I gave a talk recently at a local user group, not specifically about
Android, but about Mobile Platforms in general. The goal was to give
a technical analysis of the major features, and key differentiating
factors of the main mobile platforms that are in existing (and try to
point out some trends of what might emerge in this space).
Here are my notes (there is a section specifically covering Android),
and maybe it might be helpful for a general overview of the mobile
application space:
(Sarika, thanks for the other notes, I will likely use these as a
starting point for the "follow up" presentation I will be giving soon)
---------------------------
--Keys to Mobile Platforms
Development community
Large development community support will be critical to create new
applications, and continue to innovate
Hardware resource control(memory, battery)
Battery and memory critical to successful platform, and it is a
balancing act to allow developer access to core system, while keeping
them from bring the phone to its knees;
Many developers today don’t concern themselves with hardware
constraints
Internet for the masses
One CellPhone per child
Many 3rd world countries currently emerging as important markets, and
cell phones will be their first exposure to the internet
Key Applications
Location Awareness - These applications are emerging as extremely
important; There will likely be a lot of innovation around this space
in particular
Social Networking
Device Compatibility
Which phones will support which OS
Touchscreen interface
All the phones coming out today utilize some sort of touch interface
Vendor Ecosystems
Pressure from operators to lower the price of devices will drive
some established players to seek out new sources of revenue from
content and services sold to end users.
Application Distribution Channels iPhone App store is going
gangbusters (heard 30 Million downloads in first month)
This will be an important factor in the various mobile platforms
success
It will also be important to easily be able to extend the mobile
phones features – people will be hanging onto their mobile devices
longer, so will need to be able to easily upgrade them
OS will drive industry
Phones themselves are cookie cutter (same brick with touchscreen
interface, GPS, wifi, etc);
To a large extent, how they utilize the OS to make use of the
features, will be what differentiates them between one another
People will buy one expensive device, and keep it for a while; How
the OS and Applications evolve, is where the money will be made
Sync is hard
Critical component of Platform
Mobile Me failure testament to difficulty of accomplishing this
Enderle believes that developers are ultimately going to embrace
whichever platform or platforms promise a good return on their
development efforts. “At the end of the day, developers want to make
money,” he says. “So they’re going to develop on a platform and put
resources on a platform that will make them money.”
--Worldwide Phone Sales
If Apple is successful this year, it will sell 10 million phones -- in
a market of 1 billion. That's 990 million phones that aren't Apple.
--US Smartphones In Use
Things to note:
-Apple is steadily climbing
-Palm Is rapidly declining
-Rim steady and strong at top
-HTC has significant share
-Nokia has tiny share
Wish I could find the same graph for world wide, as I expect it would
be different
Nokia would be at the top
Apple not yet emerging in these markets
--Apple
iPhone 3G is successful
Environment is closed
-SDK
is Apple only,
OSX 10.5 to boot,
Object C is probably accessible for .NET developers with minimal
effort.
-Developers Access to distribution –
costs $99 to join developer network, and if you sell an app, you must
give %30 of you profit to Apple
but make no mistake: this is a private party at Apple's house. They
can be as picky as they want about who they let in, and they can ask
you to leave at any time. But once you get in, as long as you behave
yourself Apple wants you to have a good time.
-Jobs blesses everything that goes on the phone –
nothing gets on phone before it passes Steve’s approval; While I
resist that kind of control, I actually understand, as it is
important to maintain the integrity of the hardware
I understand this for same reasons as above (control over hardware
to maintain integrity)
Developer limited from modifying core applications-
no background processing,
no interpreted language runtimes
developers not allowed to switch out core functions like contacts
apps, or browser
Facebook has a really nice iPhone application, and I've even
heard
it said that it could "almost" physically replace the iPhone Contact
book.
