Google Android to get a workout
At the Mobile World Congress in February this year the first reference handsets running Android were on show. The first Android phones were projected to be released in the second half of this year but may actually be out this summer according to some reports – in time to give both the iPhone generation II a run and to test the back-to-school waters as well. The workout will come from third party developers, because Google says Android is open source.
Google’s made no secret about its ambitions to go mobile. Many of its key services, like email, search and calendar already have mobile versions. Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms wants to see more mobile systems. He believes innovations have been stifled by a lack of openness in the mobile phone space. He wants to see that chanage and thinks Android is the bot to do that.
"What Android enables for third party developers is the kind of programming we see on the internet," he says. "What it enables is agility and rapid innovation and the same kind of innovation that happens on the internet."
The debate, it seems, is exactly how best to open up the phones – from the operating system, released under open source, to the drivers and the application framework. By opening up the system developers will have more freedom to innovate, and more scope also.
Not all internet applications, like Google Earth or YouTube for instance, can be accessed by mobile – yet. Rubin thinks having an open operating system could change that, but cautions there’s a distinction between open source and open API (Application Programming Interfaces). Symbian and Microsoft, also build mobile operating systems and both claim to be open also.
Rubin says, "There's a distinction we have to make - and it's an important one - between open source and open APIs.
"APIs are essentially documentation, they're the way that somebody like Symbian or Microsoft will allow third party developers to develop for their platform.
"Open source is a mechanism by which the source code of the operating system is actually for free and that way the carriers and OEMs are not really locked into a single vendor, nobody really owns this.
"It means they are free to take it into the direction that's important to them; they can fix bugs, add enhancements so in the end the consumer has a better experience."
Nearly three billion people use mobile phones worldwide. The number of devices, including cellphones, is rocketing. So the future of the web is definitely mobile. No one company dominates the mobile market yet, so the race as they say, is very much on.
So Android’s open source means mobile experiences will be driven by the ideas of developers and not by the rules and regulations of an operating system, leading to a greater variety of phones and phone capabilities – guaranteeing Android a workout for years to come.
