

Schmidt: "Android Adoption Is About To Explode" - edw519
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/15/schmidt-android-adoption-is-about-to-explode/

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gcheong
I think it would be great to have more competition in the smartphone
marketplace. My concern as a developer is that with so many devices coming out
can I be reasonably assured that any app I write for android will work on all
devices as with the iPhone? I certainly cannot afford to buy 12 different
phones. Sure, adroid is _supposed_ to be the common OS but is it going to
really work that way in practice?

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qeorge
You raise a good point, and in order for this to work they'll need to ensure a
full suite of emulators are available for testing. Android already provides an
emulator [1] that can be configured to match the target device, although I
can't speak to its quality as I have not used it. Windows Mobile is in a
similar position, and its SDK provides emulators for every phone you would
want to test on.

Phones differ so much in form factor alone that you really need to be testing
individually for any phone in your target market anyway. Its a huge time-sink
to be sure, but you won't be flying blind.

[1]
[http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator...](http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html)

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evgen
Its not just about being able to test (although I have serious doubts that any
suite of emulators will be able to give anything more than a rough guess as to
how an app will perform on a wide variety of potential platforms) but also
about what features will be available, what APIs will work, and how much code
you will have to write to deal with some funky condition on Vendor A's phone
that makes it differ in some subtle way from Vendor B and C's phones.
Eventually they will probably figure it out, but for the next year or so this
game is going to make browser feature detection look like a walk in the
park...

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shimi
From I seen so far unless you're playing with low level stuff the software is
consistent across the devices.

For now Android is far from the J2ME scenario, let's hope it will stay that
way.

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neovive
With the new Verizon Android phones coming to market shortly, a key factor
will be how many features does Verizon remove from the phone. The new Android
phones are extremely powerful and Android provides an excellent platform to
leverage the hardware. However, it's doubtful that Verizon will offer the new
phones with full support for things such as free Maps/Navigation, free games,
chat, etc -- since they charge quite a bit for these services on other phones.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

~~~
kijiki
Verizon is getting better.

They crippled the HTC Touch Pro horribly (including cutting its RAM in half
for no good reason), just like most of their phones.

But the HTC Touch Pro 2 came out completely unmolested.

Hopefully this represents a change in strategy...

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protomyth
I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior that
a lot of the Windows Mobile licensees to take a look at coming out with an
Android phone (since they cannot license Web OS or iPhone OS).

~~~
WalterGR
> I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior...

What, in particular, are you talking about?

~~~
protomyth
Sorry, posting as I was going out the door. The Sidekick disaster is a
problem, but the first party phone referred to by jsz0 is probably a bigger
issue. Think "Plays for Sure" vs. Zune.

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rimantas
Does "explode" mean that it will be fragmented to a zillion of unmanageable
pieces? :(

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symesc
Google's profits were up 27% (as reported today) while Nokia was reporting a
loss. I doubt anyone on this site finds this surprising.

Google is doing what Google does, which is to say it brings its services to
users and users use them. And all of it is subsidized by advertising.

Google is playing a different game, and until someone starts challenging them
they're going to continue to be adopted as the platform of choice for every
market they're in. The only exception: Facebook.

~~~
brandonkm
> The only exception: Facebook.

To provide a little context, Googles revenue in the UK alone was $200 million
more than Facebook's highest revenue reports ($500 million).

[http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q3_google_earnings.h...](http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q3_google_earnings.html)

On earnings calls, every quarter, the report on revenue growth is centered
around various metrics with search advertising. Search advertising continues
to be the most profitable form of advertising on the web. Facebook has
impressive statistics, but I don't see them challenging Google in any one of
Google's core businesses. When Facebook becomes a public company and matures
more and has a solid way of generating revenue then they _might_ be in a
position to challenge Google.

~~~
protomyth
If local search is going to be super valuable then I think and interesting
challenger to Google's dominance would be one of the credit card companies.
They already know all the merchants and take a very interesting part of
Google's business like Craig's List did to the newspapers.

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rauljara
They would be fools to say anything else. What platform owners trying to
attract developers would ever say, 'Our prospects look grim'?

Not to say android won't continue to grow. Not to say they won't explode. Just
to say, why would you put any stock in what Schmidt says? It's like asking
Steve Jobs if his next product is going to be amazing, or a Goldman Sachs
executive if he deserves his compensation.

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thismat
As a G1 owner (which I do love), I would love to get my hands on an HTC Hero
and hack it to work on T-Mobile....I've never wanted to switch carriers until
I was disappointed with the MyTouch (forgot the HTC hardware it runs on). I
think T-Mobile could of done so much better by bringing in the slightly higher
priced HTC Hero and kept the G1 as their entry level model.

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CamperBob
Translation: Our manufacturers are getting desperate, and are about to
subsidize and/or give away a metric assload of phones to a lot of people who
are too cheap to buy your apps.

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dminor
I think your translator is broken -- there's just a bunch of new Android
phones all coming out at once, whereas before last month there was only the G1
on T-Mobile. Hence the explosion.

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dminor
Here's Gartner's prediction of Android going from 2% to 14% by 2012:
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139026/Android_to_gr...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139026/Android_to_grab_No._2_spot_by_2012_says_Gartner)

There may be as many as 40(!) phones coming out in 2010.

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henrikschroder
Here's Gartner's prediction of everything:

Growth! <insert picture of exponentially growing curve>

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charltones
Did I imagine it, or was there a website posted here a while ago that tracked
these kind of predictions against reality? I had a quick google for it but
couldn't find it.

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cmalabs
You're thinking of <http://wrongtomorrow.com/>

