ANDROID FEATURE
HTC Dream (marketed by T-Mobile as the G1) in October 2008. At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the audience during his keynote presentation that there are now 26 Android devices with 59 operators in 48 coun- tries. There are 65 partner companies in the Open Handset Alliance, the organisation that stewards the Android community. Schmidt added that 60,000 Android devices are being shipped each day, a figure that had doubled on the previous quarter. Figures from Informa Telecoms & Media
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forecast that, this year, the top five smartphone operating systems, Symbian, Apple, Research in Motion’s Blackberry, Microsoft and Android will ship on more than 250 million devices. Of this number, Android will account for 8.3 per cent, with 20.78 million devices. this puts it in fifth and final position, with the nearest competitor, Apple, on 28.56 million. But by the end of 2011, Informa expects
Android to have overtaken both Apple and Blackberry, with device shipments of 35.84 million and a 10.6 per cent share of the market accounted for by the top five operating sys- tems. While the firm does not expect Android to improve upon its third place in this segment by 2014, which is as far as Informa forecasts the market, it does anticipate that Android will continue to gain ground, shifting 95.64 million units and commanding a 17.6 per cent share of the top five smartphone operating systems’ overall market. It’s entirely natural that Android should
overtake Apple and Blackberry, given that these two operating systems are single-vendor environments while Android is attracting increasing numbers of players. Among the leading handset vendors, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola are all committed participants in the Android space, with Mo- torola in particular owing a turnaround in its fortunes to a successful implementation of the operating system in the high end of its portfolio. But Android’s growing popularity with low-
er tier vendors looking to establish themselves in the smartphone market will be a significant driver of Android uptake as well. Acer and Huawei announced four Android handsets each at Mobile World Congress, while Alcatel and Garmin-Asus both unveiled their debut handsets based on the platform. As the cost
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ndroid has most definitely arrived. The Google-backed operating system first appeared commercially on the
of producing smartphones dwindles, the top tier vendors are losing their exclusivity—and Android is proving central to bringing these costs down. “The roadmap of Android OS and its up-
grade cycles are highly governed by Google, the main contributor to Android code,” says Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms And Media. “Although this could be seen as a disadvantage because of the level of control Google could have on the Android ecosystem, it actually represents one of the main strengths of Android because the cost of innovation is borne largely by Google.” Glory Cheung, a spokesperson from Hua-
wei’s devices unit concurs, suggesting that the operating system will actually come to “dominate” the handset market as a whole. “We’re confident that Android will dominate the mobile phone market, since handset manufacturers can greatly reduce R&D costs through the free Android platform,” she says. “Operators are showing signs of favouring this platform, largely due to the currently prevailing financial pressures. Huawei’s op- erator customers perceive the main attraction of Android (compared to other platforms) to be that it is license free and open source,” she says. Not all organisations involved in the An-
droid space feel quite so bullish about its prospects, though. “We are investing so heavily in Android that I would love to agree with such a blanket statement [as Cheung’s assertion that Android will dominate] but I don’t think I can,” says Sy Choudhury, product manager at Qualcomm’s silicon unit, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset is gaining real traction in the Android space, and the firm’s technology was in the first Android handset to launch. “Android will be one of the top smartphone
operating systems but there are enough economic reasons why other application platforms and operating systems will continue to thrive. We definitely see that the current number of smartphone operating systems will coalesce over the years, but we don’t expect that to happen in the next two years, or for the number to come down as low as one or two,” he says. For Choudhury, one of Android’s key
strengths is its versatility. While the success in this space of firms like Apple and Research in Motion is clearly down to the level of con- trol and single mindedness that is possible in a single vendor environment—and while »
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