This should give IM469 something to rant about.....
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/troubles-brewing-in-android-land-228603
Trouble's brewing in Android land
The Android OS dominates the mobile landscape, outselling all rivals combined in most countries. The only serious challenger, Apple's iOS, earns much more money for Apple than Android earns for Google and all its hardware partners combined, but when it comes to market share, Android is king. So why does the Android ecosystem appear to be troubled?
HTC is in disarray, as its Android sales struggle in the face of the dominant Samsung, which is the only Android device maker to profit from Android. Google's Nexus devices have so-so sales, perhaps because they tend to be middle-of-the-road devices that don't inspire large populations the way Samsung and Apple do. Ditto for its Motorola Mobility unit. In fact, Google seems to have backed off on Android, focusing instead on Chrome OS and its array of data-mining services, which is where the company actually makes its money.
Then there's Samsung, which sells by far the most Android devices and makes real money from them. Yet it apparently has stolen secret Apple information in defiance of the courts, cheats on industry benchmarks, and abuses the patent system to undermine Apple, a key customer if also a key competitor. It also stoops to announcing all-but-nonexistent products, such as the curved-glass Samsung Round last week, a pathetic attempt to pretend to be first. (HTC plans a similar product, so Samsung cobbled together a prototype that may never actually reach the market.) Such actions reek of desperation, not success.
What's going on in Android land is a series of sometimes unrelated events that intertwine in ways that aren't good for Android's future.
HTC's desperation to matter again
For example, HTC's troubles are not so much about Android but about not delivering compelling products regularly. HTC was the first company to offer a compelling Android device, the Droid Eris, in 2009, then all but disappeared in terms of innovation for the next three years. Its products were run-of-the-mill, inspiring little passion. And users have complained for years that HTC smartphones tend to break after a year of operation. Although this year's HTC One is a stylish smartphone that's a personal favorite of mine, it has done little to make HTC a leader in the Android market.
As a result, the company is in chaos, according to news reports. It's losing money, has laid off employees, and may need to get an infusion of cash from another company, ending its independence.
Samsung's misguided and perhaps unethical strategy
Samsung holds the leadership role in Android, thanks to strong efforts in 2011 and 2012 to make innovative, compelling products, such as the Galaxy Note series of smartphones, the Note series of tablets, and the very nice Galaxy S III. This year's Galaxy S 4 may have jumped the shark, despite its improved physical design, because of its mishmash of partially completed software, but Samsung still has plenty of momentum from those earlier products in buyers' minds.
On the other hand, Samsung appears to be losing steam and sullying its reputation with poor products. The Galaxy S 4 seems to be the turning point; it's not bad, but it brought a lower level of quality. The Galaxy Gear smart watch by all accounts is just a mediocre product, not even as good as two-year-old smart watch prototypes such as the Wimm One (now owned by Google, so stay tuned!). My best guess: Samsung is reacting to rumors of what Apple might be doing and releasing products -- unfinished or not -- to be first, damn the consequences of selling crap. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is intentionally leaking such rumors to provoke Samsung to keep being stupid.
But more is going on at Samsung than misguided product development. I was appalled to learn that Samsung has apparently stolen secret Apple-Nokia patent licensing details given to its outside lawyers in one of the many court cases involving Samsung and Apple. Worse, according to a deposition filed by Nokia to the court involved, Samsung executive Seungho Ahn acknowledged the receipt and claimed "all information leaks." If true, that is criminal behavior -- literally -- not merely unethical.
There are other reasons to distrust Samsung's ethical compass. As tech site AnandTech demonstrated, Samsung designs its hardware to perform better when industry-standard benchmarks are running, creating a falsely high score that users don't actually experience in real-world usage. (For the record, Samsung denies the allegations, but AnandTech is highly credible and has no reason to lie.) There's a long history of such cheating in the PC industry, and AnandTech demonstrated that HTC, LG, and other Android makers use similar tricks in their devices. As our mothers told us, just because others are dishonest doesn't mean you should be too.
Certainly, Samsung can afford to take the high road. But it chooses not to. By contrast, both Apple and Motorola Mobility don't cheat, according to AnandTech. They're also not so coincidentally the only two mobile device makers to provide honest sales numbers, of devices actually purchased by users, not stuffed into sales channels.
