YA @ Sadko Mobile

Cnet has a good article based on CTIA sppeches of Open Handset Alliance members citing danger of market fragmentation (i.e. every operator coding their own Android version)

Can carriers do it? Quite possibly! It is difficult to see doing business without locking user in 2-year contracts with locked handsets, especially if you are a US/EU carrier (in some countries like my native Russia, mobile operators only sell service, and all GSM handsets are sold free and unlocked, believe it or not).

Well, one man’s man is another’s lemonade. This can be quite a business - tweaking Android for carriers. Thus said, it is still better to avoid it: this really ruins platform adoption. The more apps, the happier is the end user about the platform.

See Apple with AppleStore - SDK mix. I bid $10K on Apple Store having 200+ programs at launch. 200+ games? Easy!

Says Google employee:

“we are focused on shipping the first devices”

So we ARE going to get Android phones this year, and it is not only manufacturers that work on it. It is Google too - and possibly more Google than manufacturers.

New SDK v.m5-rc14. Yes, Google timed it to MWC week. Apparently it is a last minute release, the Congress is almost over. Developers say there are some stability issues, and no change to much waited telephony stack. I hold my judgement till we deploy it and test thoroughly.

And screenshots from Zach Hobbs.

 It seems that Mobile World Congress in Barcelona will be full of Android news (even new SDK is promised to be released there)

British chip designer ARM (ARM.L: Quote, Profile, Research) will demonstrate a prototype of Google Inc’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Android mobile phone platform in action next week at the world’s biggest wireless fair, a source close to the company said.

It was not immediately clear on Thursday what the working model that ARM plans to show at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona would look like or who would supply the parts.

Google plans to deploy phones and services using the Android platform commercially in the second half of this year.

 Research firm Strategy Analytics has estimated that Android will be in 2 percent of smartphones this year.

What really surprised me is new market data. 2% of smartphones! This is more than current iPhone installed base. I personally feel this is an exaggeration but I might be underestimating the momentum.

Uh-oh. My startup just hit its first major challenge. Google Android Challnege deadline was extended by 6 weeks to April 14 !

We’d like to let you know that we are extending the submission deadline for the first Android Developers Challenge to 14 April 2008. Based on the great feedback you’ve given us, we’ve made significant updates to the SDK that we’ll be releasing in several weeks. In order to give you extra time to take advantage of these forthcoming UI and API enhancements, we’ve decided to extend the submission deadline.

In other words, upgraded (with many needed features) SDK is weeks away at best. That means my business strategy must be modified and my product roadmap must be modified. Better and more complex products, different customer focus (maybe), different budget and benchmarks - start steering off to the new course.

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Ammosov.

PS. Other developers also face similar strategy challenges.

http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/e02649f553aace46?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge/browse_thread/thread/d52a5f17d3a71136?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge/browse_thread/thread/c5985763892219a5?hl=en

Android got some critical press last week - in Business Week:

Still, the success of Android hinges on Google’s ability to get the platform in better working order. One developer who really needs help is Peter Wojtowicz. He and several collaborators are using Android to build a cell-phone game called Wi-Fi Army, where competing teams would hunt each other using Google Maps and location data from the Wi-Fi hotspots nearest the rival camp’s cell phones. Upon finding an enemy, a player uses the phone’s camera as a rifle scope to shoot.

But Wi-Fi Army faces a more significant hurdle than enemy bullets: Android doesn’t yet support Wi-Fi wireless technology. And the lack of support for Bluetooth means that Wojtowicz and his co-developers can’t get going on a feature that would enable team members to strategize their moves using wireless headsets. Writing the game application “is not easy,” Wojtowicz says. “But we are looking at it in the long run. Google has a lot of money to burn.”

and in San Jose Mercury News:

But Google has yet to deliver. “What have they been doing for three years?” said Sean Byrnes, chief executive of Flurry, a San Francisco start-up that offers free e-mail software that makes regular mobile phones more like smart-phones. … For the first time, developers are griping about Google the way they used to complain about Bill Gates & Co. The search giant’s phone software is buggy, they say, and lacks key features.

