Schmidt: "Android Adoption Is About To Explode" | Hacker News Reader

Schmidt: "Android Adoption Is About To Explode"

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44 pointsedw51939 comments

I think it would be great to have more competition in the smartphone marketplace. My concern as a developer is that with so many devices coming out can I be reasonably assured that any app I write for android will work on all devices as with the iPhone? I certainly cannot afford to buy 12 different phones. Sure, adroid is supposed to be the common OS but is it going to really work that way in practice?

I asked them about this in some unconference. They were very smug about it, they said that hardware developers will want to implement the whole thing as completely and as compliantly with other Android phones as possible and the message was "we don't care". I think Android development will become close to the nightmare that mobile games developers used (or still do?) to face.

...can I be reasonably assured that any app I write for android will work on all devices as with the iPhone?

That's one of the main points of Android.

It's in Apple's DNA to really polish their software on a small number of hardware platforms. This might not be so much of an advantage when it comes to apps handling personal information. However, this advantage might be significant when it comes to games some of which have a tendency to push whatever hardware they are on.

> However, this advantage might be significant when it comes to games some of which have a tendency to push whatever hardware they are on.

This doesn't line up with the experience in desktop software where the the PC dominates gaming despite having a multitude of difference hardware environments.

The detail you forget with gaming is that the basic PC hardware is more or less guaranteed to be there: mouse, keyboard, 3d graphics accelerator, monitor capable of a certain minimal resolution. In particular, the ergonomics are also consistent.

The issue with phones is that ergonomics can make or break your app, and that is dictated entirely by fixed hardware. Do you have only a touch screen? A keyboard? keyboard + touch screen? What about physical screen size and resolution? Your application will technically run on every combination of that hardware, but the end-user experience may suffer.

Those ergonomic issues impact the end-user in a huge way. If you've ever watched someone with a Blackberry (with a trackball) use an iphone optimized website, it's usable but not as efficient as using a touch screen. There's often no way around these limitations for the end-user other than getting a new device.

Mobile devices will eventually mature and converge toward common hardware and input technologies, but until that happens cross-device work is going to be a real challenge.

...and you've never run into a case where your particular hardware isn't capable of running latest great game XYZ? The point is that people don't think of their phones the same way they think of their computers. If I want to play Crysis, I'll go out and buy a new graphics card. If I've got 15 min standing in line at the store and my phone can't play your game, I'll go buy a different game.

Shouldn't we be comparing the PC as game machine to video game consoles, then? I think console gaming is a MUCH larger industry.

This is in part because the manufacturers have adopted standards - be they patented, like x86 and directx, or open like opengl. Unfortunately, we don't see as much in terms of standards on phones.

Android addresses this, though, since everything runs on dalvik. A JIT would be nice if we're going to see more resource-intensive stuff.

The main difference is screen sizes and densities -- their latest blog post talks about it in depth: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/

You raise a good point, and in order for this to work they'll need to ensure a full suite of emulators are available for testing. Android already provides an emulator [1] that can be configured to match the target device, although I can't speak to its quality as I have not used it. Windows Mobile is in a similar position, and its SDK provides emulators for every phone you would want to test on.

Phones differ so much in form factor alone that you really need to be testing individually for any phone in your target market anyway. Its a huge time-sink to be sure, but you won't be flying blind.

[1] http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator...

Its not just about being able to test (although I have serious doubts that any suite of emulators will be able to give anything more than a rough guess as to how an app will perform on a wide variety of potential platforms) but also about what features will be available, what APIs will work, and how much code you will have to write to deal with some funky condition on Vendor A's phone that makes it differ in some subtle way from Vendor B and C's phones. Eventually they will probably figure it out, but for the next year or so this game is going to make browser feature detection look like a walk in the park...

From I seen so far unless you're playing with low level stuff the software is consistent across the devices.

For now Android is far from the J2ME scenario, let's hope it will stay that way.

The emulator is quite configurable, so you can set up a profile for each set of hardware. Of course there are things like tilt sensors and accelerometers that just don't translate well.

I think you can be as sure about that as you are sure that writing a desktop application for MS Windows will run on most machines running Windows regardless of the underlying hardware.

With the new Verizon Android phones coming to market shortly, a key factor will be how many features does Verizon remove from the phone. The new Android phones are extremely powerful and Android provides an excellent platform to leverage the hardware. However, it's doubtful that Verizon will offer the new phones with full support for things such as free Maps/Navigation, free games, chat, etc -- since they charge quite a bit for these services on other phones. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Verizon is getting better.

They crippled the HTC Touch Pro horribly (including cutting its RAM in half for no good reason), just like most of their phones.