Then there's Samsung's abuse of the patent system, specifically the notion of FRAND patents, which are patents incorporated into industry standards on the condition they're licensed under fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms to all companies that want a license. But Samsung tried to charge Apple more money to use certain FRAND patents than it charged other companies, in an apparent attempt to put Apple's iPhones at a disadvantage to Samsung's Android devices. Apple balked, launching what has become a series of lawsuits to end the practice, even getting Microsoft's help, since Samsung's FRAND abuse threatens the entire notion of using patents in technical standards. This battle has been raging in the courts for years, and most courts are finding that Samsung has indeed abused the FRAND principle. It's an unethical use of FRAND, and I'm glad the courts recognize it for what it is.
All of those incidents reminded me of another ethically challenged moment at Samsung: Two years ago, Samsung flew some clearly naive Asian bloggers to Germany, ostensibly to cover IFA, a big German tech trade show. Once the bloggers were in Germany, they were told they had to work the booth wearing Samsung attire if they wanted their tickets home -- the bloggers felt duped and ended up being sent home early, missing the show they went to cover. Samsung said the incident was based on a misunderstanding.
I thought little of that Germany incident at the time, but looking at Samsung's pattern of behavior since, I'm troubled by what appears to be an unethical culture. Where there's repeated smoke, there's fire. I'm inclined to avoid the fire, meaning avoid Samsung products.
None of this is good for Android given Samsung's preeminent position.
Google's focus on Chrome OS over Android
In 2007, Android was a new mobile platform from an industry association called the Open Handset Alliance of which Google was the leading member. Many of today's Android makers, such as Motorola and HTC, were members. The goal was to have an industry-standard platform that members could modify as they saw fit. That's exactly what happened.
But over time, Android became a de facto Google product -- Google does the development, releasing the final code only after it has released its own products using it. Android is free and openly licensed, but it doesn't follow the community development principles of open source. There is a version released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), but that iteration isn't quite the same, as Google's edition includes proprietary technology -- creating a tension that moved AOSP's longtime engineering leader, Jean-Baptiste Quéru, to quit in frustration earlier this year.
At the same time, Google seems less focused on Android. The last three versions (3.0 "Honeycomb," 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," and 4.x "Jelly Bean") have been increasingly incremental upgrades, and the fact that the forthcoming 4.4 "KitKat" is also a 4.x suggests it will be more of the same. Of course, you could easily argue that iOS 5, iOS 6, and iOS 7 were likewise incremental updates to iOS, though they were bigger increments than recent Android versions have been.
Since Google co-founder Larry Page became CEO in 2011, Google has sharpened its focus on its core business: strip-mining users' personal data to sell ads and insights to vendors. That's why you now see ads in Gmail on the Web (Yahoo does in its Webmail service as well), for example. Services like Google Now and Google Search track all sorts of details about users' digital and physical activities to offer personalized assistance and feed the desire for targeting information by vendors.
Google has made these services much more available for competing platforms such as iOS than in the past, which makes sense if the goal is to mine users' data. It's also made a huge push on Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system launched to fanfare in late 2010 that suffered poor adoption because it could do very little. But this year, Chrome OS has started to get some traction as an entry-level laptop, and the number of PC makers adopting it has grown. In addition, Google has worked on its Chrome browser, which is available for all leading PC and mobile operating systems, to essentially bring Chrome OS into those alien OSes.
Although Google continues to develop Android hardware of its own -- through partnerships under the Nexus brand and through its Motorola Mobility subsidiary -- they've not been the aspirational flagships that Google had originally promised. Instead, devices such as the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Moto X have been middling products that seem more intended to encourage use of the pure Google Android UI, which of course emphasizes its data-mining services, than to push the Android platform itself forward. Remember, Samsung is the one that's been trying to innovate on Android, not Google.
Google's emphasis on Chrome and Google's services means there's less need for Android, which Google used initially as a vehicle to get its technology into lots of hands. Mission accomplished. Its technology is in pretty much every other platform now as well. Google has long believed in the notion of the Web as computer, and I believe Android was an interim step until Chrome OS was perfected. Chrome OS is not yet perfected, but it seems to be Google's key vehicle going forward.
That's why I believe Android's pace has slowed and AOSP is no longer that important to Google. None of this is an immediate threat to the Android platform, but at some point, Google is likely to stop investing in Android's development and leave a lot of companies in the lurch. It's possible that Samsung would take over Android, but it's focused on Tizen as an adjunct OS or, if needed, as a replacement for Android. It's hard to imagine others picking up Android successfully; the history of open source mobile OSes is one big string of failures: Moblin, Symbian, Maemo, MeeGo, WebOS, and likely Mozilla's Firefox OS. (Canonical's Ubuntu Touch may find a niche.)
