75 million phones running the Android operating system will be sold in 2012, says research firm Gartner, which if right, would eventually make it the second most popular mobile OS after Symbian.
This makes sense, because the operating system is free (unlike Windows Mobile), and it gives mobile carriers and handset manufacturers who aren’t Apple and RIM (the closed off guys) the ability to create a smartphone that someone may actually want to use. I’ve switched to Android now based largely on deep integration with Google Voice. And that is despite the fact that Android is still just an infant. Version 1.5, which most people are using, has an imperfect user interface and is somewhat laggy on today’s hardware.
But hold on. There’s just one problem. Android, an open source operating system, must avoid the fate of J2ME, an open source mobile applications platform. Open source is great, until everyone splinters off into their own world. That’s what happened to J2ME, and a number of frustrated Android developers are now saying that there is a risk Android will follow the same path.
New Android devices are being announced and shipped in bunches. HTC, Samsung, Dell, Verizon and others have phones on the way. Each has different hardware, and different software, than the others.
We’ve spoken with a number of high profile Android application developers. All of them, without exception, have told me they are extremely frustrated with Android right now. For the iPhone, they build once and maintain the code base. On Android, they built once for v.1.5, but are getting far less installs than the iPhone.
And now they’re faced with a landslide of new handsets, some running v.1.6 and some courageous souls even running android v.2.0. All those manufacturers/carriers are racing to release their phones by the 2009 holiday season, and want to ensure the hot applications will work on their phones. And here’s the problem – in almost every case, we hear, there are bugs and more serious problems with the apps.
There are whispers of backwards and forwards compatibility issues as well, making the problem even worse.
More than one developer has told us that this isn’t just a matter of debugging their existing application to ensure that it works on the various handsets. They say they’re going to have to build and maintain separate code for various Android devices. Some devices seem to have left out key libraries that are forcing significant recoding efforts, for example. With others, it’s more of a mystery.
Imagine if Windows developers had to build different versions of their applications for different PC manufacturers. Or even different versions for various models by a single manufacturer. That’s what some Android developers are saying they are facing now.
Some manufacturers/carriers are opting out of the Android marketplace altogether, and only allowing custom applications on the phone. These devices can still use the Android robot logo, which is creative commons, but they aren’t able to use the Android text logo, which requires that they pass a compatibility test suite.
Developers are frustrated. And consumers will be confused when their “Android” phone won’t let them download their favorite third party applications.
When Steve Ballmer said open operating systems are hard, he wasn’t kidding. And Google, which is currently building two separate operating systems (Android and Chrome OS) doesn’t have 30 years of experience in getting it right.
But Wait…Keeping the Cart Behind The Horse
First of all, the compatibility between versions issue may be overblown. The reported problems have been limited to an Android developer contest, where developers were building on v.1.5 and being reviewed on v.1.6. We haven’t heard of any major app developers complaining of backwards or forward compatibility problems. Also, I’ve now upgraded my phone from 1.5 to 1.6, and every application continues to work fine.
The bigger issue of a general splintering of Android cross-partner may also be overblown. As I said above, the carriers are rushing to get devices to market by end of year, and they are pushing developers to ensure that their apps work. In most cases the test devices developers get aren’t running final software, and so the final devices at launch may not have these problems.
The real test will come in a month or so when sales of multiple devices running v.1.6 of Android ramp up. If apps are running bug-free cross-device without tons of developer frustration, Android may be looking good. But if developers are forced to create and maintain multiple versions of their apps for various devices, Android may be in trouble. The whole idea of Android is to let app developers build once and let users install on any Android device. Right now, it’s not a certainty that will happen.
“it gives mobile carriers and handset manufacturers who aren’t Apple and RIM (the closed off guys) the ability to create a smartphone that someone may actually want to use.”
The only thing that carriers want to do with it, is limit the usage. So people pay more and use less… *cough* Orange *cough*
no, the main thing is they want lots of new customers. after they get those customers, they want to limit usage.
oh, I absolutely 100% love the way you are saying that.
So, why the use of “chink” in the title? I’m not sure I follow that…
Unless you’re using that word to mean “a flaw” in Android’s armor, and not using it in the typical derogatory way to refer to something of Asian descent.
I think i may have misunderstood it at first, and thought that you were referring to something similar to “A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing”.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s not the ‘typical’ meaning of ‘chink’- at least not among literate people. If the only use of the word you know is as a racist slur, then you should have spent more of your life actually reading you know, books, and less time hanging around with racist retards.
A chink is a gap in a suite of armor through which an enemy can thrust say a spear. it refers to a potantially fatal vulnerability.
