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The Future of Android — Does It Belong To Bing and Baidu?
hype7 writes "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."
The most important asset Google-approved Android devices have is the Android Market. So, how far can a manufacturer go toward replacing Google's applications and services before Google says "No Android Market for you!"? By the way, I believe most Android devices that come out of China don't ship with Android Market so there you go.
Google controls the Andoird Market. Sure, manufacturers can roll their own markets if they want, but they will always be dwarfed by the offical one. No one is going to buy an Android phone that does not have access to the market. And Google can cut off access to any manufacturer at any time if they get too in-bed with Baidu or Microsoft.
Not to mention, the first thing anyone does who gets the stupid Bing phone from Verizon is uninstall it and put Google back. There has been such a consumer backlash that Verizon is backing out of the deal and putting Google back in newer handsets.
Why the hell would Baidu or Bing be profiting from Android if Google weren't? Just because Google's main business is a search engine? Have these people ever actually used Android? Maybe if they had, they'd know it isn't just a mobile platform for Search... o.O
Oh well, I'm going to read the article now... checking back in 5 minutes to confirm whether my prediction (article=utter crap) was right...
Even if Google don't see a dime out of Android, it helps to bring down locked alternatives such as the SO on the IPhone and Windows Mobile. That helps to keep the market clean and filled with options.
Pre-delivered apps can be pirated just the same.
If you define benefit as the evil kind of benefit by which you abuse the control you have over a platform to lock the competition out and the customers in, create walled gardens, etc then Google won't benefit under this scenario. On the other hand if yu define benefit as denying your competition the evil kind of benefit, then Google will benefit immensely even if Bing and Baidu and Facebook choose android as their preferred platform.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, GOOGLE IS REALLY NO LONGER ABOUT SEARCH!
Look, Google is an advertising company. Way back when, they got their start as a search engine, but that's a small part of the pie now.
Android further fragments the mobile OS market, which drives consumers to use shitty web "apps" rather than native applications. These web "apps" are the sort of think Google can shit advertisements into, or otherwise collect the personal data you so willingly give them.
It's not like they would lose control over Android itself, since they are the primary developers. But I agree that its possible for them to lose control over the cashflow that Android generates, which is quite a different thing.
But this raises an interesting question. Google was surely aware of such a risk when they decided to open source such a high valued piece of software. They had to decide between giving away freedom and having an easier way for "android everywhere" (so they can flood the market with android), or have total control over the platform and do it in a more WP7-way. So why did they go with the first approach? How will they keep earning money off it if its open?
IMHO the answer is that it doesn't matter (to some extent) if the operating system is free or not. One of the things that make android so attractive (in terms of features) is google's services: Contact sync, app sync, android market, google voice, voice search, voice actions, google navigation, GMail and more cloud services which are to come.
Someone can "take" google's efforts - that means take the Android Open Source Project - and turn it into a phone with bing. Or yahoo maps, etc.. But they would need to compete with google in all fronts, with all its cloud services, etc.. Plus there are lots of apps which already work with google-propietary services like Google Appengine, Google Maps, etc... they are gaining lots of new users which are going mobile and using those services more and more. And its becoming more difficult for competitors to make a competing product because they can not only take Android and put bing search on it, they have to compete with Google in ALL fronts to make it really competent.
(of course thats my own opinion and view in all this, and all in all I like that android itself can bring competition within its own platform in the cloud level, which makes everything much more exciting for me as a user/consumer. I don't know if google really wanted to give away android for "the benefit of us all" but they could end up competing on their own platform as a result of it, and I think thats good)
PD: another interesting matter is what would happen if someone would make an android version that runs apps that aren't compatible with other android versions because they don't fulfill the OHA criteria and/or tests. In that instance I'd say that isn't Android anymore and could not be regarded as such, even if it was a fork of it
And as I predicted, utter crap.