Another scenario would have Android devolve into the Internet of things, as Chrome takes over the smartphone, tablet, and other personal computing realms. Android is already used by developers for embedded systems, Google uses it in its own Google Glass eyewear, and there are reports that the failed Google TV will be rebranded Android TV as part of a repositioning of Android into embedded systems. That might make sense for Google services like Glass and TV where Google can mine user behavior and data, but for other embedded uses, there's no clear economic value to Google.
No immediate danger for Android
HTC could disappear tomorrow, and the Android world would be unharmed. Samsung could lose market share by turning off buyers and Android would continue, with device makers such as LG filling in the gaps. Google and Motorola could continue to make middling Android products without harming Android as a whole. Executing on its Chrome strategy will take Google at least several more years, so Android remains necessary to its ambitions for what is a long time in the tech industry.
But the confluence of all these trends threatens Android over the longer term. As Android becomes less important to Google and if only Samsung is able to make money from Android, the market will shrink to Samsung, whose ability to compete on technology against Apple over the long term is an open question. Apple is all about making money, not grabbing unprofitable market share, so I don't see iOS pushing aside Android outside of a few markets like the United States and Japan, where market differences come into play. In the States, for example, carrier subsidies make iPhones just a little pricier than Android devices, so more people can afford Apple's superior platform.
In the rest of the world, price matters quite a bit, which is why in places like China and India very cheap Android devices sell very well -- never mind that they tend to run old versions of Android and would be considered barely functional in developed countries. Apple will target the rich buyers, leaving Samsung, LG, and so forth to try to find a niche between the rich and poor -- in countries with small middle classes.
Moreover, these supercheap Android devices don't do much for Google, as they can't run its data-mining services that well, outside of Gmail. Plus, China blocks a lot of Google's services, partly to control citizens' data access and partly, I believe, to keep its citizens' data for its homegrown companies' use. This reality means that huge Android sales in such countries isn't that economically important to today's Android leaders, and the future potential is one that requires calculated investments.
Nonetheless, Android fans in developed countries will enjoy Android for the foreseeable future. Just don't be surprised one day to discover that Android is less than it was.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/troubles-brewing-in-android-land-228603
Trouble's brewing in Android land
The Android OS dominates the mobile landscape, outselling all rivals combined in most countries. The only serious challenger, Apple's iOS, earns much more money for Apple than Android earns for Google and all its hardware partners combined, but when it comes to market share, Android is king. So why does the Android ecosystem appear to be troubled?
HTC is in disarray, as its Android sales struggle in the face of the dominant Samsung, which is the only Android device maker to profit from Android. Google's Nexus devices have so-so sales, perhaps because they tend to be middle-of-the-road devices that don't inspire large populations the way Samsung and Apple do. Ditto for its Motorola Mobility unit. In fact, Google seems to have backed off on Android, focusing instead on Chrome OS and its array of data-mining services, which is where the company actually makes its money.
Then there's Samsung, which sells by far the most Android devices and makes real money from them. Yet it apparently has stolen secret Apple information in defiance of the courts, cheats on industry benchmarks, and abuses the patent system to undermine Apple, a key customer if also a key competitor. It also stoops to announcing all-but-nonexistent products, such as the curved-glass Samsung Round last week, a pathetic attempt to pretend to be first. (HTC plans a similar product, so Samsung cobbled together a prototype that may never actually reach the market.) Such actions reek of desperation, not success.
What's going on in Android land is a series of sometimes unrelated events that intertwine in ways that aren't good for Android's future.
HTC's desperation to matter again
For example, HTC's troubles are not so much about Android but about not delivering compelling products regularly. HTC was the first company to offer a compelling Android device, the Droid Eris, in 2009, then all but disappeared in terms of innovation for the next three years. Its products were run-of-the-mill, inspiring little passion. And users have complained for years that HTC smartphones tend to break after a year of operation. Although this year's HTC One is a stylish smartphone that's a personal favorite of mine, it has done little to make HTC a leader in the Android market.
As a result, the company is in chaos, according to news reports. It's losing money, has laid off employees, and may need to get an infusion of cash from another company, ending its independence.