I think you might have got it wrong. I think he is referring to the asian who stole that green suit in the picture. The retarded community frowns on your derogatory insistence that at least some of them are racist. Apparently, your literacy and reading skills are being called into question as well.
@Jaxon, neither of you are correct in the matter. Neither you, for referring to the above picture in that context, nor Eli, for using the word “retard” as some sort of demeaning adjective (which it shouldn’t be).
I admitted below, in reply to Mike Arrington’s explaination, that I was wrong and apologized. Can we all go back to reading TC and get over ourselves? Thanks.
I’m sorry… was I speaking to you?
And thanks for those lovely comments. Don’t you know that fighting on the Internet is completely void of use?
it’s understandable that someone might not know what it means. it’s not like it’s a phrase used in every work of literature out there. you could pick fifty random works of literature and it’s possible that you won’t see a single instance of it. i’m sure there are many phrases that you yourself don’t know the meaning of. for example, i didn’t know what “vis a vis” meant until recently, or “qua.” it doesn’t mean you’re not well-read. and even if you don’t read books, so what? i know plenty of well-read individuals who are still dumb jerks. reading a bunch of books doesn’t make you wise or good. quality is more important than quantity.
plus, the phrase is not really used that often these days. sort of like the word “niggardly.” everyone knows it sounds racist so they use good judgement and choose different words with the same meaning.
So racist is wrong but it is OK to use the term “retard” instead of mentally challenged? How does this make you better than the person you are attacking?
@Ben Hughes
HAHAHA, I am sorry, you may truly be offended, but your analogy is hilarious.
You thought “A Chink In Android’s Armor” is equivalent to “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?” The image of that and your rationale is too much for me to handle.
“A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” is generally used to describe a predator sneaking into the herd dressed as a member of the herd.
By that logic “A Chink In Android’s Armor” would suggest an Asian man dressed in an Android suit. That alone is hilarious, but to continue the analogy it would suggest that the Asian man was trying to sneak into the herd of robots. Given the number of anthropomorphic robots emanating from Asian countries recently, that last bit is particularly hilarious.
HAHAHA.
Ok, sorry let me regain my composure, you may now go back to blowing simple cliche phrases out of proportion. (I imagine this will spawn a whole thread on whether “blowing something out of proportion” is too sexual to be displayed on Tech Crunch.)
http://www.answers.com/chink
http://www.urba...n%20the%20Armor
it’s a way of saying there is a potential weakness in the grand Android plan, if carriers are able to splinter the OS.
Sorry that I misunderstood!
Even I understand the meaning of the word in engineering term, but I am still very annoyed by the title.
The word itself apparently has racist meaning. Google it and the first 2 results will tell you.
Too bad it gives me the kind of bad feeling which I should never expect from this site
No, a chink in armour is a common expression.
I did not even consider it’s other meaning, even though I have been slurred by it before, because I’m not an idiot. That last bit is very important.
By shunning the word’s actual meaning, by sidelining its correct usage, you would do nothing but to give the slur power.
I concur with the guys above, that those PC twitards should maybe try “books” and lay off the tweets.
(Note – I’m using the phrase PC, as in politically correct, not personal computer. Just had to make sure.)
Techcrunch is a high profiled blog with international readers of different background, not all of them understand the meaning without doing some further research. And, by looking some comments, you can see some people take advantage of the double meaning of the word!
While you are free to use words like “idiots”, your arrogant attitude shows what they really mean!
the chink is the asian who worked on android
Pretty bad dude! It’s unfortunate that such wordings will result in racial debates.
It’s even worse that people complain about a word without actually knowing what it means.
I got my HTC Magic primarily because of its tight google apps integration. The apps are a bonus for me. I’m not a heavy twitter user or facebooker. I don’t maintain a regularly updated blog.
I do, however, receive plenty of e-mails each day, have hundreds of contacts and a crazy daily planner. All these three things are well integrated with google apps and everything syncs automatically with android. The few apps I do use I am content with.
I think as long as google can maintain their own solid apps then Android may become something like a blackberry for google users (Gtalk on the Android is very similar to blackberry messenger in that respect!).
“I got my HTC Magic primarily because of its tight google apps integration.”
THIS is exactly why you DON’T want Android.
Google already tracks everybody all over the Web. GoogleAnalytics just being 1 tool, but it covers almost all relevant sites. They know more about you than yourself.
Google needs competition, not World domination.
Tired of hearing this privacy scare nonsense with Google. Fuk it…if they want to somehow datamine and profit off the face that I used voice search this afternoon to search for “Thai food”…let them.
