Who is Android's customer? | Hacker News Reader

Who is Android's customer?

calebelston.com

26 pointsdkasper29 comments

Google is Android's customer.

Before Android, the phone market was either screwed up locked down "smart" phones produced by the carriers or the iPhone which is tightly controlled by Apple. Aggravating the iPhone option, AT&T has a lock on the iPhone, freezing out the other carriers.

Without shaking things up, Google had little market for serving mobile ads. Nobody did Google-style searching -> web browsing on the screwed up "smartphones" and Google is at the mercy of Apple (to some extent) on the iPhone.

With Android, Google is shaking things up and getting their opportunities (in spades) to serve ads to mobile browsers.

The carriers saw iPhone as the major threat that it is, saw their smartphones losing popularity as people realized how poor their UI was, and still were paying lots of money for the smartphone software. AT&T has the iPhone locked up (for now), so Android is the only way for them to be competitive.

Google did the "white knight" on the phone ecosystem: they offered the carriers software competitive with the iPhone and offered the phone manufacturers free software that didn't suck for development and didn't suck for UI. While neither is probably real happy with the leverage Google has over them and the disruption that Google is doing in their industry, the alternatives with Symbian or Windows Mobile is worse and more expensive to boot.

Google already has a strange split concept of 'users' and 'customers' when it comes to online advertising. I imagine they can split the concept further when it comes to handset manufacturing.

That aside, this is _the_ issue of the Android platform. Apple knows that their 'customers' are the people who purchase the device and not their developers (as any developer who's gone through the approval process will tell you). The question remains...can Google make the same leap?

Maybe there is no customer, not yet. I suspect that right now, Android isn't much more than market research. It's talked about all the time here: release early, iterate often. Google's initial choice for a market was the geeks, and with the Android, they've given us much capability with minimal restrictions. The geeks are going to determine Android's customer, when we collectively figure out what the best uses are for what I consider to be the first true general purpose computer that fits in my pocket.

I'm not sure there's any one type of customer for Android. Google is throwing a lot out there right now. It's still fundamentally a platform and not a product. For what Android is lacking in fit & finish is nothing compared to the feature set. Integration with Google Voice is going to be huge in the future. It's just too compelling of a service not to be a huge success. Hardware choice is important because there's no one-size-fits-all. People have different requirements. For example we'll almost certainly see a hardened Android phone without a camera for professions where this is an absolute requirement. Apple is a non-player there. Small market? Sure but when you add up a bunch of small markets you get something big. For the mainstream consumer market I think the iPhone's App advantage, specifically games, is going to keep Apple in really good shape for a while. It's RIM/Microsoft/Palm/Nokia who have the most to lose here. I think from Apple's perspective, if they could choose their primary competitor going forward, they would happily pick Google over the others because in the end Google doesn't really care if you're using their services on an iPhone or an Android phone.

Uh, my brother, brother-in-law and about everyone I know that's contract has expired since the droid came out.

There are places where iPhones just aren't offered/don't work well. Here, the competition is more for the BlackBerry market.

There are places where iPhones just aren't offered/don't work well.

Yes, but do you know what? That advantage of the Android platform is entirely temporary, as the original article hints at near the end:

As Apple expands to other carriers in the US it will be even more clear the massively better product they have for consumers.

We're just waiting for that shoe to drop. It's not as if Steve Jobs does not know, probably down to the second, exactly how long Apple's exclusive contract with AT&T will last in the USA. Nor does it seem likely that Verizon and T-Mobile -- however eagerly they appear to have clutched Apple's competitors to their breasts in the short run -- will hesitate for a nanosecond to augment their current offerings with the iPhone if that will earn them additional money.

I think it might be a mistake to assume that the iPhone is even aiming for ipod-like market share. Soon the smartphone market will virtually disappear and replaced by the phone market.

Do we really think that Apple will own the lion's share of the phone market? I think a mac-like strategy is more likely: Apple take a big, juicy, high margin chunk of exactly the piece of the market they want.

All the other phones will need some sort of OS too.

All the other phones will need some sort of OS too.

Absolutely. And from what little I've seen of how the Android market has played out so far, this might as well be Google's official mission statement.

But this is what the original article is about. "The people who aren't well-served by Apple" is a large market, and is always likely to be a viable market. But it is a terribly fragmented market, and it has an ephemeral definition to boot.

Yes. IPhone will be more widespread when it becomes available to carriers. However, I doubt the OS will be available to manufacturers to use for their handsets.

That's the advantage of Android. Manufacturers can use it and have them negotiate with carriers.

With the IPhone, it cannot expand as fast as Android since Apple is the only one producing it and they need to work with every carrier. Whereas with Android, Google will not be doing any of these (or doesn't have to). The phone manufacturers will be doing it for them.

> Google really needs to focus on building out the user experience so that average users can pickup the phone and don't want to put it down.

I think it's pretty clear that this is what Google itself is focusing on. The built in apps are, by most accounts, pretty slick.

Additionally, while people might not be clamoring for "multitasking" by name, they do want features like "my X program keeps working while I check the web", etc., so that's a bit off. I guess what's lacking for that to be an Android strength, is the 3rd party app that you absolutely positively want running in the BG.

Maybe Google doesn't want to "win" right now. If it needs applications, it seems logical to create a device targetted at the people that can write them. In three or four years, equivalent hardware will cost peanuts...

Google was stupid to release the Nexus One. They created a fragmented developer environment, stabbed Android licensees in the back and terrified carriers all in fell swoop.

