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Carriers, Manufacturers Are Strangling Android
loconet writes "This article in Gizmodo claims that Android's fragmented model is harming it, but Google has the power to save it. The rumored Google Phone could be a ploy to upset the wireless industry, or it could be an expensive niche device. Either way, it would be a bid to take Android back from the companies that seem hell-bent on destroying it. '...once handset manufacturers (and carriers, through handset manufacturers) have built their own version of Android, they've effectively taken it out of the development stream. Updating it is their responsibility, which they have to choose to uphold. Or not! Who cares? The phones are already sold."
You have to hand it to Apple, at least they handle updates pretty well.
I don't think it's reasonable to complain about the spread of updates yet, I think over time they will tend to smooth out.
Plus, I don't think it matters. Look at all the people will ing to jailbreak iPhones, or to apply custom firmware to Windows Mobile devices. If the carriers don't update, most users will if it's possible - and I think for the most part users will be able to upgrade phones since Android is open. It will just be a more quirky process than the iPhone offers, but in the end people can make a choice they feel comfortable with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since phones are frequently replaced for various reasons the software upgrade issue seems to be less interesting anyway.
A new model replacing the old with better hardware comes at least every year. And people do drop their phones and a lot of other things happens too.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Cell phone carriers are, at least in america, holding back cell phone software. The subsidized-phone business model gives them the oppourtunity to control everything about customer's phone software. Most basic carrier-sold phones are a nightmare to use, filled with ugly, confusing branded interfaces and annoying "stores" that sell overpriced useless games and ringtones. Apple did something right by cutting a tough deal with specific carriers in order to prevent them from branding the phone. Google's "all comers" strategy has opened them to the megalomania of the carriers.
Windows Mobile, which unlike Android has always ranged from okay to sorry, must be updated by the phone manufacturers unless you luck out and your model gets attention from ROM cookers. Yet it has lived for over ten years... why would the expectation for Android be any different? Perhaps I am being cynical, but this smells like fear-mongering from parties that still think WinMo has a future.
I'm not entirely sure what this article is trying to prove. Android has been out for a year. It takes most software companies 6 months to ready a new release, test it, and put it out to market. If anyone (carriers or manufacturers) are interested in keeping their hardware on dated software, that won't be clear until at least June.
And his supposition that handset manufacturers have no incentive to make their already-sold handsets operate well is just stupid. If you get a reputation for not updating your software, people won't want your hardware. And the carriers have even more interest in keeping software up to date.
The manufactures aren't trying to destroy Android, but the negligence is sure to stunt its growth. As long as Android is free and provides a good tech demo companies will continue to use it to sell the newest version of their phone.
Without a more cohesive foundation it will probably stagnate though. The same thing happened with Linux; 'the year of the linux desktop'. Linux has survived not because of market viability but because technical people liked it. It still doesn't have more than a couple percent of marketshare (in the consumer market.) Android has an advantage in that smartphones are more integrated platforms than desktops, and people expect less expandability, but each smartphone will be a part of the manufacturers brand, rather than the Android brand. On a fragmented market it's much more difficult to deliver expanded functionality in the form of applications to consumers. It will be more like the crappy java games that you'd see on old phones than the market for desktop software.
It's a new concept for phone companies though, and they'll probably start updating the OS once they get used to it. If they don't though, Android will probably see a limited success.
It's as if you're fishing for the answer "N900"...
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Why the hell can't cell phones be this way, instead of the current quagmire where they're hopelessly entangled with what the carrier wants?
Because that's how the carriers like it.
You can't take the sky from me...
It's hard to believe that Google chose to go with what essentially is the open-source version of the broken WinMo model in a post-iPhone world. They got this thing all backwards.
Perhaps they should have came out with Nexus One from the outset and then set up some kind of a reference design for all other manufacturers, instead of letting various handset manufacturers to cook up their own custom distributions. That way you could have one unified experience for the developers to follow. It's starting to look like Linux on the desktop -- something that sounds amazing on paper but doesn't quite work in the real world when you put it in front of non-geeks.
Apple maintains total control over it, sticks to their guns, and the product isn't bad.
Google gives the carriers complete control, and it turns to shit.
This isn't a new pattern, this is the way its been all along and is one of the reasons the iPhone is doing well.
You wouldn't get email on your phone with out an extra $10/month charge from AT&T if it was in their control. Maps would be the same way. Data would be $0.10/kb or packet, whichever amounts to the largest possible bill.