All I know is I hit a button on my magic, said “thai food” and got introduced to a place right up the street that I never noticed before. The food sucked but that’s not Google’s fault.
People with these deluded fantasies that their lives are important enough for Google to be tracking their every move: get over yourself. If you have these idiotic concerns about Google….don’t use their services. The rest of us will keep saying “thai food” into our phones until we find a place that has noodles of a higher quality than ramen…..seriously this place sucked…how ya gonna @#$# up pad thai?
putz….
I do worry about the privacy concerns, because like you, Google has most of the details of my daily life at this point, and we have only their assurance that they won’t be used for nefarious means at some point.
At least with Google I can back up everything, e-mail, contacts, docs, calendar, to a hard drive that I own. So I can always opt out, I guess.
Yeah, but these same developers bitch about Apple’s approval process. I wonder what’s worse? Having to wait three weeks for your app to come out, with the possibility that it could get rejected, or the potential of having to recompile and test your app for three different versions? I think I’d rather put up with the Apple approval process.
That said, I sure hope someone gets their act together in 2010 because Apple needs competition in the worst way and so far it looks like Android is in the best position to provide that competition.
all true.
Totally agree on the fact that Apple should have some competition, but does that mean that the entirety of Android would have to be writen over again in order to limit the amount of “hackability” within its code, so some things aren’t modifiable, such as the basic OS itself which would be able to receive updates from the mothership?
Wow. That was all one sentence.
If you do that android will be a lot less interesting to mobile phone manufacturers. They need to be able to modify android to differentiate from other manufacturers. How else are they going to convince the customers that their phone’s are better?
“How else are they going to convince the customers that their phone’s are better?”
Better design and marketing.
@andrej but where does the “interesting” factor need to be set aside so that users can receive regular updates and be able to run the same version of their equipment that everyone else has?
It shouldn’t be up to the developers to be careful with what they mess with so that the upgrades can be received in the future. That should be the responsibility of Google (implementing safety nets).
I would rather compile my code again then depend on someone else (usually a dictator for letting you go.). You might not have had the taste of a dictatorial rule but I have. And I absolutely hate it.
It boils down to a choice.
Developers can have freedom (Android) or prosperity (iPhone)
If you want both, go back to developing for the computer. If you want neither, I guess there is the Pre.
I so want to retweet this comment.
It depends what you mean by competition. The consumer mobile phone industry is largely driven by fashion and, bluntly, apps are a nice feature but well down the list of reasons to own one.
Apple have released the same design for three iterations. I’m not sure they’ll get away with that again.
As for best placed to compete – I assume you’re talking about the US as everywhere else no-one is threatening Symbian yet.
UIs are nice and apps are nice but, ultimately, they will not sell phones by themselves. I think that’s a lesson Apple need to learn or it could be hard for them in 2010.
“As for best placed to compete – I assume you’re talking about the US as everywhere else no-one is threatening Symbian yet.”
Research, it’s a wonderful thing no?
Australia achieved over a 21% iPhone penetration in just over one year, which definitely came close to threatening Symbian. Additionally, everywhere you look in any population centre within Australia at least half the people have iPhones (yes, I’ve counted at various times): Pubs, Restaurants, (modern) Churches, Workplaces.
I presume you live in Europe or somewhere similar that iPhones have not had a major impact based on your comment, but that doesn’t mean only US has the over saturation of iPhone’s problem.
Having said that, I’m currently looking to move to Android, as are most of my IT minded acquaintances, and if Motorola Droid had released a GSM version already by now I would be.
Right now most of the phones are running nearly the same specs, or processors. I’m waiting for the next batch of processors to come out. If carriers are still pushing new Android devices, I’ll definitely pick one up. If they’re selling strong, the developers will be there.
Another thought. Mike, are you saying that Palm Pre is looking better? It doesn’t have Apple’s waiting period for developers (you can distribute your app on the web without going through any approval) and because of their Apple-like control they only have one OS to support.
i am most certainly not saying that Pre is looking better.
The fundamental problem with Android is the push by Google to expect users to have a Google Checkout account to buy apps – this is far-fetched and so the adoption of paid apps at least will be poor.
The good news is that the openness of app approval will provide developers the option of accepting other forms of payment.
So it’s far-fetched to expect users to sign up for a Google Checkout account but not an iTunes account? Apple *requires* you to enter credit card details, even if you have no intent of buying anything – even if you just want podcasts or free apps. Consider that.
Android != iPhone.
It shouldn’t be even for the payment system.
Not true. I have signed up for iTunes without providing a credit card number. There’s a checkbox you can use to opt out.
