A few weeks ago, just after the iPhone 3G launch, I was invited to join a mobile round table put together by the folks at TechCrunch. They’d brought together a relatively large group of people with the goal of engaging in a dialog about the future of mobile and the implications of new solutions like the iPhone AppStore and the upcoming launch of Android.
As is often the case, once the discussion got going, folks on the panel tended to take extreme positions — in part to illustrate points and in part to keep the dialog lively and entertaining. Periodically the conversation would turn to Android and when that happened Mike Arrington would typically chime in with enthusiastic comments about Android’s open stance and potential. Others on the panel were more guarded in their enthusiasm and advocated a kind of wait-and-see approach. In the heat of the discussion I said something pretty inflammatory (“I need Android like I need a hole in the head”). It was a stupid thing to say, and I immediately regretted it.
My thoughts on Android are rather uncomplicated and are not in any way well summarized by my comments that day. Here’s what I really think
- It’s being built by a great company with a great team.
- Their SDK is evolving nicely and it’s getting easier and easier to develop really compelling applications for Android. The SDK released on August 18 (a few weeks after the TechCrunch panel) in particular is a great step forward.
- We want Pandora to be available everywhere there are listeners. On the web, on your phone, in your car, in your home. Everywhere. If that means investing in dozens of mobile platforms, so be it. Once Android is released and starts to gain traction with users (and I’m sure it will), I’m certain we’ll develop and release a version of Pandora for Android. We’ve of course been prototyping already and it’s clear that we can build a great version of Pandora for Android.
- I think that there are real challenges to the notion of Android as completely open when placed at least in the context of the US cellular market. For example, the US consumer is addicted to carrier subsidies on phone hardware. Even Apple was forced to reverse its stance with the iPhone 3G and go to a carrier subsidized model. Carrier subsidies mean one thing: network lock in. So I think that means there are two options for Android: phones that are truly open, but that are largely not price competitive for the mass market, or subsidized models that sell at scale but lose some of their open appeal. I guess my main point is that at the end of the day, at least in the US, it’s the carriers that control access to the spectrum which means that they’re typically the final arbiter of how “open” the devices accessing the network will be.
- Our experience with BREW, J2ME, and Windows Mobile — all software platforms that are at least somewhat device agnostic — has been that device firmware level issues often make porting very, very time consuming. When viewed through that frame, and combined with the fact that there are already 7 major phone OS’s that are viable in the US, the introduction of yet another mobile OS isn’t entirely exciting news in and of itself. Having said that, I’m sure my enthusiasms will shift once I’ve been able to lay hands on a real live Android device. Certainly the latest demos and emulators are very compelling.
- I think Google and RIM both have a very formidable competitor in Apple with respect to the maturity of their mobile development tools. In some ways, Apple has been working on the iPhone tools and SDK for something like 15 years since the basic mechanisms and tools have their roots in the NeXTStep platform. Having said that, I’m really encouraged by what we’re seeing in the latest Android SDK drops and it should be fun to watch this competition play out. Certainly the industry would benefit from these players each trying to outdo each other with respect to development tools and technologies.
So that’s the my real point of view on all of this. As much as anything, this entire back-and-forth was a good reminder for me that it’s just not smart, not to mention nice, to say anything that seems to openly disparage the hard work that other smark folks are doing in the industry. So to the Google Android team: sorry guys.