Point 1: "Ohnoes, Bing's being used as the default search engine on a few Verizon phones!" Let's see... how important is this really? Anyone who cares will simply use Google (from the Market, or just in the browser, or if needed by sideloading)... as for revenue from search? I'm guessing much more of the revenue comes from things like Admob and the rest of the Google-infested web, not to mention priority placement of items in apps like "Places" and Maps searches.
Point 2: "Ohnoes, Baidu is rolling its own 'G-Apps' to replace Maps, Search, Nav, Market, Talk and so on!" Let's see... native Chinese stuff made by Chinese guys for the Chinese - sounds like a perfect idea to me. I'm sure the integration with Baidu and Chinese culture in general will make for a very usable operating system in China... outside of China, however... what's the point?
And if Google continues improving its proprietary apps at the current rate, it's very unlikely that Baidu will be able to keep up. That market will sort itself out... as we've seen with all other devices without G-Apps (tablets, for instance).
Have you actually used Android?
The whole point of a smartphone (and Android) is that you can run all the apps on all the phones (the fragmentation that prevents this in some cases is NOT a positive aspect)... Screw non-standard preloaded apps, that's the exact evil thing we're trying to get away from.
Not if the are payed for by the carrier and free to everyone on that carrier. Hard to steal it when it is already there, and harder to steal it when it won't run on your branch of the Android tree.
It's what Google is getting away from too, with its plan for a slimmed-down future release of Android having all the apps as downloadable (by the end user) apps, to free up memory, allow users to choose what to install and provide fewer excuses for the likes of Orange to delay OTA updates.
Having to pay Apple $100m annually for the search box is nothing, even though it is probably more than Mozilla gets. Google revenues are what, $28b annually? How much of that is due to being the default search engine in major browsers? They would probably pay 10 times as much if they were asked to, although perhaps not for the iPhone and iPad at this point ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Well boo hoo .. :D ,although we do owe them thanks for their modest contribution to this great success.
This just proves how little the Business community understands technology. Google could lose control of Android to Bing and Baidu if either of them were to come out with a superior product than Google. Anyone that has any sense with regards to the internet knows that Google is orders of magnitude superior to Bing. Baidu's only advantage is not having to comply with take down notices. Bing was able to make gains on Google only after Microsoft sunk ass loads on money into commercial advertising, all the while Google just sat back and watched. Has anyone ever seen a google ad? Google is the Mario Andretti of the search engine world, and Microsoft just came out with Ford Torus with a tail fin and a racing stripe.
Google gets a percentage from every sale in Android Market. Most apps that use AdMob ads also generate revenue for Google. In fact I think there aren't any AdSense ads in the mobile version of Google Search, so Google's loss in case Bing is used as the default search is ZERO.
Google's preference order for the structure of the mobile market, from most preferred to least preferred, is probably something like:
1) Android is a popular, unified platform controlled by Google.
2) Android is a popular but fragmented platform, with carriers and handset makers doing whatever they like.
3) Android is an unpopular platform. Apple dominates the market, and has the power to lock Google out of mobile advertising.
Based on Google's behavior, it's clear their primary goal with Android was simply to avoid #3. Trying to achieve #1 would have required Google to exert control over the platform that carriers and handset makers would have likely objected to, this lowering adoption rates and increasing the probability of #3 occurring. So Google was willing to give up nearly all control, and settle for #2. They'd rather have a fragmented market than one controlled by Apple.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
The main reason for Google to produce and promote Android is so the mobile/embedded Internet isn't locked up, either by a monopoly (Apple/Nokia/Microsoft/telco) or by a technology (iOS, Symbian, Win7+). With a large minority, or even a majority, of non-desktops off Windows, Google is more likely to have more access to more content to index, and more searching to insert ads into. That is Google's core business, the only one that makes money, and it makes money by the bargeload. Google is the only truly cross platform Internet business other than eBay or any other site that isn't original content. Android makes the Internet more cross platform, so Google has more natural advantage in it. Even if Google doesn't control Android. In this way Google's strategy is just like Sun's Java strategy. And Google is sticking to it much more closely, unlike Sun which never became an "Internet company", but rather a company that the Internet benefited. Consider whether Sun (even as an Oracle division) would still have a future without Java, and whether Java would have as substantial a future without Android. Android free of Google (even more than Java is now free of Sun) would still benefit Google more than does Java free of Sun benefit Google, even as Java keeps Sun alive.
