Its exciting to see the amount of work that is going into mobile phone world. Google wants to be at the helm of things in the future of mobile devices and Android is its bet to conquer the mobile world. Rich Miner, manager for mobile platforms at Google was speaking at the Emerging Communications Conference and said that Android will Outshine iPhone. Only time will tell if Google's belief in Android will be true, but let us analyse how the competitive environment of Android and iPhone will look like.
Apple's iPhone is a phenomenon. It sold about 4 million units in its first seven months of release and is grabbing market share in the US smartphone market unlike any other previous mobile phone. Even with a closed platform, where installing apps was an issue and developing apps for the iPhone was a reverse-engineering experiment, it still managed to make all those sales. Just goes to show what good design and "Apple sleekness" can do!! The latest release of the iPhone SDK brings in a new paradigm to the iPhone, where developers will be making new apps that can be downloaded from the "Apple App Store". Apple said last week that more than 100,000 downloads of the SDK were done and if this is any indication then we can surely expect some interesting apps for the iPhone.
On the other hand we have Google Android which was announced at 3GSM last year. Google Android is a software platform and there isn't any device in the market that currently implements it. The SDK has been downloaded over 750,000 times and Google is offering $10 million in prizes as part of its "Android Developers Challenge" for innovative applications. The response to the competition and design wins from Motorola, HTC, Samsung and others, may be one reason why Google may be confident about its position that Android may outshine iPhone.
But the question to ask here is whether just having good apps decide the winner?? iPhone has made its sale till date only on the pre-installed apps. This goes to show the mobile phone matters. The iPhone User-Interface has been innovative, but the same can't be said about Android at the moment. How it will be implemented by the handset manufacturers will also be another reason to decide the winner in this battle. Google Android being free, open-source will definitely help keep the price of the handset down compared to the expensive iPhone, but will price be enough to win this battle??
Developers may create great apps, but the users are going to decide the winner of this battle. Lets wait and watch the fun!!
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