I understand this for same reasons as above (control over hardware
to maintain integrity)
Gadgets platform –
Apple owns their platform and sees themselves as responsible for the
user experience, period. They restrict what applications can do and
what they can access accordingly, so as to maintain the quality of
that user experience according to their standards
NDA for iPhone SDK needs to be lifted –
no developer access to forums, books about developing, etc
SDK includes excellent performance tooling
The SDK includes both Instruments and Shark, tools which allow
measurement and some very fine grained profiling of where all your
cycles are going. This includes how much time is spent in the core
libraries.
--RIM –
Research In Motion (Canadian Company)
Already has a huge installed base
Including a lot of enterprises that are running their Blackberry
Server software to sync email
Have an App Store Now
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/downloads/
New stuff due:
JDE V. 4.5 (current released in June 2008) – so not idea when 5.0
will be out.
Blackberry Thunder
rumoured to have OS v 5.0 on it
Will have touchscreen
3G
New OS – Blackberry 5
Openness of Platform
Third-party developers can write software using these APIs, and
proprietary BlackBerry APIs as well, but any application that makes
use of certain restricted functionality must be digitally signed so
that it can be associated to a developer account at RIM. This signing
procedure guarantees the authorship of an application, but does not
guarantee the quality or security of the code.
Blackberry JDE
Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) - is a specification
published for the use of Java on embedded devices such as mobile
phones and PDAs.
Released a JDE 4.5 Beta Plugin for Eclipse
Also have a NetBeans Plugin
Uses Blackberry JDE
Technical Requirements
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 SP1 or later, or Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Vista™ (BlackBerry JDE v4.2.1 and higher)
BlackBerry JDE v4.5: Java® SE JDK v6.0
Large Development Community
Lot of forums, books etc exist for developing apps for the
Blackberry. Plus, since it uses Java at its core, there are a ton of
resources for that as well.
--Microsoft
New Windows Mobile 7 due:
“Sometime in the next year or so” – Gates (speaking before the Inter-
American Development Bank)
Touch Navigation - Windows Mobile 7 will use touch gestures, similar
to how the iPhone does. You will be able to flick through lists, pan,
swipe sideway, draw on the screen. A lot of emphasis has been put on
making navigation easier and doing away with scrollbars, including a
new scroll handle that allows for multiple ways of finding items
extremely fast
Large .NET developer base
(integrated with MS Studio products)
Good Integration with MS Products
Close integration with Outlook, and likely other Sync opportunities
with rest of Windows Infrastructure big plus
Very large installed base
Costs $20 per license to install on phone
Likely will change since all competitors will be offering their
platforms for free
Never bet against Microsoft
They are making moves towards embracing mobile environment including
introduction of new Mobile based search engine: Mobile Search Live –
including an advertising platform
Zune Phone
(Go ahead and snicker)
(rumored to come with Windows Mobile 7, and Surface based interface)
MS bought Danger this year (maker of Sidekick)
Close integration with Outlook, and likely other Sync opportunities
with rest of Windows Infrastructure big plus
--Symbian
Recently purchased by Nokia, and instantly open-sourced
Looking at year or so before true nature of purchase, plays out
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO have announced their
intent to unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP to create one open
mobile software platform. Partnering together with AT&T, LG
Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas
Instruments and Vodafone
SDK very accessible to variety of developers, including Java, C++,
and .NET
But core is still C++, and the API’s are known to be somewhat
difficult to work with
Huge installed market share
Especially in Europe
Over 200 Million phones shipped worldwide – could mean nothing; today
things are different, and new phones are very different from old ones
-or could mean that they have done this before, so they know the ins
and outs of mobile platform
Nokia OVI –
infrastructure to support application delivery
-http://www.ovi.com/
Release of new version
Current Version 9.5 (since March 2007)
release of next version isn’t publicized
--Android
Open handset alliance,
consisting of some very big players including Google, HTC, LG,
Samsung, Motorola, LG, T-Mobile, DoCoMo; Key to this, is that this
isn’t a Google app – they must deal with wishes of community (which
can be a difficult thing); Other thing, is that there is widespread
support for platform
http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_members.html
This has some positive effects -- as Dan Frommer pointed out earlier
today, it gives Google the chance to get their OS on as many phones as
possible. But when you're working with that many partners, it makes it
more difficult to get things done.