--
make install -not war
Android is open source, that means Bing, Baidu, Google or anyone can use it.
Which means the best usage wins. If another company can utilise and spread (make appealing) their version of Android better then Google then they will win over Google. End of story.
However, due to the same open source that gave any competitors access to what google has created Google will have access to what advancements competitors make.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A good working app market, and goog google services is one thing. But they can still win customers back. The one thing on the side of google is time. Google does have early access to next release of android. Members who do not play the rules correct will only have very late access to the latste version of android. Google will release source eventually, but when the latest google phone is released, google already tested it for several months with the very latest version of android. After that they start to release the software. From that moment "strange"handset makers can port their software to that version. With good quality control they are about 6 months later. after 6 months google has already released or announced the next version.
So handset makers can release bing/baidu apps on android, but only on old android, not the newest/latest. This might be acceptable on "budget" phones, but not on high end phones.
11 Jul 2010 Android 2.2 release on HTC high end phone
No source for 2.2 on official site today 20 nov
Do you have a source for that? Do you mean no Google apps at all? No Maps, Street View and so on?
Or are you just talking about stuff (bloatware) that carriers like to preload...? That would be a step in the right direction.
And if it doesn't, hunt it down and kill it!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I've never understood exactly why Google shoveled so much money into Android, and from what I hear from Android developers, they're not sure either.
Google sells ads; they're very good at it, and they have excellent margins. It's hard for them to find another business where they can make money as efficiently, so maybe they shouldn't bother. When they started developing Android, perhaps Google was worried that there wouldn't be good smartphone platforms that they could use to sell ads on, but that's not a worry now. Google doesn't care much whether you visit their sites or use their aps on an Android-powered phone or any other kind of phone; they get paid either way. If Microsoft or Baidu is willing to take over some or all of the cost of developing the software necessary for Google to serve ads to mobile users, Google would probably be delighted to let them.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I'm not convinced that #1 is even a strong interest of Google's. When Google bought Android they could, after all, have kept it and made it available to handset makers under attractive terms. Instead, they set up the Open Handset Alliance -- which they don't control -- and transferred ownership of Android to the OHA. I think that, for Google, as with Chrome in the browser market, the two main purposes of Android in the smartphone OS market are:
1. Prevent any one non-Google vendor from dominating the market and using that to dictate which services can be accessed, either directly or simply by favoring their own services or their partners,
2. Drive expectations in the market so that future offerings, from whatever vendor, provide an excellent platform for the online services at the core of Google's business.
Google's preference order for the structure of the mobile market, from most preferred to least preferred, is probably something like:
1) Android is a popular, unified platform controlled by Google. 2) Android is a popular but fragmented platform, with carriers and handset makers doing whatever they like. 3) Android is an unpopular platform. Apple dominates the market, and has the power to lock Google out of mobile advertising.
Based on Google's behavior, it's clear their primary goal with Android was simply to avoid #3. Trying to achieve #1 would have required Google to exert control over the platform that carriers and handset makers would have likely objected to, this lowering adoption rates and increasing the probability of #3 occurring. So Google was willing to give up nearly all control, and settle for #2. They'd rather have a fragmented market than one controlled by Apple.
I think you're totally right. All the people saying "Google is trying to control our phones! Google is trying to control our phones!" are ignoring how inconsistent Google's actions are with actually trying for #1, and how much more their actions point toward #2. Of course they want #1, they're a for-profit company; that doesn't mean they think #1 is viable.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I can't actually find the original source, but a while ago Google stated that future versions of android would run separate from versions of the google apps, separating them so that users don't need the latest OS to run the latest gapps.