Samsung's misguided and perhaps unethical strategy
Samsung holds the leadership role in Android, thanks to strong efforts in 2011 and 2012 to make innovative, compelling products, such as the Galaxy Note series of smartphones, the Note series of tablets, and the very nice Galaxy S III. This year's Galaxy S 4 may have jumped the shark, despite its improved physical design, because of its mishmash of partially completed software, but Samsung still has plenty of momentum from those earlier products in buyers' minds.
On the other hand, Samsung appears to be losing steam and sullying its reputation with poor products. The Galaxy S 4 seems to be the turning point; it's not bad, but it brought a lower level of quality. The Galaxy Gear smart watch by all accounts is just a mediocre product, not even as good as two-year-old smart watch prototypes such as the Wimm One (now owned by Google, so stay tuned!). My best guess: Samsung is reacting to rumors of what Apple might be doing and releasing products -- unfinished or not -- to be first, damn the consequences of selling crap. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is intentionally leaking such rumors to provoke Samsung to keep being stupid.
But more is going on at Samsung than misguided product development. I was appalled to learn that Samsung has apparently stolen secret Apple-Nokia patent licensing details given to its outside lawyers in one of the many court cases involving Samsung and Apple. Worse, according to a deposition filed by Nokia to the court involved, Samsung executive Seungho Ahn acknowledged the receipt and claimed "all information leaks." If true, that is criminal behavior -- literally -- not merely unethical.
There are other reasons to distrust Samsung's ethical compass. As tech site AnandTech demonstrated, Samsung designs its hardware to perform better when industry-standard benchmarks are running, creating a falsely high score that users don't actually experience in real-world usage. (For the record, Samsung denies the allegations, but AnandTech is highly credible and has no reason to lie.) There's a long history of such cheating in the PC industry, and AnandTech demonstrated that HTC, LG, and other Android makers use similar tricks in their devices. As our mothers told us, just because others are dishonest doesn't mean you should be too.
Certainly, Samsung can afford to take the high road. But it chooses not to. By contrast, both Apple and Motorola Mobility don't cheat, according to AnandTech. They're also not so coincidentally the only two mobile device makers to provide honest sales numbers, of devices actually purchased by users, not stuffed into sales channels.
Then there's Samsung's abuse of the patent system, specifically the notion of FRAND patents, which are patents incorporated into industry standards on the condition they're licensed under fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms to all companies that want a license. But Samsung tried to charge Apple more money to use certain FRAND patents than it charged other companies, in an apparent attempt to put Apple's iPhones at a disadvantage to Samsung's Android devices. Apple balked, launching what has become a series of lawsuits to end the practice, even getting Microsoft's help, since Samsung's FRAND abuse threatens the entire notion of using patents in technical standards. This battle has been raging in the courts for years, and most courts are finding that Samsung has indeed abused the FRAND principle. It's an unethical use of FRAND, and I'm glad the courts recognize it for what it is.
All of those incidents reminded me of another ethically challenged moment at Samsung: Two years ago, Samsung flew some clearly naive Asian bloggers to Germany, ostensibly to cover IFA, a big German tech trade show. Once the bloggers were in Germany, they were told they had to work the booth wearing Samsung attire if they wanted their tickets home -- the bloggers felt duped and ended up being sent home early, missing the show they went to cover. Samsung said the incident was based on a misunderstanding.
I thought little of that Germany incident at the time, but looking at Samsung's pattern of behavior since, I'm troubled by what appears to be an unethical culture. Where there's repeated smoke, there's fire. I'm inclined to avoid the fire, meaning avoid Samsung products.
None of this is good for Android given Samsung's preeminent position.
Google's focus on Chrome OS over Android
In 2007, Android was a new mobile platform from an industry association called the Open Handset Alliance of which Google was the leading member. Many of today's Android makers, such as Motorola and HTC, were members. The goal was to have an industry-standard platform that members could modify as they saw fit. That's exactly what happened.
But over time, Android became a de facto Google product -- Google does the development, releasing the final code only after it has released its own products using it. Android is free and openly licensed, but it doesn't follow the community development principles of open source. There is a version released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), but that iteration isn't quite the same, as Google's edition includes proprietary technology -- creating a tension that moved AOSP's longtime engineering leader, Jean-Baptiste Quéru, to quit in frustration earlier this year.
At the same time, Google seems less focused on Android. The last three versions (3.0 "Honeycomb," 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," and 4.x "Jelly Bean") have been increasingly incremental upgrades, and the fact that the forthcoming 4.4 "KitKat" is also a 4.x suggests it will be more of the same. Of course, you could easily argue that iOS 5, iOS 6, and iOS 7 were likewise incremental updates to iOS, though they were bigger increments than recent Android versions have been.
