year-over-year.

At a platform level, Android accounted for 52% of global smart phones shipments in Q4 2011, with iOS representing 23% and Symbian 12%. Android was also the leading smart phone platform by volume for the whole year, accounting to 49% of all devices shipped in 2011 and ahead of iOS with 19% share and Symbian with 16%.

Canalys has revealed that there are over 300 million Android devices in use by February 2012. Android was released officially in 2008 and by now several Hi-Fi Android based smartphone models have inundated the touch phone market. Android is so much in demand that Google itself has stopped marketing Google Nexus One to focus on making Android an epitome of mobile OS.

Low Cost Products Are Offered: Apple products are usually expensive as consumers end up paying a lot just for the brand name. But Android devices are available with a cheaper price tag and they are crushing Apple's iPhone in countries without subsidies. As Android devices sell well, carriers are going to become less willing to pay to inflate Apple's margins with subsidies. Apple usually cares more about profits than market share and arguably will forfeit market share to retain its business model. However, the mobile ecosystem is going to revolve around one big player, and Google's low-cost strategy positions Android to be that player unless Apple can figure out a way to be both cool and cheap.

Latest reports point out that carrier subsidies are crippling iPhone sales in parts of Europe especially in Greece and Portugal. Android now controls over 50 percent of the Greek and Portuguese smartphone markets. The platform's advantage is mainly price, since many Android phones cost less than $200 without a contract. If other bigger markets like India and other eastern countries are considered, Android devices are becoming more and more popular as they are more easily available than Apple's iPhone and other devices.

Everybody Wants Partnership with Google: Google's rapid growth since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond the company's core Web search engine.

A growing number of handset makers are throwing their weight behind Google's Android operating system. All the big cell phone brands like HTC, Dell, Samsung, Sony and Motorola are already competing in the market with their latest models. Samsung's success and focus on Android have contributed substantially to the growth of the platform, but other vendors, such as Sony Ericsson, Huawei, Motorola, LG and HTC have also seen significant growth in their Android volumes over the course of 2011.

No Fear of Experimenting: Google has got thousands of world's most brilliant engineers spending their free time on whatever takes their fancy. Such a home would provide a safe environment for these fledgling experiments to test their wings. It would provide a playground where the geekier contingent of the general public can access ideas before those ideas are ready for public consumption.

It would be associated enough with Google to get the brand benefits, and quarantined enough so that it doesn't put the core service at risk. Current offerings like Google Alerts, Google Desktop, GOOG-411, Google Docs, Google Maps and more came out through experiments in Google Labs.

App Store is Catching up: Google has announced that the Android market is now home to 450,000 apps, a mere 50,000 shy of Apple's iOS App Store, and more than 1 billion downloads are being served each month to over 300 million Android devices worldwide.