The difference is Apple had 6+ years of having people already setup on iTMS for the sake of music downloads. Only one of my friends has a Google Checkout account set up. Almost all have an iTMS account even though only a couple run macs.
So as a developer, I will take the 2 week wait to get my Apps approved VS maintaining mulitple forks in the code base (plus substantially more complex testing). Add to this a payment system that is already mature…
Freedom VS Prosperity. Since we are not taliking about lifestyles but simply income… Prosperity wins.
I have all three platforms and I can unequivocally say that WebOS is already a better development platform than either iPhone or Android and it’s still first gen. Pre is failing because of the handset. Fortunately that’s the easy part to fix.
75 million, these are numbers not to sneeze at…
Except that that is *projected* by Gartner. Which, as was pointed out on this very blog, isn’t necessarily fair.
Yes, but it’s a completely made-up number.
wanna bet? how much?
v1.6 and newer will be able to run on all phones and screen sizes. i dont know what “top developers” you are talking about but 1M+ downloads over here and only one source code. only changed api level throughout android updates.
not just overblown but a beat up
all the leading category developers on android are big fans
yeah that’s the thing. all the guys who are trashing android are super-android fans in general.
From an OS standpoint, I think Palm is better off with the Pre. It’s rather unfortunately the hardware is sub-part at the moment. Perhaps with the Pre 2.0 it will correct that.
Well, I run several different ROMs and I’ve had pretty much no comparability issues. The few issues I have had are when I’m running an experimental build that I know is unstable or running a build based off of a future version of Android.
Time will tell, but I doubt Google will let compatibility issues get out of hand.
cool. have you been developing on any of the unlaunched devices yet?
The fragmentation of Android will be most noticeable with more form factors and from a user experience perspective. App developers can expect to see OEMs branch code to test integration of software and hardware close to network certification of the device by carriers. Even if only temporarily. There will also be device-specific integration of an OEM’s or carrier’s proprietary app code on a particular device with Android, like Samsung’s TouchWiz or Moto’s widget framework for MotoBlur, which is not contributed or accepted into open source by the OEMs or Google. These devices may still download and run an application from the Android market successfully, but the market developer may not have access to all device or UI APIs that may be unique to that brand of device configuration. So fragmentation will appear, if only on the user interaction layer or visual presentation of the customer experience. The consistency of an iPhone user experience – what the menu button invokes, what a session is, how the app uses devices resources – is generally excellent. On the other hand, if an OEM or carrier wants to develop it’s own brand on Android, then to protect the integrity of the visual experience, they will likely not leave the doors open for bad designers to barge in and behave badly. Ultimately, the consumer is left to see a cacophony of interaction designs and visual cues that creates a form of fragmentation. Apps are either inside the branded device tent experience, or they are left in the unwashed masses of the market.
“Android is still just an infant. Version 1.5, which most people are using, has an imperfect user interface and is somewhat laggy on today’s hardware.”
I think that sums it all up.
Android is slow and its browser is just not up to the standard of other mobile OS. The on-screen keyboard is sluggish, it has fewer apps some of which are bugged (!) and it is hard to find reviews of them. Also, Androids’ music app is damn lousy (solvable, yet annoying). I’m very discontent with Android!
I actually don’t think the issue is a technical one, but more of a question of branding and consumer expectations. I didn’t realize how much of a problem – beyond a theoretical one – that different Android distributions would cause until I received my new Archos 5 Android powered Internet Tablet a few days ago. (I got it to hold me over until the damn CrunchPad comes out of vapor-ville.
)
First, the Archos doesn’t have any integrated Google apps – so no gTalk or gMaps – and secondly, it uses a separate app store called AppLib which has a lot less content than the official Google Marketplace. Though I’ve been able to find some downloadable .apk files out there, there’s a variety of Android apps I’d like to have (like the Facebook app, or commercial games) are either unavailable or very inconvenient to obtain. That’s before you even consider any technical incompatibilities. So even though I own an “Android powered device,” its true capabilities are vastly different from other devices like the G1, etc.
Yes, the Archos is a bit odd as it’s not a phone, but the point is that there’s already a splintering happening in the Android community because of manufacturer changes. I’m willing to accept it to be on the bleeding edge, but it’ll be interesting to see in time if there’s a consumer backlash against the OS as different hardware makers launch slightly different versions of Android – tweaking the UI, swapping out app stores, adding/removing pre-installed apps, etc.
It could turn out that Android powered phones become much like a PC. By that I mean that the Windows computer you get from HP and Dell have vastly different pre-installed wallpapers, apps and drivers, but are, at the end of the day, compatible enough to both run Office or World of Warcraft which is really the most important thing. Time will tell.
