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50+ Android Phones Expected In Near Future
wiseandroid writes "It's not even a year ago that the HTC Dream G1 became the first Android enabled phone to be released publicly (on October 22nd, 2008) and now we have listed more than 50 Android phones expected in the near future." Of the 51 phones on this list, 12 (from nine manufacturers) are currently available.
Discuss.
The question: Is Android trying to dethrone Symbian or Apple?
If the goal is Symbian, this is a good thing: An OS thats customed by the handset deliverer with development being secondary, because the platform ends up grossly fragmented (different screens, capabilities, processing power, UI presentation, storage, etc...)
If the goal is Apple, this is a horrid thing: Apple's huge lock is the ecosystem, with all the developers. Which would you rather develop for, a platform which has everything being the same capability, or one with a grossly fragmented market where screens, UI conventions, etc are all different?
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50+ Android phones coming?!
Is it for real? IMO, this would be the worst thing that could happen for the Android platform!
Imagine what would a PC user who wants to try Linux reacts if he sees 50+ different distributions of Linux on the shelf! Each with different features, strengths and price (not free for the sake of analogy). He would be confused and do not know how to choose!
Good luck sorting out the features of different phones and the compatibility/usability of different apps among them. It would be worst than try to figure out if a given PC game can run properly on your home PC.
Having 100+ models works for ordinary mobile phones, as you mostly do not expect to install any extra software other than which comes with the phone. With a "smartphone" (I hate the term) that is practically a mini-PC, there is value in keeping a small set of uniform performance/feature profile. It is the same trade-off between PC gaming vs console gaming.
With two or three strong Android models, it has a chance of overtaking iPhone. With 50+ different models, average Joe is not going to bother to sort them out and just buy an iPhone.
Oliver.
The apps come to the platform. The platform with the most users is going to have the most apps written for it.
Then why aren't there a lot of apps out there for Symbian? It's by far the most popular phone operating system out there. And Windows Mobile used to be pretty popular too... so where are the apps for that one?
Yet the iPhone only has a very small percentage of market share, yet there are more apps for iPhone than for any other mobile platform out there.
Somehow your statement doesn't make a lot of sense.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.