Since Google co-founder Larry Page became CEO in 2011, Google has sharpened its focus on its core business: strip-mining users' personal data to sell ads and insights to vendors. That's why you now see ads in Gmail on the Web (Yahoo does in its Webmail service as well), for example. Services like Google Now and Google Search track all sorts of details about users' digital and physical activities to offer personalized assistance and feed the desire for targeting information by vendors.
Google has made these services much more available for competing platforms such as iOS than in the past, which makes sense if the goal is to mine users' data. It's also made a huge push on Chrome OS, a browser-based operating system launched to fanfare in late 2010 that suffered poor adoption because it could do very little. But this year, Chrome OS has started to get some traction as an entry-level laptop, and the number of PC makers adopting it has grown. In addition, Google has worked on its Chrome browser, which is available for all leading PC and mobile operating systems, to essentially bring Chrome OS into those alien OSes.
Although Google continues to develop Android hardware of its own -- through partnerships under the Nexus brand and through its Motorola Mobility subsidiary -- they've not been the aspirational flagships that Google had originally promised. Instead, devices such as the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Moto X have been middling products that seem more intended to encourage use of the pure Google Android UI, which of course emphasizes its data-mining services, than to push the Android platform itself forward. Remember, Samsung is the one that's been trying to innovate on Android, not Google.
Google's emphasis on Chrome and Google's services means there's less need for Android, which Google used initially as a vehicle to get its technology into lots of hands. Mission accomplished. Its technology is in pretty much every other platform now as well. Google has long believed in the notion of the Web as computer, and I believe Android was an interim step until Chrome OS was perfected. Chrome OS is not yet perfected, but it seems to be Google's key vehicle going forward.
That's why I believe Android's pace has slowed and AOSP is no longer that important to Google. None of this is an immediate threat to the Android platform, but at some point, Google is likely to stop investing in Android's development and leave a lot of companies in the lurch. It's possible that Samsung would take over Android, but it's focused on Tizen as an adjunct OS or, if needed, as a replacement for Android. It's hard to imagine others picking up Android successfully; the history of open source mobile OSes is one big string of failures: Moblin, Symbian, Maemo, MeeGo, WebOS, and likely Mozilla's Firefox OS. (Canonical's Ubuntu Touch may find a niche.)
Another scenario would have Android devolve into the Internet of things, as Chrome takes over the smartphone, tablet, and other personal computing realms. Android is already used by developers for embedded systems, Google uses it in its own Google Glass eyewear, and there are reports that the failed Google TV will be rebranded Android TV as part of a repositioning of Android into embedded systems. That might make sense for Google services like Glass and TV where Google can mine user behavior and data, but for other embedded uses, there's no clear economic value to Google.
No immediate danger for Android
HTC could disappear tomorrow, and the Android world would be unharmed. Samsung could lose market share by turning off buyers and Android would continue, with device makers such as LG filling in the gaps. Google and Motorola could continue to make middling Android products without harming Android as a whole. Executing on its Chrome strategy will take Google at least several more years, so Android remains necessary to its ambitions for what is a long time in the tech industry.
But the confluence of all these trends threatens Android over the longer term. As Android becomes less important to Google and if only Samsung is able to make money from Android, the market will shrink to Samsung, whose ability to compete on technology against Apple over the long term is an open question. Apple is all about making money, not grabbing unprofitable market share, so I don't see iOS pushing aside Android outside of a few markets like the United States and Japan, where market differences come into play. In the States, for example, carrier subsidies make iPhones just a little pricier than Android devices, so more people can afford Apple's superior platform.
In the rest of the world, price matters quite a bit, which is why in places like China and India very cheap Android devices sell very well -- never mind that they tend to run old versions of Android and would be considered barely functional in developed countries. Apple will target the rich buyers, leaving Samsung, LG, and so forth to try to find a niche between the rich and poor -- in countries with small middle classes.
Moreover, these supercheap Android devices don't do much for Google, as they can't run its data-mining services that well, outside of Gmail. Plus, China blocks a lot of Google's services, partly to control citizens' data access and partly, I believe, to keep its citizens' data for its homegrown companies' use. This reality means that huge Android sales in such countries isn't that economically important to today's Android leaders, and the future potential is one that requires calculated investments.
Nonetheless, Android fans in developed countries will enjoy Android for the foreseeable future. Just don't be surprised one day to discover that Android is less than it was.