I’d be willing to bet before long Google takes tighter reigns of the OS. Not the code – which is mostly open – but the trademark of Android itself. In order to get to use the little green guy on your package, you’ll need to guarantee some basic user experience and compatibility.
-Russ
You better hope the CrunchPad ships soon. Out of all my Archos purchases, only one lived longer than 30 days.
Archos could give their stuff away coated in gold, and I’d never touch it again.
I don’t believe they can do that. The Android logo (green guy) is Creative Commons licensed.
http://www.andr...m/branding.html
They could change their minds about the CC license, but Google wouldn’t be able to successfully defend a trademark on the green Android, at this point. Trademark’s defined by your aggressive enforcement, not so much statute.
If you publicly renounce all claims to a mark, as Google has, you can’t then claim that the mark is yours to defend.
Is the Archos 5 using the “Android” text logo? Everything I could find online about it says it is based on Android, but it is pretty clear that it is not a Google-blessed device…meaning they can use the robot logo, but not the actual name. This seems to be the best we can hope for — Android is open-source, so we want derivatives, but the compatible derivatives need to pass the suite of tests provided by Google (sort of reminds me of Java).
It would be interesting if it were officially an Android device — I just got an Android Dev email indicating that support for screen sizes seen in Archos 5 (800×480) is a very new feature. The email was sent on Oct 9:
“Until now, Android devices have only had “normal”-sized screens, e.g., HVGA (320×480). The latest platform release, Android 1.6, expands support for upcoming devices that cover three different screen sizes: small, normal, and large.”
Anyway, I think there may be less splintering on compliant devices than people fear. I guess time will tell, but I expect Google will handle this well.
Weirdly enough, the Android dilemma that Arrington describes, has been predicted by Daniel Eran More than a year earlier: http://bit.ly/Fragdroid1
I am using Android but never have had any problem. It is awesome.
Mike, this is An Android Developer here..
It is severely overblown all Android applications work across al multiple OEM UI customizations.
2nd point, I would not call that Danger Inc base of employees that Google obtained when buying Android Inc less experienced in Mobile.
3rd point, you do have valid point about coding for Android 1.0 to port to Ophone which happens to be Android 1.0 as those applications will not run on Android 1.5.
No smartphone OS is going to see the kind of domination that symbian enjoyed for a long time.Android is currently getting fragmented,it’s a nightmare working with OEMs/ ODMs ,who are coming out with their customized android flavor.Going ahead these phones are bound to loose their ‘android’ identity.Wrote a blog on this here… http://thetechstig.com/?p=16 ..
And about win mobile 7, I know people are already saying that it’s dead,but MS isn’t just another startup.They need to get it right just once and they have the marketing muscle to pull it off.
Ahhh lovely. The Arrington is making up reasons to switch away from his beloved android phone. Well played, attention whore.
Great Article Arrington – and yh iPhone OS rules
This article is another in the series that really are just continuing ads for google – stop shilling, what happened to a journalistic endeavor?
Google is the world’s largest spyware company.
Why would you want them on your phone, computer or any other device?
Do you work for Microsoft?
No, he works for the government.
.
My last two blog posts http://www.fishmark.net/ have said similar things. I love the concept, I worry about it’s application.
I’ve been thinking the same thing whilst pondering whether to keep my iPhone 3G, upgrade to 3GS, go Palm Pre or Android. At the moment I’m waiting for better hardware. WebOS looked like a great concept compared to the unpolished nature of Android. But Android, I argued, would have a better chance of long term success because of its widespread adoption by handset manufacturers and therefore consumers.
The long term prospects of a phone are important because of the long contracts. As it stands perhaps the iPhone is still the best bet.
Apple has already solved the majority of these problems during the development of OS X on the desktop. Using a variant of OS X on the iPhone allows Apple to bring this knowledge to the mobile device space.
When we add this to Apple’s development of both the hardware and software, it’s a significant advantage which will be difficult to replicate for other handset manufacturers.
The reason J2ME failed was because the basic libraries included were not comprehensive enough. This meant that ever handset manufacturer exposed their own proprietary interfaces to do such fundamental things like drawing UI’s.
Android OTOH is a much more complete package, and there’s a lot of libraries included “in the box”. As long as you use those parts you don’t have to worry about the market splintering.
The problem will be if (or when) manufacturers have their own extensions to Android to do things which are not available in standard Android. AFAIK this hasn’t happened yet, but when it does it’s important that Google continually incorporate these extensions into the core product making them available for all platforms.
