Google Android

[westmeadboy]

Android and Chrome likely to converge: http://androidandme.com/2009/11/news/an ... -over-time

IMHO the biggest problem with Android is the Market - from what I hear, its much more difficult to spend money than in the App Store. Also in many countries (e.g. China) its not possible to get paid apps at all, yet. When they sort that out and introduce in-app purchases (no idea when/if this will happen) then things will be pretty perfect.

I don't think the app storage thing is a huge problem because there are workarounds for that. Its a bit messy (e.g. once installed, app downloads data and saves to SD card) but customers don't seem to mind.

 

[mikelove]

On the scare stories, they may be partly self-serving - Gameloft much like Pleco would probably prefer a world with as few mobile platforms as possible, market fragmentation means spending more money on development and selling less software so I imagine the only developers who like it are those who are better at porting old software than developing new software. (Nintendo are the world's leading experts at this - I can't even count the number of times I've paid for a copy of Super Mario Brothers)

Android's a huge investment for us, that's another part of the problem - much though I'd like it to fail I can't be certain that it will, but at the same time the possibility that it will (or at least that it won't make enough money to justify the cost of porting to it, which is exactly what the problem was with releasing Pleco 2.0 on Palm OS) is enough to make me hesitant to support it - iPhone's a safe bet and we're a small enough to company to need to take as many safe bets as we can. And again, platform success does not equate to software success - even people writing us to ask if our software runs on their Motorola Droids say Droid and not Android. The carriers have a definite financial interest in making sure people don't know their phones are running Android, that way they're more likely to stick with that carrier's particular Android trademark rather than jumping to another carrier offering an equally-nice Android phone.

Android-Chrome convergence is an intriguing thought, and is I think a long-term reason not to support Android - Google doesn't want a world where people are running locally-hosted Java apps, they want everything living in the cloud. We haven't seen Google's answer to Amazon S3/EC2 yet, but we will, and it'll both be spectacular and represent the final piece of the Chrome puzzle - combine their vast array of JavaScript etc libraries with their ad network and the world's best web hosting platform and the idea of a network-only computer becomes much more intriguing. They may never be able to develop OSes as well as Apple or (once they get their act together) Microsoft, but they can run circles around anyone on web apps. So if Pleco's going to develop for a Google platform long-term it may be better to look at what we can do on Chrome than start rewriting everything in Java for the sake of the few years people are going to be using Android phones.

 

[sui.generis]

Nintendo are the world's leading experts at this - I can't even count the number of times I've paid for a copy of Super Mario Brothers)

It's Zelda I keep buying over and over. Except apparently I'm not really "buying" it. Just renting it under the guise of ownership <.<

Android-Chrome convergence is an intriguing thought, and is I think a long-term reason not to support Android - Google doesn't want a world where people are running locally-hosted Java apps, they want everything living in the cloud. We haven't seen Google's answer to Amazon S3/EC2 yet, but we will, and it'll both be spectacular and represent the final piece of the Chrome puzzle - combine their vast array of JavaScript etc libraries with their ad network and the world's best web hosting platform and the idea of a network-only computer becomes much more intriguing. They may never be able to develop OSes as well as Apple or (once they get their act together) Microsoft, but they can run circles around anyone on web apps. So if Pleco's going to develop for a Google platform long-term it may be better to look at what we can do on Chrome than start rewriting everything in Java for the sake of the few years people are going to be using Android phones.

Android-Chrome convergence need not consist of Android dissolving into Chrome. Indeed, I find that the less likely scenario. See PC World's take on it for more on why. Would Google favor pure cloud given their expertise (though they have been toying with linux internally for many years)? Maybe. But people aren't ready to go all in, and Google knows that.

 

[mikelove]

But they will be ready to go all in in the timeframe I'm talking about, I think - heck, Microsoft's getting ready to release a web-based version of Office. Even most of the games on iPhone and Android could be pretty easy implemented as web-based now, and those that can't will be in a few years (at least in Flash if not in the new-pseudo-OpenGL-web-spec-I-can't-remember-the-name-of-right-now). It's hard to think Google will continue aggressively pushing native Android development once that comes to pass.

