Google Android: More than just a cheap date
For years, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM have used Linux to lower the cost of their hardware and software-based solutions, while keeping profit margins fat and healthy. Google, ever the quick learner, is now doing the same with Android.
The mobile market will never be the same.
Take a peek inside the Android.
(Credit: Google)Just as Google and others are using open-source software to lower barriers to adoption of their proprietary cloud offerings, so, too, is Google using open source to reduce the cost of mobile computing in order to drive uptake of its proprietary search-related advertising business in mobile.
Google CFO Patrick Pichette said as much in Google's most recent earnings call:
If we move forward the adoption of these smartphones by having a lower cost infrastructure because it's open source...all the (mobile) searches...will happen so much faster.
Open source: it's all about peace, love...and capitalism.
However, Android is more than just a way to shave a few dollars off a phone's purchase price. Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation's executive director, declared recently that Linux offers "greater flexibility, freedom from lock-in, and lack of licensing costs."
He's right, but I'd argue that the "lock-in" argument is a bit of a throwaway line and the cost advantages are of secondary importance. The real value for would-be Android developers is its flexibility, which in turn helps to corral a community of interested participants.
Google Android's open-source license also encourages broad experimentation with the platform by a range of device manufacturers. Some handsets will be flops, but others, like Verizon's forthcoming Motorola-developed Droid, look likely to succeed.
Google can play the odds because, unlike Apple, it hasn't tied its fate to any one device. Instead, it has intentionally spread Android's risk--and chances of success--through its open-source license.
It's genius. Sheer genius.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seems determined to revive Microsoft's stale desktop monopoly, as reported by The New York Times and, in mobile, is focused on toppling Apple's iPhone "momentum." But he probably should be more worried about Android as a long-term community play.
Mobile is the future, and that future is going to be heavily influenced by open source.
Linux has succeeded in servers precisely because a wide array of Microsoft competitors have converged on it as a way to club Microsoft. The same is happening in development tools (Eclipse), browsers (Firefox), Web servers (Apache), and more.
In Android, then, Microsoft isn't simply competing with Google. It's competing with the entire industry--or will be, soon enough.
Google, for its part, should continue to spearhead Android development, but must find ways to open Android further to outside involvement. Otherwise, it stands to lose out to open-source alternatives like Symbian if they do a better job at encouraging community uptake. Google really doesn't need to control the platform to succeed.
In fact, given that its revenue derives from proprietary services delivered on top of the Android platform, its best chance for success is to do whatever is necessary to further proliferate Android.
Android is powerful with Google behind it, but it would be much more so with Nokia, Palm, and others. As in the server war, such vendors may find it advantageous to abandon their "Unix" variants to combine behind Android.
That is the power of open source, and it's how Google has made such intelligent use of Android. It's not about freedom from lock-in; it's about freedom to demolish competitors and serve customers by shifting the rules of the game.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
android tries to provide a "write once - run anywhere" enviroment which is what java failed at on desktops but so far it seems to work out for android
besides... Android got an NDK that lets you run C code inside an Adroid application (which would make your whole app cpu dependant of course)
Depends on whether or not those optimizations break compatibility or not. ;)
Wow!
The only real issue with java are developers screwing up paths to files. Other than that cross platform issues are extremely rare, unless a project makes OS specific calls.
Microsoft has beaten back all challengers. OS/2 = dead. Linux = only used by tech geeks. Mac = only used by artsy fartsy folks and technically challenged people.
There is smart use of open source, and then there is the "religious holy war" of open source. Stop the jihad. It will only get you clobbered by the big boys of computing.
"Mac = only used by artsy fartsy folks and technically challenged people."
Sounds to me like this poster is the technically challenged one.
Agreed, even though the Macs on our network take 3x longer to start up on average than the Dells. And they're abhorrently slow. And they cost over 3x as much as the Dells. ($75,000 is a huge chunk of money for a 50-Mac computer lab.)
Also, all the mathematicians I know use Windows boxes... and I don't know any supercomputers that run OSX... and I'm pretty sure Mission Control uses a proprietary OS rather than a commercially available one.
...have you seen Microsoft's growth (or rather, lack thereof) lately? It's in decline, and for good reasons.
- Windows simply isn't sexy anymore, and hasn't been since (roughly) Windows 2000.
- Microsoft is being run by a flaming, narcissistic, egotistical, and overall incompetent executive.
- Microsoft itself has become moribund, compartmentalized, and cursed with departments that are too busy fighting against each other than in striving for excellence.
- Seen the share price for MSFT lately? How about over the past five years? Blaming the economy won't cut it, and Microsoft's will likely be forced to post crap fiscal numbers this month, in a time-frame when Google, IBM, Intel, et al are reporting massive recovery and huge wads of growth/income/profit/sales/etc.
...and that's why Microsoft's monopoly is considered to be stale.
Dude, seriously? Not happening yet.
While mobile can do a whole lot of very nice things, there's not enough processing 'oomph or screen-size to do much of anything that would be considered normal work.