Google has already begun doing this in some manner and 1.6 added support for different resolutions.
The second piece of the puzzle is that there needs to be more future updates on “older” Android phones. As long as old phones can be updated to support new libraries there is no significant reason for the market to splinter.
And Apple are also having this problem, eg the new iPhone supports OpenGL ES 2.0 which is not supported in the old devices. (As well as the compass.) Future versions of the iPhone will need to make even bigger changes in this manner to stay attractive. And then their platform will begin to splinter as well. (But it will naturally be a lot easier for Apple to control it.)
Sounds like that’s app developers complaining, not users.
The importance of third party apps are overhyped and besides, web apps are the future, for mobile too.
But but…. but they allow Google Voice!
For most of J2ME’s existence it was not open source, and most of the fragmentation happened while it was not open sourced. Drawing a connection between it and Android on the basis of it being open source is ridiculous.
What J2ME and Android have in common is that handset makers and networks can cut it up in to pieces and do various permutations of it. Worse still: they are *encouraged* to do this.
I had to stop at J2ME being an “open source application framework”. Your definition of what is open source or your understanding of J2ME is incorrect there.
Android was built with this concept in mind and I think has done a fairly great job for developers to maintain compatibility across multiple different handsets.
They provide ways to scale and deal with the differences and if you do not assume things like a keyboard always being on the device or a certain screen size, you are fine. Their way of also pointing your application to specifically support certain configurations will also weed off the unsupported ones. So the main point I am trying to make is that there is support for all of this directly in Android and it doesn’t make life for developer that much harder. I doubt the Iphone can maintain the same form factor forever. Developers will eventually have to deal with programming for the applet and the phone soon.
In general, I see no problems having to deal with different hardware or even different flavors of the OS (if the changed flavor does not break compatibility). A standard computer software can deal with this, there’s no reason mobile applications can’t. It is far overblown if anything.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something because of my limited knowledge of software development, but isn’t Android based on Java? Isn’t Java written in such a way to be hardware agnostic? No matter what you change, cram in or take out access to everything is generally the same, right? But if cell phone makers are taking out whole packages, I can see that being a problem.
“Some devices seem to have left out key libraries that are forcing significant recoding efforts, for example.”
Please cite an example of this. I have yet to encounter this problem.
If you scroll up a little bit and look at Russell Beattie (@RussB) – October 11th, 2009 at 2:48 am CDT
you find an example already?
I keep hearing about incompatibilities, but I haven’t had any problems, except with Twidroid – always a hoggy beast, under any flavor of Android.
As to fragmentation issues, I’m not even aware of any phones in the US or UK – present or future – that use the bare OS with no apps or support from Google. Which, yes, would be free and wide open and you could even make it work entirely differently from the other phones. But that isn’t happening, and I’d be surprised to see a phone made that way breaking out any time soon.
They’re all either second tier licenses, with a new UI, or “Google Experience” phones, which the carriers can’t mess with at all. Certainly, none of them seem to be reconfigured in some bizarre manner that would keep apps from working. Even the Archos tablet, for all the early hoohah about how the Android Market would be “replaced” on the device, turned out just to have its own iTunes competition. You can still buy and download Android apps on that thing, too.
The comparisons to J2ME seem to me to be entirely based on both phone OSs being Java-based. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense – it’s like saying oh, any day now, the iPhone will suffer the same fate as NEXT because, you know, Objective-C.
I never even saw a Java ME device in the wild without going out of my way to look at one. Last night during SNL, they ran a special myTouch ad that was all SNL Stars Past. So I’m reasonably sure Android isn’t suffering anything like the same fate.
None of this would be a problem, if Android developers would stop trying to recreate the iPhone whimsy economy of $1 apps, hoping to win the disposable software lottery. Developing apps is hard work, not a get rich quick scheme. If developers would charge enough to warrant serious development, rather than trying to slap something together in a couple of weeks that they hope will make them rich overnight because it gets “hot” for a month, then it would be no problem to account for different versions.
Android offers a more homogeneous development environment than PalmOS or WinMo ever did, and there have been plenty of companies making a decent living off those platforms for a decade. Is it hard to get rich off of a $1 app if you have to take different versions into account? Why yes, it is. Is it hard to make a reasonable profit off an app that cost you $200,000 to develop if you charge $20 per license? Why no it isn’t.
The problem isn’t Android, it is the unrealistic and ridiculous expectations Apple’s developer press kits have created in the mind of mobile app developers. Apple, tells developers they can spend a weekend throwing together a $1 soundboard, and quit their job next month because they will now be rich, and people believe them, and think that is a valid development model. Never mind that it isn’t even a valid development model on the iPhone itself, they now want that same model on every other device, so that they can increase their chances of winning the app lottery.
