Today brings the news that Sony Ericsson and ASUS are joining the "Open Handset Alliance". The (now 11) members of the OHA are promoting the use of Goole's Android operating system for cellphones.
Android is Internet giant Google's offering as an open platform for software development for handsets.
Motorola and others have already bet their cellular future on Android.
I'm looking forward to these offerings. I like Apple's iPhone, but the proprietary nature of it has so far put me off. It's an expensive device from a controlling company and is typically tied to a single cell network provider: AT&T in the US and Vodafone here in New Zealand. So people who want 'cool stuff' have to lock themselves into a device and network that effectively dictates to them what they can do and for how much.
Google's Android promises to bust those doors wide open and offer a rich and constantly growing function set on an open platform that will work on any network compatible with the phone hardware. I'm tired of buying the cheap phones because I need one for each cell provider. I'd like to have one really good (and very cool) phone and use it with any provider competing to offer me services.
This is much more like what I want and would happily pay for......and hopefully soon will.
I like your descriptor of Android being VHS.
ReplyDeleteAre you then saying the iPhone and/or Symbian are BETA?
,Michael Martin
Google And Blog
Michael Martin: Time will tell. Can an open platform, supported by a variety of competing vendors, and - hopefully - an army of application developers, win major market share against other major platforms? Maybe. If it does, then - yeah - VHS might be a good analogy for a widely supported plaform that ends up dominating other platforms that - for whatever reason - were not as 'open' and as easy to adopt, however good they might be.
ReplyDelete