In fact, Android lacks more than that. Even photos in contacts are not supported yet. For CallFreq, for example, we had to create our own database of associated photos - but Android’s original dialer does not display photos while showing call progress interface.

The press criticism in my opinion is exaggerated. Too much, too soon. But the risk of slow Android development is still real.

We can provide Google with extended time credit on Android development - we are in this business ourselves, and we realize how hard it is. But we still have to deliver critical functions to our customers, and if the OS development lags behind, no one will be happy. Android is a huge investment for Google, and while Google can afford wasting it, it does not mean it should.

So, Google should keep steady progress if it really committed to become a mobile space leader. There are no “years” or “months” in mobile space, rather “weeks”.

A blog reader asks if we plan any more software releases. Yes, stay tuned.

An interesting guest post on GigaOm (that I disagree with) -

http://gigaom.com/2008/01/12/5-who-wont-appreciate-google-android/

- and an even more insightful remark in the comments from Alan Wilensky:

 Boy, did you swing and miss at the fat part of the potential Android adoption curve: Dedicated data devices for verticals and business applications.

While there are a number of mobile data platforms for business, this might be the first open source environment that is widely adopted. I believe that all of the other mobile linux environments are a bit here, a bit there.

Boy, he is right all along. Yes, where extra security is an issue and need for flexibility coupled with always-on-networking outweighs coolness and form factor, it will be a killer.

Looking through the blogosphere review of A La Mobile presentation of a Qtek 9090 running Android, it seems to me that there is a correction that has to be made to the original US News and World Report story. A La Mobile is not a software company, it is a hardware company. What they really did is got Android to run properly on a standard machine and interact with all principal hardware elements - GSM radio, sound card, camera and so on. This basically proves that Hardware Abstract Level (HAL) of the platform is operating properly and software written for it can be expected to operate fine.

Based on the only available screenshot (courtesy of openandroids.com), it is difficult to say what kind of applications they got to run - we can only see a iPhone-like launcher. They could have used a number of open source applications or write their own prototypes (a primitive media player, for example, takes less than an hour to write and is available as a tutorial; browser and maps are provided by Google with the platform) . Porting Android to hardware has already been done before.

What is important, though, it that we now have proof that all basic functions of Android work with standard issue hardware (or at least are claimed to be working). To which degree, A La Mobile deserves recognition.

So, here we go, ladies and gentlemen. I am starting the Sadko Mobile blog with news that it is January 2, 6-01 pm Pacific standard time, and Android Challenge is LATE. Android homepage states clearly “Android Developer Challenge I: We will accept submissions from January 2 through March 3, 2008… A submission form will be available on this page starting on January 2, 2008.” - and the submission page is nowhere to be found. In places like Europe and Asia it is already December 3. So we now have the first major failure on behalf of Google to deliver.

Google Android challenge Usenet group was abuzz about the page from the very morning - see this discussion, for example.

What is most interesting about the Challenge is not the opportunity to submit ASAP itself - although many developers, including myself, already got submission-ready applications and stand ready to go - but rather, what the submission package will look like and what will be the terms of the contest.

I am looking forward primarily to legal stuff that can be either very favorable to the developer or get us sign away all our precious IP - depends on how the contest terms are phrased. A lot of us in the Android community bet heavy on the new platform and might be very willing - or very reluctant - to play the Challenge, depending on what’s in it for us (except for a check, which is relatively modest for Phase 1, compared to expected business benefits).

One more Challenge homepage refresh… no form. “Publish”.

PS. It turns out the problem is not legal but with the software.

Hello, Developers!

As you probably know, the Android Developer Challenge submission period for the first round is scheduled to run from today, 2 January, through 3 March.

Unfortunately final testing revealed some cross-browser bugs in the application we’ll be using to allow you submit your work. We’re fixing those now, and will have the site up and running as soon as we possibly can. At the same time that the submission application becomes available, we’ll also make the final Terms and Conditions of the competition available.

We apologize for the delay, and thank you for your patience!

- Dan

http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge/browse_thread/thread/5fbad987d2b67145