Thinking about Google’s Android mobile platform…
Ever since mobile phones got the company of their younger and smarter siblings called smart phones and PDAs (PDA phones?), we’ve witnessed, used and seen development for several mobile platforms - Palm OS, Java ME, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, BREW, iPhone… What, no link for iPhone?! Well, nothing interesting to point here as iPhone can only be used by platform agnostic web applications (i.e. well-known CSS and AJAX slightly adapted to play/look nicely on iPhone), while a true (extensible) Apple SDK is announced for February 2008.
Now Google has entered the mobile market battlefield with it’s own mobile platform called Android. Apart from that, its core, the mobile (software) platform, has been wrapped inside an initiative called Open Handset Alliance which aims at creating a mobile ecosystem of its own which includes 34 founding members falling in five groups:
- mobile operators - to fuel the market penetration and partnering with operators that will both resell Android handsets, offer a more integrated and Android-friendly deals, and will benefit themselves
- software manufacturers - developing killer apps (and app clones from other platforms) that will make the best use of Android SDK,
- commercialization companies - sort of providing the glue between hardware and software, and even more market and end users, working towards improving user experience (by providing solutions for interaction design and novel user interfaces)
- semiconductor companies - providing chip-sets and building blocks which Android OS and apps will run
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hardware handset manufacturers - last but not least, as they’ll need to excel in both hardware design and, more importantly with heavy competition from Apple and Nokia, in industrial design.
For the first time in the mobile history, which is still in its adolescent years, it seems as if there’s a mobile platform that might actually tip the point when mobile devices will take over the world of (desktop) personal computers. Apple iPhone has managed to capture the hearts of many end users and developers alike, but is still very limited due to lack of iPhone SDK. Watch this space for the iPhone vs Android rumble. A month after the release of Android, there are already some inspired attempts on Planet Nerdom of running Android on some hardware.
Android platform has a viable future from market-oriented perspective. Carl Rosenberger nicely describes the mobile landscape and why Android is advantageous. After months and months of working in an Apple-style isolation, Google has yet to prove if it has made a good bet with Android. Google has certainly made a half-brave, half-smart foray into the mobile market. Here are some reasons:
- betting on best-of-breed (and widely accepted!) technologies:
- Linux - the most extensible and customizable operating system
- Java - the most popular cross-platform programming language
- Eclipse IDE - extensible development environment conceptualized with 20-year lifespan in mind
- using Java dialect (using Java syntax and relying on Apache Harmony) thus benefiting from the greatest developer base,
- implementing it’s own virtual machine (called Dalvik) which is incompatible with traditional JVM with the optimization in mind - compressing binary code, increasing performance and separating programs in process,
- for both previous reasons, Google will be getting around JCP (Java Community Process) which is controlled by Sun Microsystems and other JCP members (incl. Google)
- much more…
Before I go into details in my further posts, I’d like to open a couple of main points when analysing Android as a viable solution for the future of mobile computing (and beyond!).
Computing power and Internet are steadily moving towards mobile devices (pun intended), location-based services seem like an obvious step forward and the new market to explode. After user accounts, online activity and social networks, location is the next user context that will allow Google to deliver more targeted ad and add new revenue models.
When thinking about what Android will can bring, it doesn’t hurt thinking two steps in advance, towards something we will call Mobile 2.0 or Web 3.0 or whatever - depending on whom you ask.
What do you think about using Android for more seamless interchange of data between devices (mobile phones, personal computers and anything else with CPU heartbeat, network connectivity and some memory)? As a random though, imagine that whatever Microsoft Surface computer will do for top company executives, Android could do for everyone else.
How about something that could also step into Web 3.0 - personalized TV programming, where set-top boxes will allow browsing of user content and streaming of user-targeted multimedia, and all that facilitated by Android mobile/set-top platform?
More ideas, not necessarily far-fetched as some I’ve mentioned, will follow…
Stay tuned and mobile!