They're going to have to work very hard to get the industry to trust them again. It may already be too late.

I don't think so. None of this would have happened if the manufacturers and carriers didn't fuck up. Google's Nexus One might very well save the platform by serving as an example of how things should be done.

Here's hoping that they keep the device updated like Apple does with the iPhone (unlike HTC/T-Mobile with the G1 that's still stuck on Android 1.6). One of the reasons why I like buying Apple is because they continue to add value after the sale.

I wouldn't count on this from Google. The release of the Nexus shows they have a very muddled strategy as far as Android goes.

It looks like they thought they could pull off some of Microsofts' old tricks but Android is open source and they had no way of keeping the handset makers from messing with it. The Nexus is a retreat from this strategy.

None of this would have happened if the manufacturers and carriers didn't fuck up.

Is this to suggest Google wouldn't have released a phone if they were more impressed with the G1, Droid, et all? There's been "G Phone" rumors for at least 2 years.

It is an interesting thought, though. What is your basis?

How does it fragment the environment any more than the release of any new Android phone?

Imagine if Microsoft had released a "Microsoft PC"? Why would anyone buy anything else?

If you're a Android licensee now you're forced to differentiate whether you want to or not because you have to compete against the favored Nexus. The Android dev environment was destined to be a fractured mess to begin with. The Nexus just sped up the process.

I still don't see how that has anything to do with fragmenting the platform. If anything, a semi-official reference device would work to unify the platform around that implementation, no?

Why would HTC and Motorola follow the Nexus? What's in it for them? As far as they were concerned the whole point of Android was that there was no reference implementation. If the start looking to the Nexus as a reference implementation all they get is to become box makers for Google's software.

As an Android developer, if you want to cover the whole market, you're now going to have to deal with handset makers at war with the developer of the platform. I can't see how the Nexus provides anything but more motivation for Android licensees to make their products significantly different from what Google is offering.

> Why would HTC and Motorola follow the Nexus? What's in it for them?

Considering HTC makes the Nexus, I think it's pretty clear what's in it for them. :-)

The Nexus One does not appeal to all types of users. I know people who would much prefer the Droid.

This fragmenting thing, stabbing licensees etc. are just crazy talk.

Google will come out with another phone that is not built by HTC. The next one will probably be there Motorola.

Google is not stopping any manufacturers from releasing an Android phone. What Google is doing is raising the standard for its Android phones.

Isn't this how an ideal market should work? The most innovative company wins.

Motorola, LG, etc may be allies with Google but they need to step up their game. If you are releasing crappy phones, blame yourself not Google.

The Nexus One does not appeal to all types of users. I know people who would much prefer the Droid.

Why?

Google is not stopping any manufacturers from releasing an Android phone. What Google is doing is raising the standard for its Android phones.

It's not a question of stopping manufacturers, it's a question of distorting the market with a phone that has an insurmountable advantage. Google can no longer be an honest broker. I assure you if HTC and Motorola had known about the Nexus neither one of them would have been so aggressive in developing their own Android phones.

Motorola, LG, etc may be allies with Google but they need to step up their game.

They aren't allies anymore, as of Jan 5th they just became competitors.

The Nexus One does not appeal to all types of users. I know people who would much prefer the Droid.

> Why?

Because some people out there have just got to type with their thumbs on a physical keyboard. Others swear by Verizon.

HTC makes the Nexus. You can't even buy an HTC phone from HTC, http://www.htc.com/us/where-to-buy (but this may be a function of the US cell market, maybe you can buy from HTC directly in other countries), you have to buy it from a carrier, or in the case of the Nexus, from Google which ends up being carrier agnostic (once the carrier list is expanded).

If the nexus has an insurmountable advantage, it's HTC that can deliver on it even to other specific carriers. I'm not even so sure what this insurmountable advantage is. If these other manufacturers want to compete, they're going to need to start innovating. And they can put less effort and money into innovation on the software side, because they can license android, and spend all that they would have spent on software on making their hardware better.

They should have made the Nexus One, but as Android's iPod Touch: low markup, no cell modem, faster hardware.

It was pretty moronic of them to pull a Zune, especially when their partners making iPod touch competitors are fucking things up even more than their phone manufacturers.

Your mainstream user does not give two shits about "open-ness" and apps running in the background. Odds are they think the iPhone does already, especially with push notifications.

It is a nice alternative to the iPhone on carriers that don't have it the iPhone yet, but that's certainly not a position of strength. The iPhone will be on other carriers and at that point the iPhone will almost always win out. Android is a nice second best to the iPhone. Price is irrelevant too. There's already a $99 iPhone, so what are they going to do, lower the Android phones to $50? Even at that point, the iPhone is still worth $50 more. I think palm tried this with the Pixi, the Pre, or the Pez. Yeah, that worked out well. Go lower than $50 and you're out of smartphone territory.

Oh an unlocked phone? Your mainstream users do not give a shit, especially when it costs $538.

Everyone is trying to be Apple, no one is trying to BEAT them.

"Oh an unlocked phone? Your mainstream users do not give a shit, especially when it costs $538."

A very narrow view of the phone market. The phone market is not only the US. Unlocked phones are widespread in other parts of the world.

Even second place in the cell phone market is not a bad chunk of change. Everyone keeps talking about whether or not Android will beat iPhone. They seem to be ignoring the fact that there are still a lot of $$$ being spent on other smartphones (WinMo, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm, etc). Even if Android never beats iPhone, there's still a lot of users and a lot of money for them to hoover up.

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