There is no gPhone –
Android is open OS designed to run on a variety of supporting
platforms. This makes designing apps for Android more difficult (no
standard screen resolution, or gauranteed functionality on HW); The
phone itself doesn't matter, it is the OS that is the key to this
project (many API componenets avaialble to hardware vendors, but they
don't have to support it).
SDK is very accessible, easy to run, Java based, includes Eclipse plug-
in
Java-like (but not Java) Android is not Java technology. It uses the
Java programming language but Dalvik is not a JVM. It’s not claiming
to be Java tech.
Android has a totally non-standard user interface toolkit. What this
means is that applications written for Android have no chance of
running anywhere else.
Java applications will not run on the Dalvik VM without being ported
Eclipse Plug in – or variety of command line tools if that is
preferred
SDK is buggy – Emulator slow, many features not implemented, etc
Didn’t release to developers – accidentally sent out email
announcement to forums; created bad blood
release schedule
Original release schedule for last quarter of 2008; already delayed,
and likely will be further
Aug 18, 2008 – HTC Dream gets FCC Approval, and next SDK released
(still just 0.9)
Completely Open Platform
Android is intentionally designed to let third parties such as
Facebook build an application that replaces the Contacts book, Home
screen, and Dialer, or nearly anything else.
Inverse of Iphone:
You might even say that Android and iPhone are sort of inverses
of
each other. iPhone is a Gadgets- style platform where the user
experience is largely fixed and an execution context is carved out for
each third-party application. Android provides a framework for
managing the execution contexts of third-party applications, which
are permitted (and expected) to augment the user experience in
innovative ways.
Jason Chen - Android version 1.0 will be available to everyone and
anyone who wants to download and port Android to any phone or any
other devices they so desire. Once Android version 1.0 hits the
street, you do not have to be an OHA Member and you don’t need to
sign anything or ask for anyone’s permission to install Android on
any device.
Some things missing in Android 1.0 –
“Cut and Paste”;
Bluetooth API – didn’t have time
Flash-lite
GTalk Client – security concerns
--Palm
Put a fork in them
New Linux based OS due soon (but very oft delayed)
Combination of Garnett Core, and Linux
but very oft delayed
No reliable release date announced
Latest hardware is uninspirational
Runs Windows Mobile
Palm software division is likely done
They offer nothing compelling in the software arena, and haven’t for
a long time
hardware likely will continue to succeed
New Treo Pro manufactured by HTC
nice phone, slim, GPS, wifi, and non-recessed screen
Centro is big success (but likely being sold at close to cost)
--The rest…
Garmin Nuviphone –
release date recently delayed from 4Q 2008 into 2009
Sun’s JavaFX Mobile –
Android has a totally non-standard user interface toolkit. What this
means is that applications written for Android have no chance of r
unning anywhere else. Contrast that with JavaFX Mobile which will run
Java SE, Java ME, and JavaFX Script. JavaFX Mobile phones will be able
to run much more Java code out of the box… and importantly, Android
will be able to run zero compiled Java applications out of the box -
Google’s VM is not a Java platform VM, but rather a VM of their own
design that runs their own so-called “Dalvik” bytecode.
Openmoko –
available now, likely hardware platform that will be integrated with
another emerging open source OS
LIMO
(Firefox, and other big players – some the same as the openhandset
alliance is part of this group)
TMobile App Store –
recently announced, but full details haven’t emerged; could be good
alternative app distribution channel (and you can bet they are
watching Apple very closely)
T-Mobile is big initial supporter of Android (first Android phone –
HTC Dream will be on this carrier)
Android merger with Symbian – not likely
Alternative: Not developing custom apps, and concentrating on Web
development
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