Daniel Langendorf of Last100 has a few good thoughts on why Google should have produced their own phone, rather than producing Android for others to use. Good thoughts, but not too many that I agree with. Here’s why I disagree, picking off his arguments in order…

It makes sense from a design and development perspective

I think the point here is that open (source) development does not lead to good product design, so Google shouldn’t worry about Android being open source and just go ahead and produce their own proprietary systems and well-designed hardware.

Actually, I think this is a fair point. But the phone hardware manufacturers are doing just that. Google could do it, too. The open source nature of the software is neither here nor there; the point is that the hardware is proprietary. HTC, Samsung, etc are already producing this. Google could too, if it wanted to, but if it did it wouldn’t change anything.

There are too many self-interests

The argument is that there bringing companies together in a so-called alliance is pointlessly hopeful, because the manufacturers are rivals at heart. But I think this is exactly the point. By providing a common software stack the playing field is levelled, and the phone makers will compete on that level playing field to produce the best hardware.

What about the carriers?

I think the argument here is that the Open Handset Alliance perpetuates the status quo, in which the carriers exert too much influence, so they will just try to create so many incompatible flavours and distributions of Android that the market will become fragmented. This is indeed a real risk of an open source stack, and it would be counteracted by Google insisting on a single software stack. Maybe it’s feasible that they could exert such influence over the carriers, but I don’t think it’s obvious. It’s not obvious to me that, standing alone, they’d have that much leverage with them.

And don’t forget Google

Yes, Google isn’t a charity; they do want to make money out of this. But that’s their choice. If they see their current role in the OHA as paving the way for that, then fine. There is a more obvious route to money if they kept all the IP and direct sales to themselves, but I suspect they’ve already evaluated that option and judged their current position to be preferable. That’s their choice, made with their market data and their strategy. I think we should respect that, and not consider ourselves to be better informed than their own staff.

Daniel then goes on to consider the counterarguments. Here they are…

OK, but Google has never developed a phone much less a physical product

To which he says “Hey, companies evolve”. True. Maybe they could do it, but it’s an absolutely huge deal to get phone hardware right first time. Remember Apple’s first iPhone? No, not the one with the multitouch interface, the one they produced with Motorola in 2005. If Apple — a hardware company — felt the need to only dip their toe gingerly into the handset market, then Google would surely be foolhardy to dive straight in and expect first-time success.

Suppose Google did this: It would cost a fortune

Yes, this really is a non-issue. Google surely doesn’t have any money worries.

Daniel then goes on to propose how Google might actually have done it. But by now — sorry — it’s wishful thinking, though I’d love him to be right — goodness knows I’d like to get my hands on an Android phone. Hell, just this week I lost the stylus from my 8-year-old Palm Vx, and if that doesn’t create a pressing need to buy a whole new handset gadget thingy, I don’t know what is. But no amount of wishful thinking is going to change reality, and part of that reality is that a Google Android phone isn’t realistic this year or next. Maybe in 3-4 years they’ll have evolved enough to get there, but not before Samsung and co get their products out there first.

For the record, here are my predictions…

1. The first Android phones will come out this year, and there will only be two of them. This is because “phones this year” has been promised, the Alliance will lose some face if it fails to meet this, and two phones is the minimum needed to make it true (since “phones” is plural).
2. However, the first few such handsets will be very disappointing, partly because the first versions of anything so radical are disappointing, and partly because the hardware requirements will be slightly ahead of what’s comfortably possible. (Not “possible”, just “comfortably possible”.) So you’ll get things like poor battery life, sluggish touch screen response, etc. The hardware will all technically work, but it won’t be really satisfying.
3. I reckon late Q1/early Q2 2009 will see the first decent Android phones — that’s just enough time for the second-wave manufacturers to have learned from those in the first wave.
4. There will be some damaging confusion about what apps can run on what hardware. That’s because different hardware manufacturers will have different hardware supporting different services (some will have compasses, some not, some will be phones, others will be MIDs, etc).

And then following on from 4 one of two things will happen. Either the whole thing will splinter, with some core applications running on most or all hardware, and other applications only running on specific hardware. Or everyone will realise that the only way to exploit the market will be to produce hardware which reliably runs a single standard Android stack, and to compete on the hardware implementation. Personally, I hope the latter happens, but the pessimist in me suspects the former will.

Ho hum. Those are my predictions for the future. What ever you do, don’t hold me to them.

Tags: android, gphone, google