I'm not sure if this will be controversial, but I think the iPhone will benefit from the launch of Google's Android in the same way Android benefits from the iPhone. What's happened is that Google has created a rising tide that will lift the entire cellphone industry. They have built a baseline standard for phone software that the industry will either have to adopt or compete against. Since it's free, and since cellphone manufacturers have thus far been willing to spend very little on cellphone software, my guess is that they will just use Android and re-skin it.
The net effect will be that the baseline for all cellphones will start off far better than what we have today; touch screens, network access, great graphics, extensibility, awesome web browsing, etc. etc. And developers of both web software and embedded phone software will benefit from that.
Take as an example a company like Starbucks. I could easily see a world where you could open up your cellphone, browse to the Starbucks app, get directions to the nearest Starbucks and even submit your favorite drink order so that it's fresh right when you get there. But up until now, while that's a cool idea, it wasn't practical for a company like Starbucks to do that type of development for every phone. Now they can write to the Android interface and potentially ship on a bunch of different phones from a wide variety of carriers in a couple of years.
It doesn't have to be companies as big as Starbucks. It could be little guys, like you and me, who no longer have to worry about chosing Motorola, Nokia, LG or mobile Flash or whatever. We can just write to Android.
Anyway, how does this benefit the iPhone. It will raise awareness among consumers that their phones really suck. And either the can get a phone running Android which is far better than what they have. Or they can get an iPhone which is really cool as well, but integrates with their desktop and their iTunes far better than the Android phone does.
That being said, I think Apple needs to add the ability to run the Android VM on the iPhone. It doesn't have to be seemless. But iPhone adopters shouldn't get penalized by restricting what apps they can run on the phone.
Posted by jherr at November 13, 2007 08:15 PMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
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