Whats the big deal about Android?
As I sit looking at the feeds this fine Saturday morning I am simply stunned about the level of coverage Android is getting.
All this coverage stems from the leaked video that surfaced online showing Android running on a T-Mobile HTC dream.
Now, I don’t know about you but using a Linux based OS on a mobile phone is dreadful. Most open source projects are wonderful, but they all suffer from one flaw. People trying too hard. When you have a team of extremely talented engineers working on a common goal sometimes the objective gets lost. Think of the adage, If you try to design a horse by committee don’t be shocked if you end up with a camel.
The Android OS is muddled by too many features. It is not designed for the common user. Look at the Blackberry, Palm and iPhone OS (Mind you I left WinMo out). You KNOW that all the previous mentioned OSes are designed for the for the “average” user. Blackberry with their click wheel enabled OS, Apple with their instance on eye candy and no background processes. Palm with their extremely familiar UI. The Android just leaves me uninspired and unimpressed.
Now these might be words I eat later down the road, but the Android alliance is a coalition of second stringers. Again, look at Apple, Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, Motorola. These are all companies working solo and leading the industry, and with the exception of Apple available on almost every mobile carrier in the world. Now if you look at the Android alliance you have Verizon, and AT&T absent - the TWO largest phone networks in the US. HTC is a nice hardware manufacturer but if Google wants to win the mobile war, they need to make their own hardware and get out of this coalition of the weak.
Here is the formula. Steal a bunch of UI designers from Apple. Hide the geeky Linux Stuff. Buy Palm for the hardware (Hey the have the guy behind the Sidekick and iPod working there) and use them to manufacture your own devices. Make insane deals with the cellphone carriers, they are fueled by their unquenchable thirst for money and coincidentally you are sitting on a pile of it. Being secret only works for Apple, embrace the user show them you care. If all else fails become your own MVNO. Buy wholesale minutes for AT&T in the US make your phone available for a VERY low cost (Say $99 as shown by the success by the Centro) and give the service away for free. Enable your phone with GPS and bombard the user with ads. Repeat elsewhere in the world.
But in all honesty, the Android OS is going to be another one of Google’s pipe dreams. They came to the party too late.