This has already started happening, with the core apps later versions appearing in the market - http://android-apps.com/articles/reviews/google-puts-gmail-app-in-the-android-market-new-version-available-for-download/
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Google usually competes by trying to have better quality applications... starting with their search engine and extending to mail, maps, documents, etc. A competitor could try to replace all of these with better alternatives and it would be a good thing for competition and choice if they could do it but I don't think that Google is worried about this happening in the near future. They seem to keep producing compelling free applications that people adopt voluntarily on the open Internet, not because they are locked into some proprietary platform. If Microsoft can produce a better suite of apps and compete on the open Internet then we all benefit. However, Bing is not an auspicious start and the rest of their apps are far behind Google's offerings.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
i really doubt tht google won't be benefitting.....they will have a massive ads network which inturn increase its revenue.. :)
Yes, that's definitely started happening, but it's never been stated that the core apps would not be shipping with handsets. That would be an entirely different scenario... and an unlikely one at best.
They're already on the right track with Maps/GMail and other market-updatable core apps... other than the fact that the updated APKs are then placed in /data/app/ instead of /system/app/, this is most definitely the way to go. And on modern phones (2GB+ of space for user apps is becoming the norm) this isn't a problem at all... :)
So let's say Baidu makes a market with localized apps and pays providers to point to only that?
Or let's say China Mobile sets the phone with their own default market. Even Verizon can do that.
Many ways competitors could become much bigger than the "official" market pretty quickly.
Lies about crimes
Gmail, maps etc ARE the core apps. What were you thinking about?
As the AC said above, no. It costs Google nothing if the Chinese telecoms put Baidu and their own app market on. It's not like it costs extra to develop that version they had nothing to do with. And the Chinese people will still have a computer in their pocket that can visit the Web. And where will they go on the web? To sites that carry Google ads. To YouTube and Gmail. And when they get tired of the poor search results with another provider, they'll just google from the browser.
If the vendors get to be too much trouble, phone users can just load a proper version of Android and be done with them.
And in the long run the vendor that provides the full Android experience with Google apps wins anyway.
In summary, the analysis in the fine articles is complete hogwash. It shows a lack of understanding about the situation. It assumes that Google wants to assert some control over the handset and that's not the case. Google doesn't want control, it just wants people to have more access to the Web so people can see their ads and use their services. Android can't be reengineered to shut Google out, so Google will be fine.
This is one of the things I love about Google. They engineer their businesses to profit from technological progress - faster Internet, mobile everywhere, open spectrum. Then they put their other efforts into driving that progress. Because they foresaw the progress they're driving they're best positioned to profit from it when it comes. Because we like progress, it endears us to them. Everybody wins. I like this model better than the domination and ossification model that was previously prevalent.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Google wins with Android simply because Microsoft and Apple can't hold up app approvals for a year and a half or mess with Google's web sites. If they get any revenue out of Android, that's icing on the cake.
Cuz Microsoft is so good at seizing opportunities these days...
The bias of the Harvard Business Review is given away with the question "What's the endgame here?" The domination and ossification model we're used to - "embrace, extend, extinguish" has an endgame: the state where no more effort need be made toward progress because the domination of the market is self-reinforcing. James Plamondon called this "critical mass". This is rent-seeking behaviour, and participating in it is essentially self destructive from a customer point of view because it advances the plan toward the ossified end state. We desperately don't want an "endgame".
Google's game doesn't have an end state. Their game involves continually staying ahead of progress to catch the benefits, and continually driving progress to keep moving the goalposts so others can't achieve dominance because the market is too dynamic. It's better for us in the long run. It requires a great deal of courage and vision to come up with a plan like this, and excellent execution to keep it working. I hope it continues to work.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Who cares if Baidu or Bing muscle out Google's search on their own mobile OS platform? How is that going to spell the end of Android or Google as a company? ...Sad for Harvard Biz review, really.
Relax. No one is spelling the end of Android or Google. But Google did not create Android as a gift to the OSS community. They created it to be able to drive search revenue their way, instead of having to rely on Apple. If the product they invested in cannot actually drive revenue, it causes their investment to have been in vain.