But the HTC Touch Pro 2 came out completely unmolested.

Hopefully this represents a change in strategy...

I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior that a lot of the Windows Mobile licensees to take a look at coming out with an Android phone (since they cannot license Web OS or iPhone OS).

The handset makers are hedging their bets with Android because they know Microsoft is interested in producing their own first party phone. When this happens it's likely Windows Mobile will become Microsoft's only licensed handset OS and will be neglected and forgotten in quick succession. Microsoft's handset would probably run a new, non-licensable, OS. The rumors that Microsoft's phone project is in trouble are non-sense. They could slap a dial-pad on the Zune software and ship a product in 6 months or less. It's definitely going to happen.

> They could slap a dial-pad on the Zune software and ship a product in 6 months or less.

I'm guessing you have not worked there.

Nope. As an outsider it seems the Zune group is allowed some autonomy from the typical Microsoft mismanagement process. The Zune HD for example is arguably the most advanced hardware platform for any DAP on the market right now so its development process must have been fast tracked.

> I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior...

What, in particular, are you talking about?

Sorry, posting as I was going out the door. The Sidekick disaster is a problem, but the first party phone referred to by jsz0 is probably a bigger issue. Think "Plays for Sure" vs. Zune.

Perhaps he is referring to the sidekick/danger bump in the road wherin MS apparently lost all user data, but recovered it with heroic effort, gaining rather bad PR, and possibly strained vendor relationships.

> Perhaps he is referring to the sidekick/danger bump in the road...

I thought that might be the case.

> ...gaining... strained vendor relationships.

With who, aside from T-mobile / Danger?

If this incident is what the OP is talking about, I don't see how it's relevant for current or prospective Windows Mobile licensees.

Does "explode" mean that it will be fragmented to a zillion of unmanageable pieces? :(

Google's profits were up 27% (as reported today) while Nokia was reporting a loss. I doubt anyone on this site finds this surprising.

Google is doing what Google does, which is to say it brings its services to users and users use them. And all of it is subsidized by advertising.

Google is playing a different game, and until someone starts challenging them they're going to continue to be adopted as the platform of choice for every market they're in. The only exception: Facebook.

> The only exception: Facebook.

To provide a little context, Googles revenue in the UK alone was $200 million more than Facebook's highest revenue reports ($500 million).

http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q3_google_earnings.h...

On earnings calls, every quarter, the report on revenue growth is centered around various metrics with search advertising. Search advertising continues to be the most profitable form of advertising on the web. Facebook has impressive statistics, but I don't see them challenging Google in any one of Google's core businesses. When Facebook becomes a public company and matures more and has a solid way of generating revenue then they might be in a position to challenge Google.

If local search is going to be super valuable then I think and interesting challenger to Google's dominance would be one of the credit card companies. They already know all the merchants and take a very interesting part of Google's business like Craig's List did to the newspapers.

The only exception: Facebook.

let's wait for google wave to grow up.

They would be fools to say anything else. What platform owners trying to attract developers would ever say, 'Our prospects look grim'?

Not to say android won't continue to grow. Not to say they won't explode. Just to say, why would you put any stock in what Schmidt says? It's like asking Steve Jobs if his next product is going to be amazing, or a Goldman Sachs executive if he deserves his compensation.

As a G1 owner (which I do love), I would love to get my hands on an HTC Hero and hack it to work on T-Mobile....I've never wanted to switch carriers until I was disappointed with the MyTouch (forgot the HTC hardware it runs on). I think T-Mobile could of done so much better by bringing in the slightly higher priced HTC Hero and kept the G1 as their entry level model.

Translation: Our manufacturers are getting desperate, and are about to subsidize and/or give away a metric assload of phones to a lot of people who are too cheap to buy your apps.

I think your translator is broken -- there's just a bunch of new Android phones all coming out at once, whereas before last month there was only the G1 on T-Mobile. Hence the explosion.

Here's Gartner's prediction of Android going from 2% to 14% by 2012: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139026/Android_to_gr...

There may be as many as 40(!) phones coming out in 2010.

Here's Gartner's prediction of everything:

Growth! <insert picture of exponentially growing curve>

Did I imagine it, or was there a website posted here a while ago that tracked these kind of predictions against reality? I had a quick google for it but couldn't find it.

You're thinking of http://wrongtomorrow.com/

They said the exact same thing a year ago about the cornucopia of phones that would come out in 2009

Water runs downhill. The shiny proprietary awesome gadget that apple made last year had been duplicated this year, and that will be mass marketed in a dozen varieties next year. Apple is readying a new shiny proprietary awesome gadget. Water runs downhill.

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