First you blame the developers for Androids fragmentation dilemma (when maybe carriers, manufacturers and even the mighty Google might have some fault here) then you blame Apple for being responsible for somehow brainwashing developers into a state of collective greed of previously unknown dimensions.
The former is plain lazyness of thinking, the latter is ultimately patronising to people who’s very livelyhood depends on making informed and intelligent decisions to stay in business.
Then, by implication, you dismiss the whole concept of open source or any ‘open’ development, because, unless you allow for free and ‘cheap’ applications you don’t have openess.
You either have serious reading comprehension problems, or you are trying too hard to shoehorn my comments into some framework you WANT me to be saying.
First off, there IS no “Android fragmentation dilemma.” As of right now, any Android software will run on any commercially available Android phone. What you have at the moment is a bunch of developers worrying about a POTENTIAL dilemma, which even the author of the article acknowledges might never come to pass. How on Earth could I be blaming ANYONE for a dilemma that doesn’t yet exist?
Secondly, deciding to make a piece of mobile software doesn’t somehow instantly make you immune to PR. Newsweek just did an article about how far off the reality of iPhone app development is from how Apple portrays it.
http://www.news...d/216788/page/1
Patronizing or not, a large number of developers are chasing iPhone riches they are about as likely of getting as they are of winning the lottery. Now they are either stupid, insane, ore were given false impressions of the viability of the market by SOMEONE. Assuming they are not stupid or insane, then it doesn’t seem at all like “lazyness of thinking” to assume the Apple marketing campaign saying the iPhone “levels the playing field and it makes it so the small guys can succeed as well” or claims that you can “make it your year” might have more than a little to do with that mistaken impression.
Thirdly, I make no claims about “greed” or “brainwashing.” The simple fact is that the promise of iPhone riches has brought a lot of developers with no mobile experience to the mobile market, and those developers have unrealistic expectations of how to successfully develop a profitable mobile app. It isn’t there fault, it isn’t like most of them have a long history of mobile app deployment. They cam in because of the Apple App Store, and they expect the mobile world to look like the App Store as a result.
Lastly, where did I say anything at all about open source development? What I said, was that the business model of kicking out essentially single-use disposable $1 apps, in the hope of striking it rich at the app lottery, was a fundamentally broken business model, and as such skewed developer’s view of what was or wasn’t a viable platform. What the flying fuck does that have to do with whether or not open source development is a viable proposition? For that matter, what the hell does Open Source have to do with free or cheap? There are plenty of commercial Open Source projects. Whether your product is open or closed has absolutely nothing to do with your pricing structure. The two are completely different subjects. Only an idiot would confuse open software with free software.
Thank you for that, but I wasn’t quite finished with my response to your comment, I also thought it was based on platitudes such as ‘it takes hard work to program’ but what annoyed me most, apart from the points I mentioned earlier, which are still not answered despite your wordy manner, is the contempt you show repeatedly to developer of ‘cheap’, 1 dollar applications.
You see, some of my favourite Apps are just a dollar, or 59p here.
I still buy more expensive Apps when I feel they provide value for money. There is no real antagonism there, expensive and inexpensive Apps will live together and some developers will do better than others.
Always been that way. Apple have no control over that and never had.
How can you not be finished? It isn’t like I somehow stopped your keyboard from working and interupted you.
It has nothing to do with hard work or lack of hard work. What it has to do with is the simple fact that pouring money into developing an app you only plan on selling for $1, based on the idea that you are going to sell a million copies in a few months, shows colossally bad business sense. If you really can afford to dump a couple hundred thousand into developing a professional app, and really believe that you are going to sell at least a couple hundred thousand units to recoup the cost, then more power to you with charging $1 for it.
However, for most people that is folly. So, what you get instead, is half-baked apps thrown together on a shoestring budget, based on the idea that someone is only going to use it a couple times anyway, so won’t notice or care about the flaws. It is the very definition of a “race to the bottom,” at what I call a whimsy economy. What’s worse is as customers get used to paying $1 for an app, it becomes all that much harder to get them to pay $20 for one. So, you end up with a marketplace full of junk designed by people hoping to strike it rich on luck, some professionally designed software being given away as basically a marketing expense, and a few decent apps that no one really notices, because they are too expensive, and thus not popular enough. That is not a healthy software ecosystem for the developer, no matter how profitable it might be for the company running the store.
Those of us who remember PalmOS in its heyday will recall this was the same problem PalmOS developers ran into — each device was different, which meant that writing code for the PalmOS meant spending a bunch of time tuning your code for the various devices out there rather than developing new features.