Harvard Business Review understands what the average geek does not: that large corporations implement strategies to create profits, and some fail. The only thing that's sad here is the groupthink on /.
Lies about crimes
I don't think this aspect of the nature of Open Source Software has escaped Google. True, they did provide something that people can use against them, but Google's focus seems to be on growing the market, rather than going to war against a set of opposing corporations.
Without Android, the global touch-screen smartphone market would be a lot smaller than it is now, and much less search traffic would be coming Google's way.
Charles Stross might call this article the thinking of "zero-sum dinosaurs". Just because an action may profit someone else as well as yourself, that's not in itself a reason not to do it.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
He is saying that he still expects Gmail, the Android Market, and the other Google Apps will continue to ship on the phones by default. I agree. All the market availability does is enable app updates more frequently than OS upgrades.
I will also dispute the Google apps being the core apps. The core apps are those like Contacts and Home, which would be present in an Android build you compiled from source.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Although I understand why Java was used...Java will cause the demise of Android and the dependency on the java platform as a whole long before Android as an operating system will experience pressure from market forces. I'm no fan of apple, but compiled Objective-C has a bright future ahead of it where Java simply does not. When mobile phones start to receive multi-core processors Java will become even more of a hindrance because the Linux kernel attempts to manage user-threads intelligently, Java virtualizes the operating system not allowing TRUE threads to be managed, or allocated to the hardware efficiently.
Personal opinion is that over the long haul, Android will NOT do well. They have not the control over the usage it.
Open vs. closed, open wins out over the long run. AOL vs. the web, Unix vs. Linux, closed winning is an outlier. It tends to happen in short bursts: A company that wants control comes up with something cool, they keep their control for a while, then people who don't want to live under someone else's thumb create a substitute for their product and the controlling party either has to open their platform (as Microsoft has generally done just enough to stay on top) or lose market share to the open competitor.
Right now the parties pushing for control (Apple excepted) are mostly the carriers. But some day soon someone is going to start selling an Android phone for $200 at retail that allows you to make Google Voice calls and browse the web, both using 802.11, whether you have a carrier or not. Then the 80% of people who are almost never out of range of an 802.11 access point are going to start wondering WTF they're paying $500/year to the carriers for. The only thing stopping that from happening right now is that the phones cost $600 instead of $200 at retail, and people would rather pay $50/month for two years for plan+phone than pay $600 up front. But eventually the price of the phones will come down.
At that point the carriers lose their leverage. The advantage in having a carrier at all is no longer to have a mobile device or make phone calls or browse the web or use mobile apps, since you can have those without them. It's so that you can use Google Maps from wherever you are when you get lost, or call a tow truck from the side of the road. For which paying a one-time fee for non-expiring prepaid for emergencies starts to look pretty attractive compared to a $500/year plan that you only use once every few months when you're outside WiFi range.
And if we still have open phones popularly available when that day comes, the carriers aren't going to be in a position to tell you what updates you can install or which browser you can use any more than Comcast is in a position today to stop you from using Ubuntu on your PC.
Well as I sit here and stare into my crystal ball here is what I see.
Andriod will be a player, but it won't be a Win-7 mobile killer or an iOS killer.
The source of its biggest problem will be its biggest advantage and that is it is wide open.
The user experience on the iPhone / iPad / i[whatever] that iOS delivers has set only set the bar, it has set the bar insanely high becuase like Apple or think that they are evil, the iOS UI is as close to perfect as you can get right now and the apps reflect that.
Win7 Mobile will be there but right now they are confusing the hell out of everyone who is finally getting comfortable with desktop Windows 7 because in their efforts to me more iPhone like their interface is confused and muddled.
So Android with it's amazing lack of a coherent set of suggestions much less standards is facing UI fracture hell because nothing looks the same app to app unless it is core phone functions.
You play with one iOS device you have played with them all and you know how to maximize what you have, not so with Andriod and not yet so with Win-7 Mobile.