 

[westmeadboy]

I'd take this with a pinch of salt. Still, would be interesting if it happens!

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol ... 924233.ece

Oh, and Gameloft appear to be backtracking...

http://phandroid.com/2009/11/24/gamelof ... -the-talk/

And, finally, here are some interesting graphs for mobile traffic share:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/ ... mpaign=rss

In the US, it looks like the iPhone is keeping stable, and Android is eating into RIM and WinMo share. Worldwide, it looks like both iPhone and Android are eating into everyone else's share (in particular Symbian). But just look at both Android curves - better than linear improvement. This time next year...

 

[mikelove]

Mobile traffic doesn't necessarily correlate with app sales, though - iPhone was making big inroads in mobile web browsing before it even had an app store. A Google phone would be interesting, but I have to think that the Android licensees wouldn't be very happy about it.

 

[westmeadboy]

As I understand it, those stats are for in-app ads served by AdMob, which means they are more of a reflection of app usage per platform. But, of course, some platforms use in-app ads more than others so the percentages themselves are not so interesting. What's more interesting is the movement in these percentages

 

[mikelove]

Well yeah, those are still highly skew-able statistics - may reflect the changing nature of the app market, developers can't make enough money with paid apps so they start developing ad-supported free ones. Or the market is getting more competitive and there's more of an incentive to release free ad-supported "Lite" versions.

 

[anchan42]

https://brewmobileplatform.qualcomm.com ... /index.jsp

new platform to look at...

 

[mikelove]

Interesting since they support C, but this would have to get a lot of traction with device manufacturers before we could consider it. Same goes for any new mobile platform, at the moment Android's the only mobile platform we don't already support that even passes muster as far as public interest (though it's a grim prospect development-complexity-wise).

 

[westmeadboy]

If this is true, then Android will simply EXPLODE!

http://www.androidguys.com/2009/12/14/r ... january-5/

100USD for an unlocked, contract-free Google Phone

 

[mikelove]

I'm calling shennanigans on that - http://www.slate.com/id/2238563/ and http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/15/entelligence-a-google-phone-could-be-the-death-of-android/ explain some of the reasons why. If Google starts selling a $100 unlocked Android phone they'll be the only people selling Android phones. Not to mention incurring a net loss of at least $80 or so per unit (from what I know of hardware component pricing / manufacturing costs), so they'd have a hard time justifying it to their stockholders / the US / EU governments unless the average Android user is buying a few hundred $ worth of apps through Android Market and clicking on every Google ad they see.

 

[westmeadboy]

Well, that second article is interesting However, its a little sensationalist with dross like "might well be the death of Android in the marketplace". Its a little backward-looking too with examples of "Nokia/Palm tried this and it failed". While those are interesting reading, I'm not convinced on their relevance.

The 100USD price tag does sound way to good (from the consumer's perspective) to be true. And maybe it is. One thing I do know is Google and HTC are not stupid. Why would HTC partner with Google for a phone which massively undercuts all of its Android devices? Especially with the new HTC Bravo about to be released:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/08/htc- ... re-lucidly

Seriously Mike - how many companies have you partnered with for them to sell Pleco at half the price ?

Clearly there is something in it for HTC and one would assume that would not involve the "death of Android".

So, it looks like the device manufacturers will be happy which leaves the carriers. More rumours - Verizon declined to sell the unlocked google phone through its stores, but T-Mobile accepted. So at least one carrier is (rumoured to be!) happy...

I'm very encouraged by all this. It looks like Android will be falling into consumers' hands at a faster pace than originally thought. Also would be great if you guys in the US move towards the far healthier model of unsubsidised phones, just like the vast majority of the rest of the planet!

 

[character]

The Nexus One (aka "Google Phone") is probably just the third version of the developer phone and going to be offered on T-Mobile as a new smartphone. There may be some Google sales stuff going on as well, but since reports indicate it won't do 3G on AT&T and isn't set up for Verizon, it doesn't seem to be some magic device.

