With LiMo’s recent announcement that Verizon had hopped onto their Board of Directors, things are starting to heat up between the LiMo platform and Google’s competing product, Android. Both are open-source Linux-based platforms, and both are aiming to rock the handset market sometime in the next year or so.
LiMo is Linux-based. Android is Linux-based. But they’re far from the same. Below, I’ll try to explain some of the key differences without going too heavy on the tech jargon. (Fiiine. It gets a bit heavy for a paragraph or two. But I’ll avoid it where possible.)
Here’s the TLDR version of this story:
Android has applications.
LiMo doesn’t.
Every game developer I know is already playing with iPhone SDK, but nobody is touching the Android SDK. That tells the whole story.
Thats funny, every developer I know is playing with the Android SDK and nobody is touching the iPhone. I will consider making iPhone apps as soon as their SDK is available on a PC… doubt that will ever happen.
Here is a different perspective .. Crossing the chasm with Android: Can we view disruptive initiatives like Android in the context of the existing value chain? http://opengard...g_the_ch_2.html
iPhone was sooo close…but fell short in two ways:
1) It’s AT&T only. You are locked in, so shut up and like it.
2) Only apps that Apple approves become available for download. That means no browsers that compete with Safari, no Skype, no apps with adult content etc.
If it weren’t for those shortcomings I think everybody would get an iPhone, no questions asked. Well, except maybe the folks who insist on a button-keyboard and don’t like touch screens. But whatever, I’m glad there is competition and I hope the winner will be the one who best caters to the consumer’s needs. So far LiMo and Android haven’t won me over either but I’m keeping my eye on them.