The jury is still out on a lot of things, but the one verdict that has been rendered unquestionably is that the iPhone pardigm is the one to emulate and beat if you can, but I really doubt that anyone can do that.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Have you actually used Android?
Its progress, if you are using something outdated you can't run new stuff.
This has always been the case, except here you don't have a company trying to procrastinate as long as possible between releasing something new in order to make more money, you have a company who is constantly inventing.
And guess what - most nerds don't care one bit. They buy a phone to use, not just to have while they sit and hit F5 in the browser hoping to read about an update.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
One crucial factor the article doesn't mention is Android Market. Although a vast part of Android is open source, besides the traditional google applications, Android Market is closed source. Not only that but to be able to use it a phone manufacturer has to receive permission from Google. Without that Android is a platform with no apps. I am not sure what is the strategy for Badu (or Bing) to create a competing market...
Followup with link to and quote from the relevant source material:
"Critical mass" is a term borrowed from nuclear physics, in which it means "a sufficient mass of fissionable material to sustain a chain reaction," in which a chain reaction is defined to be "a self-sustaining nuclear reaction yielding energy that causes further reactions of the same kind."
"Self-sustaining" is the key phrase in this definition. Once started, the nuclear reaction naturally reinvests its energy in perpetuating and growing the reaction. Once the point of criticality is reached, no additional external energy or intervention is required to maintain the reaction. - James Plamondon, Microsoft, 1/11/2000. From the Groklaw Comes Vs Microsoft Collection, exhibit 3096.
By the way, when somebody talks about "cannibalization" as if it's a bad thing, it's because the referenced platform has already reached this "critical mass" state. The petrification process has set in, and innovation is the "cannibalization" being stifled as a housekeeping cost of maintaining the monopoly for as long as possible. Once critical mass is reached progress is the only threat, and a small one because developing momentum is difficult from a static position. Cannibalization is an artful label to tag progress with to trigger a visceral defensive reaction from you, the audience. From the static state an innovator has to step entirely outside the field of action like Apple and Google did to build up enough forward motion to make a significant change.
If you're considering moderating this post informative, please bump the parent instead. I'm collecting +5s for my achievements, and subscriber and karma bonus points don't count.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Oh my goodness! Buttons! How will we ever manage!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but people still buy (differently branded) TVs, and have done so for the last fifty years. Remember all the jokes about VCR clocks? People still bought VCRs, because it fit their requirements.
And as far as cars go, ever try to get into a car with a different placement of steering column controls than what you're used to? I still turn on the windshield wiper instead of the turn indicator in my dad's car, because the controls are on opposite sides to mine. Yet, both cars are still good, and satisfy each of our needs, and really, figuring out a couple of new controls every now and then is hardly an uphill task that's too difficult for our puny human brains.
And I assume that you've never ridden different motorbikes - the gear placement and kick-start on different vehicles is always a nice topic for conversations, yet I can take my friend's bike and ride it with about as much comfort as my own.
I'll let you get back to your walled Apple garden now, where you don't have to get confused by all those buttons!
Carriers only have any leverage because of your horrendous US mobile environment, where you buy both instrument and service from the same company. Come on down to India sometime, and I'll show you just how much control the carriers have, even though we still can't migrate numbers across carriers.
Yes, phones cost more, but the end result is cheaper call rates, and pretty much no lock-in.
You might have been right if there was some market that wasn't aware there is a Google. I doubt such a market exists. Faced with a device that can't find this known useful resource, the natural response would be to fix it. That's a reasonable reaction because the device itself without access to google is in fact broken. This objection just goes more to the part of my post that reads: "If the vendors get to be too much trouble, phone users can just load a proper version of Android and be done with them. "
Help stamp out iliturcy.
and i never bee tempted to use Verizon - ever.
After all, they actually understand the concept of "free software" and all that entails. The need for Android was to ensure that mobile search (search, of course, being Google's bread and butter) didn't fall under the control of a small number of proprietary systems. After all, when they started this, every smart phone OS was at least some degree proprietary, some (iOS, BlackBerryOS, Palm's WebOS) fully so.
