The Ledger

Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.

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why aren't all 37 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable

Prediction Didn’t hold up
McMaster: Apple faces margin pressure and negligible emerging market share
“I believe over time, Apple's even going to have products. You know, problems, because they're not going to be able to sustain these margins, and in these markets where Android is dominant, Apple's market share will be negligible. Right? As these markets contin…”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:43 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Assertion Supported
Evans: Google generates more revenue on iOS than on Android
“You know, Google is making more money on iOS and Android right now.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:05 a16z Podcast | Mobile is Eating the World (and Apple is Gobbling Fastest)
Assertion Supported
Evans: Google contracts block OEMs from selling both Google and forked Android
“Well, the problem for them is that Google's contract says you're not allowed to sell a forked and uncompatible and open version of Android. And, or if you do, you can't sell a single phone that has Google services on it.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:32 a16z Podcast | Enough with the Old Stuff -- Time for New Questions in Mobile
Assertion Supported
Olivia Moore: Gemini hits 50% of ChatGPT scale on Android, 17% on iOS
“Like, if you look at Android, Gemini is at, like, 50% of ChatGPT's scale on mobile, whereas on iOS it's, like, 17%.”
Olivia Moore Dec 29, 2025 ▶ 13:03 Where does consumer AI stand at the end of 2025?
Prediction Held up
Evans: Global iOS and Android devices will reach five billion
“There's one and a half billion PCs on Earth. There's three billion iOS and Android devices on Earth. We'll go to five billion.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 24:21 a16z Podcast | Finally a Tablet that Replaces Your Laptop
Prediction Held up
Andreessen predicts WhatsApp, iPhone, and Android will reach 1 billion users
“And then like WhatsApp is going to do it, and then there's going to be a whole bunch of others. And I, you know, iPhone is going to do it, and Android is going to do it.”
Marc Andreessen Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:12 a16z Podcast | Ben and Marc Explain (Practically) Everything – Part 1
Assertion Supported
Evans: iOS users spend four times more than Android users
“You have double the revenue on iOS for half the users, and so very roughly four times the spend.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:41 a16z Podcast | The Micro and Macro of Mobile
Prediction Held up
Evans predicts active iOS and Android devices will reach four billion globally
“And we'll go to four billion iOS and Android.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:28 a16z Podcast | The Micro and Macro of Mobile
Assertion Supported
Evans: Apple's iOS 8 extensions lagged behind Android by three years
“And so, you know, again, it's a bit like multitasking, that Apple is doing something that was on Android like three years earlier.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:00 a16z Podcast | The Apple WWDC 2014 Deep Dive
Assertion Supported
Chan: Google Play drives under 10% of Chinese Android app downloads
“Google Play, I believe is less than 10% of Android app downloads.”
Connie Chan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:54 a16z Podcast | China and Tech
Prediction Held up
Balaji Srinivasan: Google will eventually merge Chrome OS and Android
“Obviously, I think it's, you know, like, there's going to be some fusion of Chrome OS and Android now that they're both folding into the same person.”
Balaji Srinivasan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:58 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile’s Own PageRank
Assertion Partly supported
Evans: Android E-Commerce Basket Sizes Are Half of iOS
“Basket size or an e-commerce transaction or, you know, payment rate on Android that's half what you see from iOS, and that's, as I said, it's really just a function of price.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:42 a16z Podcast | Apple and Google Won the Mobile OS War, But a New War Has Already Begun
Prediction Held up
Active Android devices will reach 2-3B; iOS will reach 700-900M
“And, you know, as things play out with the current dynamics, which aren't really going to change in the next two or three years, we will end up with seven, eight, nine hundred million iOS devices in use on Earth. It's probably about 500 now. And we'll end up w…”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:21 a16z Podcast | Apple and Google Won the Mobile OS War, But a New War Has Already Begun
Assertion Partly supported
Evans: The average Apple device generates 4x the app revenue of Android
“And then if you look at App Store revenue, you see that Apple devices contribute about two-thirds of all the revenue, and Android devices one-third. And that's even though there are at least twice as many Android devices in use as there are Apple devices. So t…”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 13:53 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2015
Assertion Supported
Evans: Google bypassed Android OS fragmentation using Google Play Services
“Always been kind of trying to get the handset makers to do operating system updates, and it's never worked. But they sort of got around that part of the fragmentation problem for their own services by putting Google Play services on top of everything.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:46 a16z Podcast | Truce for Mobile, Battle for VR
Assertion Supported
Evans: Android launchers focused on alternative app discovery failed
“And so we had this whole wave, of course, of Android launches that were all about trying to create new ways of discovering apps, and those almost all seem to, none of those seem to have worked.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:30 a16z Podcast | The Year Mobile Began to Truly Dominate Tech
Prediction Partly held up
Evans: Apple will capture the top 15% of global mobile users
“Apple's gonna have the top 15% 10 to 15% of all the mobile phone users on earth, and Android will have most of the rest.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:18 a16z Podcast | Mobile is Eating the World (and Apple is Gobbling Fastest)
Assertion Partly supported
Evans: Apple sells top 10% of global phone volume, Android 50%
“Apple is selling the top 10% of all the phones on Earth, And that's growing steadily, and Android takes the next 50% of all the phones sold on Earth, and that's growing slightly faster.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:55 a16z Podcast | Enough with the Old Stuff -- Time for New Questions in Mobile
Assertion Partly supported
Evans: Samsung Captured Half of Android Volume and Almost All Profits
“There's been a question for two or three years as to what was going to happen with Samsung, which had taken half of the Android market by volume and almost all the profits.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:07 a16z Podcast | Enough with the Old Stuff -- Time for New Questions in Mobile