Seamless control of the hardware + software has its own issues as well, of course. No solution is perfect. The good news is that this time there are choices, so mobile developers get to pick the set of irritants they prefer to put up with.
We’ll see which one wins over time.
I don’t see this being that much different from developing for WinMo Smartphones and WinMo Pro..you have to maintain different code base or make adjustments to your application to work properly on a given platform
Nor do i see this being much different from having 32bit and 64bit application trees. You can have unique issues with both versions of your application.
Then you might want to actually read the article for posting your opinion. it’s a lot more than one or two versions. Plus your Windows Mobile analogy is flawed as different Win Mo devices can have far more than two.
This Android situation has been foreseen by many people for a while now.
How about a Chinese in the android’s armor?
I just bought a HTC Hero from Sprint.
I have 30 days to try it out and after day one it’s not looking that I will keep it.
It takes forever to startup, like a 5 year old Windows computer. Google Voice does not match a regualr cellphone experience as you do not receive notifications of Voicemails or text messages immediately & flash in the browser is a messy experience, overall for me websites in a mobile web browser are messy experiences; prefer apps.
After another 28 days I think I’m going back to an iPhone. I can see why Apple does not allow for the things us techies complain and wanted included. If they did the iPhone’s UX would stink!
Something free is never free. The free OS model means something has to be cut out and adjusted and someone has to pay in the end, usually the user.
Funny how Android phones charge the same as other smartphones where there is a fee for the OS and or the development of the OS is factored in.
I hope to see in about two years there are about a dozen different versions of Android running on two dozen manufacturers devices. Each manufacturer will try to do something a little different to set their device apart from the rest. I hope they change the interfaces, the ROMs and anything else they can that will give them an edge. Already users are hacking the crap out those Android devices to make them perform differently. And nobody will even care to stop them and I suspect manufacturers will do the same.
The completely open Android platform will end up so fragmented nobody will know what’s the norm. I’m glad that Google isn’t charging for it, that way they can take their sweet time pushing out updates.
It’ll be a real laugh when apps downloaded from Android app store won’t run on half of those differentiated devices. Cool. Free-form mayhem.
form mayhem…sounds about right.
Sounds like Android is facing the Windows Mobile problem. No control of the end-to-end ecosystem like apple has.
http://www.trad...spx?symbol=goog
Accurate, and thoughtful take on the issue IMO … Java MIDP2 was supposed to be the unifier in that world also, but each device OEM implemented slightly differently (sometimes they implemented differently across their own handsets). This was exacerbated by certain operators/carriers (NTT Docomo notably, when they still mattered in the global mobile data space), putting in proprietary class libraries that fragmented J2ME further. Android is in a unique place with great OEM momentum I might add, but needs to try and avoid this balkanization while still being perceived as an “open” choice. No silver bullet as a certain degree of “free will” by OEMs/Carriers is going to exist unless Goog/Android drives towards a more prescriptive iPhone-esque model.
does the Android synch with Macs?
What a bold statement of Gartner: 2012 !
How can they predict the market?
If Samsung embraces Android then 75mio is too low.
If Samsung doesn’t embrace Android then 75mio is a pipe dream.
In both cases: the number will be wrong
There are 3 players on the market:
http://gigaom.c...et-share-in-q2/
Nokia:36% unlikely to use Android
Samsung: 19% potential for Android
LG: 10% most potential user of Android
Totals: 65%
The rest (all manufacturers) with 35% market share have no significant impact on the market (including the iPhone).
Android, welcome to HAL.
Microsoft understands what supporting a HAL, or hardware abstraction layer, means.
So does Apple. That’s why they focus on tightness of integration instead.
I think that this is a fundamental question that Android must confront.
Support to a lowest common denominator, loosely coupled style model, as a way of fostering the greatest level of market innovation, or go toe-to-toe against Apple and win by delivering a superior user experience.
I have forward cast this one @
Android vs. iPhone: Why Openness May Not Be Best
http://bit.ly/4lfbF
Check it out, if interested.
Mark
> These devices can still use the Android robot logo, which is creative commons, but they aren’t able to use the Android text logo, which requires that they pass a compatibility test suite.
This is confused: CC covers copyright, but it’s Trade Mark that restricts usage. Still, Google seems to confirm what you wrote:
http://www.andr...m/branding.html
So if you see the logo, you know… what exactly?
“Imagine if Windows developers had to build different versions of their applications for different PC manufacturers. Or even different versions for various models by a single manufacturer.”
Oh wait. They do.