The open source release is the driving factor behind Android's success. They had to sell to the OEMs, after all, and that's what did it. The OEMs clearly could not compete on their own against Apple or the other proprietary brands, or they would have already done so. It was intentional, to allow their choice of the level of customizations they wanted. And most of those really aren't that terrible... hacking in Bing! is a bad idea, but changing the UI shell, not that big of a deal. You can find other alternates in the Android Market, if you don't like what your phone came with.
And Google isn't losing control of the source development. If there are things OEMs do that really bother them, they can change the OS to compensate. OEMs could fight some of that, but is that kind of development really in their best interest.
The big success of Google is based on one significant thing: people actually want their stuff. No one has to pay Verizon to inflict Google Search on their customers... the customers want this. Thus, the availability of "Google Experience" phones, like my Droid 1 -- assurance that Verizon didn't muck with it. In fact, had Verizon not launched with that, I might well have gone to a different carrier for my Android phone. Verizon, after all, had the worst reputation in the business for meddling in phone firmware and options. Thankfully, AT&T stole that crown away, though the way Verizon's playing, they might be after it again.
But that's clearly Google's other option: advertising themselves. They've built their reputation, they've build Android, without any actual Google ads at all. Again, people want their stuff. Sure, Verizon and others have active ad campaigns, which help, but that success is also based on a fair degree of cooperation with Google. If they got too radical with mods and user lock-outs, Google certainly has the cash and clout to quash that.
-Dave Haynie
Control isn't what wins a market. In fact, there are very few mature markets that have ever been controlled by proprietary solutions. I can think of one: video gaming consoles. And the only reason that's dominated by proprietary systems: the manufacturers sell the hardware below cost, and make up revenue on the software.
Apple is not going away, probably not RIM either. But neither has a chance of dominating the market again. Proprietary systems offer too much lock-down and too few user choices.
And in fact, Apple absolutely can't do anything to really compete with Android. Android devices are competing with Apple's iPhone, but they're also increasingly going downscale. Apple can't release a low cost iPhone, because their whole business is based on being a premium brand. People pay Apple way too much money for that Apple logo, and that's why Apple's profits are much more akin to a software company's than to a hardware company's -- they really are selling you the software, with a fairly normal device in a very nicely made case. Same reason Cadillac or Mercedes don't produce down-scale vehicles... cheaper models would hurt profits. They're all selling exclusivity.
That's can't happen in the Android market. Some CE companies, like Sony and Panasonic, are getting on board, and will probably only offer top-tier products. But the traditional cellphone companies, HTC, Motorola, etc. are hitting all price points, just as they always have. And with China going huge on Android (it's the basis of China Mobile's OPhone... China Moble has more customers than the USA has people), low cost Chinese Android phones are pretty much a foregone conclusion.
In shot, its the same dynamic that allowed the PC and Windows to dominate, hardware and software. Apple moved to use bog standard PCs hidden inside their Mac casework, and while they're getting Samsung to design custom versions of their ARM SOCs, and may do their own eventually, they're still building on the same ARM embedded gene pool as everyone else (eg, Qualcomm, TI, Samsung, Marvell, etc). You can even run Android on the older iPhones, and pretty soon, on the iPhone 4 as well. Remind you of anything?
RIM's in worse shape, because their OS and hardware are not up to the standard set by Apple and the various Android suppliers. They're fixing the OS -- they bought QNX, which is going into their tablet now and will replace Blackberry OS in the next generation. Maybe that's
-Dave Haynie
I kind of see Droid as a viral takedown of Microsoft and Apple. Sure, Google loses on the front end of it, but then they have a shot on the backside, after the disease becomes mainstream (as it has virtually become). A few years back, the rave was this new Blackberry! It let you get *e-mail* from work on your cell phone...ooh. Now if you want a phone that does not have work email following you to the toilet in your own house you have to pay extra to remove the feature!