Google’s Android has potential; may outsell iPhone
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Google’s Android for mobile computing platforms hasn’t been released in any official capacity but that hasn’t stopped the company from making predictions about its new platform. Google says that once Android hits phones from Motorola, Samsung and others, it won’t be long before Android overtakes the iPhone in popularity.
Rich Miner, group manager for mobile platforms at Google said in regards to the iPhone, “there’s a single manufacturer [Apple], it’s targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide.”
According to Yahoo News, Android was introduced last November and is a complete “open source software stack, not just an operating system.”
To spur development of applications, Google is offering $10 million in prizes for “innovative and useful” applications. Miner went on to compare Apple’s SDK to the Google Android Kit. Apple’s SDK has been downloaded 100,000 times but Android has been downloaded 750,000 times for devices that don’t even exist yet.
He continued, “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.”
However, the two platforms are aimed at different markets; “it’s not a competitive thing,” Miner added.
Android enabled devices may end up costing less because the software is open source but Google did put a lot of money into it; there was talk of unobtrusive advertisements at one point, I’m not sure where the company stands on that issue now.
Google may not want to think it is competing with Apple but it really is. Some of the devices will have touchscreens, with any luck, some implementation of multitouch and downloadble and installable apps; how those will be delivered is not yet clear. I’m thinking there will be an application that you install to your computer that allows the Android devices to sync with data stored on the computer. Yes, it may be similar to iTunes + iPhone but slightly different and with (likely) free applications.
It’s still early but devices with Android are expected to it by the second part of this year which isn’t too far away. If Verizon gets them, I’ll probably be on board with it.
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