Apple and the iPhone didn't sell so well just because of the hardware or software specifically. Apple's total control over the system is actually a blessing, contrary to what most seem to think.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How about:
Journalists, Bloggers Use Overwrought, Hysterical Headlines
From the stop-taking-yourselves-so-fracking-seriously dept.
The linked article basically talks about how different phones are using different versions of the Android OS.
OH NOES. You mean they aren't all running identical versions?! It's being strangled! It's strangulation, I say! Woe unto those who have slightly different versions of software on their phone, for truly they shall be cursed from on high!
Seriously people. Take a deep breath and calm down.
The 10 years when WinMo was a major player was characterized by NO consumer choice after the original purchase. Blackberry and Palm were the same way. Now the consumer is beginning to understand the benefits of having an open platform untied to their carrier. So if Android phones get locked down to the same level that WinMo, Palm, and Blackberries where for years then it will have to compete on crutches with the iPhone. Sure there are unlocked phones available but not enough to justify a vibrant marketplace al la iTunes.
"a GSM area" covers most of the United States.
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/
http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx
>>Last I checked, Symbian was the largest OS on smartphones. After that was Windows Mobile, and then BlackBerry OS.
You're about 3 years out of date.
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/10/28/apple-iphone-closing-in-on-blackberry-market-share/
>>The iPhone is still a smaller player in the smartphone market and even if it became the entire smartphone market, it'd still be a small player in the total market.
Again, about three years out of date.
We've been working on native mobile apps for our systems the past 6 months. iPhone has been pretty good to work with. You build your software, if it works on one iPhone (or iPod Touch even), it will work on the next in the same exact way. Now there may be differences in OS (2, 3, 3.1, 3.2), but at least the hardware is the same and operates the same way. Same pretty much with Blackberry as well as they have the classic Blackberry style and then the Storm. There are some hardware differences between models, but basically you have to make sure it works on your normal blackberry and then the Storm series phones.
Windows Mobile is a nightmare. You can write the software, but it runs on so many different hardware platforms, each with their own difference (some have a stock UI, others a manufactures UI, others a carrier UI), that it takes a lot of time an expense to debug it. And even then we still get complaints that things don't work on XYZ model phone that we had never even heard of before. Our app maybe perfectly usable on one phone, completely unusable on the next because of screen size or one has a touch screen, one only has a keyboard interface, etc..
Unfortunately for Android, they're going down the same road as Windows Mobile. As it stands right now, we have to test against 3 different OS versions (1.5, 1.6, 2.0) AND test usability against different configuration. How does it look on AB size screen vs. CD sized screen. How well does it interface with touch screen? How well does it interface with keyboard? Does it run well on processor version X vs. Y, etc.. That adds a lot of cost to develop for in testing and QA.
We'll give Android another year and see. But if some of these problems don't look to be righted by Google, then in the future we're likely to support iPhone and Blackberry native and then develop a web-based interface for everything else to keep down costs.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If I want a landline, I can go buy any old phone I want, and as long as it speaks the right protocols (which are pretty simple for analog landlines) I can plug it into my wall, and it works.
It took the US government to end enforced landline phone rentals and open up the analog telephone network in 13 F.C.C.2d 420.
With today's moves towards "deregulation" I don't think we'll see the cell industry being forced to do anything similar in the near future.
And where on earth are Nokia on that chart?
Any survey that uses a definition of "smartphone" that includes Apple, but ignores the biggest smartphone maker in the world, is simply nonsense.
"The biggest is that there's always a reason. You may not agree with the reason, but there's always a reason."
This is a ludicrous argument. Yes, 'because I say so' is technically a reason, but it isn't a justification in any meaningful sense.
Chasing market share is not the only route to success. Apple is chasing profits, which they are making hand over fist right now. Apple doesn't want to sell 100m phone. To pull that off, they would have to sell some not-so-smart phones, which is not really their cup of tea. Apple is making bigger profits that Nokia in its handset division, with a much smaller market share in phones overall. Apple does this is most markets it competes in, with the exception of mp3 players, where it is pretty dominant. Making computers? 10% market share in the US (although they have about 30%+ in revenue share). All their competitors envy them. Every single one of them. Same in the phone space. Small market share overall, much larger revenue share. You have to remember, Apple is not interested in a pure volume business. Apple can't, and won't try to match Nokia in that regard.