Assertion Supported
Evans: Apple holds only half of the high-end smartphone market
“When you look at the high end segment, that Apple is really the only place Apple competes they've probably only got around half of that segment, and the other half is high end Android, and almost all of that high end Android is with bigger screens.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:51 a16z Podcast | Apple Takes on Payments and Your Wrist
Assertion Supported
Google has never disclosed revenue data for Google Play
“They haven't given any statistics at all on Android in nine months and they haven't, they've never given any data on Google Play. I mean, they've given app downloads, but they've never given revenue data”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:35 a16z Podcast | Google I/O -- A Three-Hour Tour (in 30 minutes)
Assertion Supported
Evans: Smartphone sales exceed the camera industry's entire historical unit sales
“And more iPhone and Android, more iPhones and Android phones have been sold and were sold by the camera industry in its entire history.”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 20:06 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2015
Assertion Contradicted
Evans: 95% of Android devices ship with Google Mobile Services
“Well, 95% of devices have got GMS”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:04 a16z Podcast | So Where Are We on the 'S-curve' for PC Devices?
Assertion Supported
Wholesale entry-level 3G Android phones cost $25-$30 and 4G cost $40
“And incidentally, the entry price of an Android, three G Android phone now, with half a gig of memory, is probably 40 to 50, no. 25 to 30 dollars wholesale. And then four G is more like 40 dollars.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:20 a16z Podcast | Mobile Falls Hard for Virtual Reality
Assertion Contradicted
Evans: iOS and Android ship 1.5B units annually with 3B active devices
“IOS, Android, doing over one and a half billion units this year, and probably over three billion of those things in the world today.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:40 a16z Podcast | The Year Mobile Began to Truly Dominate Tech
Assertion Supported
Evans: Unsubsidized Android smartphones now cost as little as $30 to $40
“A mobile entry price of a mobile phone now is five to 10 dollars to buy the phone, and an Android phone is 30 to 40 dollars, and that's not subsidized price, that's the actual price of buying the thing.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:15 a16z Podcast | A Copernican Update ... In Tech, the Smartphone is the Center
Assertion Supported
Evans: Samsung once controlled half of the global Android market by volume
“Samsung had half of the Android market by volume, more or less, and so that was kind of concerning for Google, that you had this big, powerful partner.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:33 a16z Podcast | Mobile is Eating the World (and Apple is Gobbling Fastest)
Assertion Supported
Android smartphones in Myanmar cost less than early African feature phones
“It's now cheaper to get an Android-based smartphone, you know, made in China or elsewhere than it was to buy a candy bar phone in Africa back when they were coming online.”
David Madden Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 29:39 a16z Podcast | Technology and the Opening of Myanmar
Assertion Supported
Google: Average Android user checks their phone 120 times daily
“They gave a statistic in the event of let me kind of check my notes the number of people who yeah, Android, an average Android user checks their phone a 120 times a day”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:28 a16z Podcast | Google I/O -- A Three-Hour Tour (in 30 minutes)
Assertion Partly supported
Evans: iPhone ASP is $600 compared to Android's $250 average
“They sell a phone that an average of 600 dollars, In an industry that averages about a 180, and Android averages about 250. And in the high-end space, they have, as it might be, two thirds to three quarters of the market, and Samsung has most of the rest.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:56 a16z Podcast | The Apple WWDC 2014 Deep Dive
Assertion Supported
Evans: One-third of the global Android market operates without Google services
“There's two-thirds of Android, which is the one that Google gives numbers for, is outside China, and then there's another third of Android, which is in China, and doesn't have Google Play on it or Google Maps on it”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:11 a16z Podcast | China and Tech
Assertion Partly supported
Apple holds 10% and Android 45-50% of global phone sales
“In as much as Apple has about, well, in the launch quarter, they have about 10% of all the phones sold on Earth, and Android has another 45 to 50% although only about two-thirds of those are Google Android and one-third are in China and don't have any Google s…”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:54 a16z Podcast | Apple and Google Won the Mobile OS War, But a New War Has Already Begun
Assertion Supported
Frank Chen: Android speech recognition stems from Hinton and Bengio's research
“Worked on elaboration of these neural networks called deep belief networks, and their research led directly to what you use every day in Android if you talk to Android. So the speech-to-text algorithms that are in Android are direct descendants of some of Jeff…”
Frank Chen Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 22:58 AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning: A Primer
Assertion Partly supported
Evans: Apple holds 15% of global phone sales, Android 50-60%
“Apple has about 15% of all the phones sold on Earth, and Android is the next 50 to 60%, and then the rest are feature phones that are converting very fast to those 35 dollar Androids I talked about earlier.”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 13:24 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2015
Assertion Supported
Evans: Android entry prices dropped to $30 to $40 in 2015
“The average price of an Android device, on the other hand, is currently about 250 dollars, and the entry price for Android today is only 30 or 40 dollars.”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 3:18 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2015
Assertion Supported
Evans: Apple has 10% of global phone sales vs Android's 50%
“Apple has maybe 10% of all the phones being sold on Earth, but Android has maybe 50%.”
Benedict Evans Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 3:11 Mobile Is Eating the World, 2014
Assertion Supported
Evans: Standard Android is too resource-heavy for simple smart home devices
“Essentially, if you've got a connected light bulb, or connected thermostat, or something, Android probably doesn't fit on that device, just because it's too small and too cheap, and not, hasn't got enough memory or, and CPU storage.”
Benedict Evans Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:21 a16z Podcast | For Google, Android is a Tactic and Cloud is a Strategy
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