LAS VEGAS—Androids for everyone! This year's CTIA Wireless trade show was a Google Android show – and Google didn't even have to show up.
Google's Android platform isn't the most popular smartphone OS in the USA; the RIM BlackBerry OS holds that title, followed by the Apple iPhone OS. But Google's competitors largely backed away from the CTIA show, leaving the floor to Androids of various sizes and designs. Microsoft had their say about Windows Phone 7 last week. RIM appears to be slumbering until their own WES trade show next month. Apple tends to announce iPhones in June. And Symbian and Palm are both having a devil of a time attracting anyone's attention at all, even though they're announcing new phones and versions. So at CTIA, we got to see what an Android world looks like. Everyone gets an Android touchscreen phone. At the low end, you can buy the Kyocera Zio, which will pop up on prepaid carrier Cricket and might be free with contract on larger carriers. Then there's the Samsung Galaxy S with its super-bright, Super AMOLED screen; that one could seize the midrange at all four major US carriers. Finally, sitting atop the heap is the Sprint Evo 4G, the kitchen-sink, cutting-edge super phone. I have just one complaint here: where are the keyboards? Not one of the three phones I mentioned has a physical keyboard. Some of us like to type, you know. More Android phones lurked around the edges of the show. Motorola's i1 brought Android to Nextel; Alcatel's little sliding phones seemed to be aimed at teenagers. Samsung's Moment is bringing mobile TV to Android. Nobody was talking much about the Google Nexus One, except as a sort of science project or failed social experiment. For better or for worse, we live in a country where wireless carriers, not mobile advertising giants, sell phones. Beyond Android, the big topic was 4G – and, finally, what 4G can do for you. By the end of this year, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile will all cover at least 100 million Americans with their fast, next-generation networks. MetroPCS will cover at least a million or two, as well. After a year of throwing around throughput numbers, Sprint finally figured out how to explain why you might want 4G, by showing YouTube HD playing in beautifully sharp quality on an HTC Evo 4G. Expect 4G to take the YouTube and Hulu generation fully mobile, as "video" is the first word on most experts' lips when you ask them about what works well on the new networks. CTIA comes at the end of a long, hard season of trade shows. The wireless industry is looking tired – CES comes in January, Mobile World Congress in February, and CTIA in March. But now we have a pretty decent picture of the year to come. Over the next few months, new Android smartphones will start showing up at your favorite wireless carrier. Sometime around the middle of the year, RIM is going to have to come out with some new BlackBerry models with a brand-new, WebKit Web browser that finally brings them up to par with the competition. The fourth-generation iPhone will pop up in June, and it'll make a splash. Potentially the last great hurrah for high-end 3G devices (unless it's 4G), the iPhone will be followed by the first trickle of 4G smartphones, led by the HTC Evo 4G. Don't worry, the Evo won't come alone. It's just the first one we've heard of. I'm ignoring the burgeoning Web tablet market, but that's dominated by Android, too, and most of those will show up on shelves in the fall. Whether anyone will care about non-iPad tablets, however, is a call that's too tough to make right now. Finally, capping off the year, Windows Phone 7 will arrive. With commitments from a bunch of manufacturers and all four U.S. carriers, will it sweep the market – or will it show up too late? We'll only know at the end of 2010. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361838,00.asp -- Salam, Agus Hamonangan Japri: [email protected] -- "Indonesian Android Community [id-android]" Join: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android/subscribe?hl=en-GB Moderator: [email protected] ID Android Developer: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android-dev ID Android Surabaya: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android-sby ID Android on FB: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112207700729 To unsubscribe from this group, send email to id-android+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