Now that there are 20K apps in the Google Marketplace, there would seem to be room for someone to try a more iPhone-like Android phone: 16GB unified memory and all the necessary radios to work on most/all networks in the world.

 

[character]

Correction: Only 16K apps in Android Market 'A spokesperson for the company told us this afternoon that "there are currently more than 16,000 free and paid apps in Android Market" without specifying paid-to-free breakdown or differences among regional Markets [...]'

---

US smartphone OS marketshare

Interesting because when you hear about 57 million iPhones/iPod Touches, probably less than half of them are in the US (which generates the vast majority of app sales). So I'll stick with my thought that Android needs to get to around 10 million users before having a really viable market for apps.

 

[westmeadboy]

Hope you don't mind shifting this from the other thread, but this seems like a more appropriate thread to continue on...

westmeadboy - all iPhones have that sort of IME, it's just not very good; to make developers' lives easier Apple uses the exact same size input area for Chinese as for every other language, which can get a bit confining. The actual recognition engine behind our system was licensed from another company, our contribution is the interface (which as far as I know has never been done before on iPhone or anything else). Our recognizer only works within Pleco, there'd be no way to make it work systemwide except as a jailbreak app.

You mean all iPhones have chinese handwriting recognition or all iPhones allow the user to switch between different IMEs?

I think its a huge shame that developers cannot write system-wide IMEs for the iPhone, wouldn't you agree, Mike? Wouldn't it be great to use Pleco's IME in any iPhone app rather than having to copy paste? Seems like this is definitely an area where Android has the edge over the iPhone. Are you at all interested in making your recogniser Android IME compatible?

See more here.

As you can see there is no restriction on size of touch area etc.

 

[mikelove]

Good idea, if I hadn't gotten everything so entangled I'd merge the other Android posts in here too (but as is most of them also mention iPhone stuff).

All iPhones have Chinese handwriting recognition, it just isn't very good because it's in such a small / confined space. (though I don't think it's likely Apple will risk breaking tens of thousands of apps by adding the option for a fullscreen Chinese input system now - most developers wouldn't bother to test it and Apple started rejecting apps for not working correctly with it the tech press would have a field day)

Nice that Android has an IME framework, but the costs of our licensing a handwriting recognizer to use on Android are high enough that it'd be tough to justify based on what we'd make from an IME alone. Though the fact that it supports fullscreen is certainly promising...

 

[westmeadboy]

More strong predictions for the Android platform:

“The iPhone’s share of the app market will contract from its 2010 level during the latter part of the forecast period, but it will remain the leading platform for applications,” says wireless research associate Bhavya Khanna. “The big beneficiary will be Android, which will see its market share of total application downloads increase from 11% of the market in 2009 to 23% in 2014. This rapid growth is driven by the mass adoption of the Android OS by both vendors and consumers from 2009 onwards. There are now more than 14 phones that run the Android OS, and many more will launch in 2010. This, coupled with the rollout of application stores from both smartphone vendors and network operators, will see the iPhone’s share of the total market shrink between 2010 and 2014.”

Source: http://www.abiresearch.com/press/1569-M ... on+in+2014

 

[gato]

Google has to allow native apps to catch up with the iPhone. Have you tried games on the iPhone versus the Android? Games make up for a large percentage of app sales, just as it does on the desktop. The iPhone is almost as good a game machine as Sony PSP. The top Android phones and Palm Pre all have just as much processing power, but because of the programming limitation, their apps are still very far behind.

 

[westmeadboy]

I don't play games and I'm sure that the iPhone has much better games than Android. But we're talking here about learning chinese and for that I believe Android is a much better platform.

These analysts are predicting a strong future for Android despite the games drawback.

Like character said earlier, as soon as Android achieves critical mass (which appears to be sooner rather than later), we'll see far more of the big dev houses investing in building top quality Android apps.