Game consoles are geared for one thing - multimedia (at best - some don't even cover the whole word). They have very little practical storage space, less RAM, and are locked-down to the point of uselessness for anything that doesn't involve a gated, restricted experience. Also, good luck convincing your boss to let you drag an xbox to work. :)
Cable box? I've seen what Comcast does to my network data... I'll be damned if I'd trust them with holding/storing that data too (and knowing them, they'd like charge for that storage by the kilobyte).
All but the stock price argument are your opinion Random spun into you so call world-of-facts. If you believe Microsoft is down for the count you haven't been paying much attention to the work they've been doing in their product space: Windows 7, Azure, WinMo 6.5, WinMo MarketPlace, My Phone, Zune HD (and nice desktop client too), Live Services (underscore Mesh), Bing, Office 2010, Silverlight, Visual Studio 2010, .Net 4.0, and on and on... With their distribution channels and buzz Windows 7 has already it alone will give them a nice earnings bump. You would have to be a fool to think Microsoft is stale. Oh wait...
The real risk to Andriod is branding, hardware manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung etc.) need to have something to differentiate their products from the competition. Using a common OS leaves the manufacturer with hardware features (GPS, etc), Industrial Design, screen size/resolution or value added services (app stores etc) to differentiate their product. As the hardware platforms fragment it becomes more difficult for the app developers to keep up with the number of hardware combinations to support.
Ultimately Andriod may struggle to provide the critical mass needed for app developers to support the platform, with different hardware (screen size/resolution and hardware features) and manufactures/carriers app stores we will effectively be back to the current situation of proprietary operating systems for mobile devices. So really nothing changes.
This doesn't make sense as neither Google or Microsoft make the hardware.
Nokia and Palm using Android, there's a laugh.
I totally disagree with that.
Google need to keep full control of the platform mainly for quality assurance and compatibility between hardware platforms.
Otherwise Android will become just another crappy linux distribution that are best at stealing time from users.
Besides... you can't be serious comparing Android to Symbian... maybe you could compare it to Maemo but Maemo still needs to show what it is capable of on in the real world while Android already did that.
Microsoft made a huge mistake and Google is repeating it by supporting too many platforms and not locking down the user experience. Now you have this huge branding issue because everyone had a Windows Mobile device but you had the q, then the treo, touch, etc etc. All of them look good but the user experience varies.
It's about the apps stupid - what company will put resources in developing an app that may run on one device but not on a handful of others? What about licensing and piracy? All this open talk sounds great but it's the open part that will allow someone to pirate software. Apple is dealing with this right now because the core of the iPhone OS is BSD based. That layer - which is open - is where third parties are sneaking in apps to pirate fee based apps.
Fortunately for Apple they have a game plan and they also have a large amount of free apps to keep it going. Free MS Mobile apps? Yeah right. For basic third party IM programs it costs you $29.95 because there are too many platforms to support. The cost overhead is ginormous. Android will be caught with the same problem MS keeps facing.
Regarding apps, Android runs on a JVM-like platform which means that the applications run on that platform on all devices. I don't know how they deal with the screen size issues since Android devices can vary in screen size considerably so application layouts can be a problem but that's mostly it. If a user tried to install a GPS mapping app onto a device without GPS capabilities, it's not the app developers fault unless he/she doesn't warn the user at some point when running is attempted. I agree that "it is the apps stupid" because this is what made the Palm PDA such a big hit years ago. A good hardware platform and tons of apps to give people new and interesting ways to use the device. Android does this across different devices via the JVM-like application runtime system but has to make sure it's easy to install/uninstall apps in AppStore fashion and links to PC and Netbook PIMs will help too.
There's room for many phone platforms and we really don't want or need one to own it all. Microsoft exists to try and make Windows own it all so that is dangerous. Apple may want to own it all but they don't have the power to change much to see that they do own it all. Nor does Google have the power to direct the market to do it their way and only their way.
I think people on these tech sites get more fired up about which OS is on a phone than the average consumer. In reality, people walk in the store and say "this one has the okay keys for texting, pretty good battery life and comes free with the calling plan."
- by SixString16 October 27, 2009 2:29 PM PDT
- Everybody's fightiing over Android/iPhone/Win Mo... I think of Android as an alternative to an iPhone. It's not going to kill it (nothing will kill the iPhone), but it's going to be good enough to make people think about using something different. I think that the combination of Android/iPhone can hurt RIM a bit, could probably squelch growth of WebOS, and it could really put Win Mo in a bad spot.
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(28 Comments)I've played with Win Mo phones and there's just nothing all that good that I see there. Microsoft seems to have had no real strategy for the mobile market. I think Android coming in the mainstream is really more of a Win Mo killer than anything else. Apple is still on the rise and they will continually make improvements to the iPhone. Once they take the wraps off of the exclusivity deal, the combination of Android/iPhone will eventually be a real beat down to the other platforms.