The battle for the hearts and minds of smartphone developers is on.
Earlier Wednesday, Google unveiled its Android Market which will allow anyone buying T-Mobile's G1 to download apps for the smartphone. Here's what Google had to say:
"If you're a developer, you will be able to register and upload your applications starting next Monday, 2008-10-27, when we've wrapped up a few final details. In order to make sure that each developer is authenticated and responsible for their apps, you will need to register and pay a one time $25 application fee. Once registered, your apps can be made available to users without further validation or approval."
Starting in early Q1, developers will also be able to distribute paid apps in addition to free apps. Developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees--Google does not take a percentage. We believe this revenue model creates a fair and positive experience for users, developers, and carriers.
The timing obviously was coincidental but it follows by just a day Apple's earnings report where we learned that the company shipped 6.9 million iPhones in the third quarter. Meanwhile, Research In Motion announced that its long-delayed Blackberry, the Bold 9000, will go on sale early next month.
Each company will win fans who become enamored of this or that feature. But the fanboys, whose tether with reality got cut long ago, matter less than the developers.
Competing head to head, Apple, Google, and RIM will present themselves as the developer's best friend. Whoever makes good on that promise will score big. The iPhone is out ahead of the pack but nothing's set in concrete. In fact, Apple has had, at best, an uneven relationship with iPhone developers, and each side still is not sure whether it can trust the other.
As my colleague Stephen Shankland notes, the iPhone is about as locked down as possible.
"The App Store, while thriving, is a walled garden compared to the user-ranked, self-governing free-for-all that Google aspires to build with its Android Market download site. Google launched its Android software developer kit before launching Android to encourage people to write applications for the phones, whereas Apple only released its SDK much later and, only recently, partly lifted a nondisclosure agreement that muzzled developers from so much as sharing programming tips. And perhaps most clearly, the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 built by HTC, comes with a USB debugging mode to let programmers peer into its inner workings."
If RIM and Google roll out the welcome mat, a lot of third-party developers will take notice. For more about this as well as an initial appraisal of the G1, I spoke with CNET Reviews' Kent German earlier Wednesday on the Daily Debrief.
Forgive my flippancy, but I'm trying hard not to bust into giggles after reading about Rich Miner's prediction that sales of Android-based devices will outstrip sales of the iPhone.
Know where this guy can score an iPhone?
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)"Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone," he said during a conference held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. He later added, "There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone at least at the moment."
All of which may be true and yet totally beside the point.
Let's call Google on what this really is: Considering how there are currently ZERO Android devices in the market, Miner is engaging in (pardon the pun) major trash talking. Maybe Microsoft became such an easy target that Eric Schmidt decided it was the right time to pump up the volume at Apple's expense. I don't think Steve Jobs is sweating any. Down the corridor from me, my colleague Dan Farber recalled correctly that Apple's following the same playbook that's served it quite well in its other markets.
It's the same dilemma Apple has faced over the years. Should the Mac OS be licensed to any reasonably qualified manufacturer? Clearly, (Jobs) has proven that he can create a great PC business with 5 percent market share.
The first crop of phones resulting from Google's Open Handset Alliance aren't expected until the second half of the year. And yes, Android will not be tied to a specific device and thus the potential for monster sales exists--at least on paper.
But I understand why Google's drawing invidious comparisons with the iPhone. Apple may yet screw this up but there's powerful momentum behind the device. One week after announcing an iPhone software development kit, Apple's registered more than 100,000 downloads.
Android may offer the more open architecture, but Apple's decision to allow third-party developers to build applications is just the fillip the iPhone needs to win converts in the business world. So if you're Google, I suppose it comes down to a matter of "why not?" A little bit of FUD at this juncture doesn't come at a cost. But words alone won't turn Android into the success its creators envision.
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