Posts Tagged ‘Android’

Google’s big bet: Android beyond the cellphone

by Steve O'Hear

October 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Audio, Mobile, Net TV | CommentsView Comments

Much of the iPod’s success, says Steve Jobs, is down to the fact that Japanese consumer electronics companies don’t produce elegant software. He makes the same accusation of handset makers too. They can do hardware but they “just can’t seem to get the software right.” Enter Android, Google’s open source OS, which although explicitly designed to deliver better software for Internet-connected cellphones, will also soon find its way onto all manner of devices.

“Over the last few weeks I have learned that numerous companies are tinkering with Android in an attempt to get the OS to power a whole slew of gadgets — everything from set-top boxes to navigation systems to mobile Internet devices to smart picture frames”, reports Om Malik.

Motorola have already confirmed that it has at least one Android-powered handset in the pipeline, but the company is also a major player in the television set-top box space and is said to be exploring the potential of Android in the living room too. Malik also says he’s heard from “fairly reliable sources” that two large PC makers are experimenting with Android-based Internet devices. None of which I find surprising. From both a technical and business point of view, Google has laid the foundations for Android to move quickly beyond its cellphone roots and, the company hopes, eventually become a ubiquitous platform.

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Will Android be Motorola’s savior? Company confirms its interest in Google’s mobile OS

by Daniel Langendorf

October 1st, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | CommentsView Comments

This comes as no shock, and it just might save Motorola’s cell phone hide.

According to BetaNews, Motorola has confirmed it is working on a new phone that utilizes Google’s mobile operating system Android. It’s no surprise because Motorola was a founding member of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance.

“We’re excited about the innovation possibilities on Android, and (we) look forward to delivering great products in partnership with Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA),” Motorola said in a statement.

Since the announcement of Android at the end of last year, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and LG Electronics all have been rumored to be interested in manufacturing an Android handset. HTC is the first to deliver an Android phone, the G1, which will be available later this month and sold by T-Mobile in the U.S.

Other handset manufacturers have laid low, however, keeping their Android plans quiet. For its part, Motorola has been working diligently to solve its ailing cell phone business. Earlier this year it decided to spin off its troubled cell phone division from the rest of the company.

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Android Developer Challenge winners appear polished, ready for sale

by Daniel Langendorf

August 28th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | CommentsComments Off

It looks like Google may have made the right move with the Android Developer Challenge after all.

The winners of the first developer challenge, announced this evening, appear polished, well thought out, and ready for the first Android-powered phones to hit the streets in the not-too-distant future.

The Android Developer Challenge provides yet another contrast to Apple and its iPhone. Apple announced a software developers kit (SDK) for the iPhone this spring and a few months later the first iPhone/iPod touch applications went on sale at the App Store July 11.

While many of the iPhone applications performed flawlessly, many felt rushed and suffered from buggy behavior. Subsequent releases worked out the kinks.

Google certainly has had its share of problems with the Android SDK and cranky developers, but these Android apps seem tight, well developed, and ready for sale. Of course, final judgment cannot be levied until we actually have working Android phones in our hands and these applications running.

Of the 50 applicants that emerged from Round 1 of the ADC, 10 were awarded $275,000 each for their efforts, with another 10 receiving $100,000 each. A complete listing of winners and entrants is here.

The $275,000 winners include:

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Report: HTC’s Android-powered “Google phone” may be delayed after all

by Daniel Langendorf

August 7th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | CommentsComments Off

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Developing a phone — even if it is just an operating system — is not something you do overnight with a bunch of cajoled software developers.

Just a week after High Tech Computer (HTC) said it was on schedule to deliver Android-powered cell phones by the 4Q of 2008, another report surfaces Thursday that says HTC is “having structural problems to incorporate Google’s demand feature set” and “demanding a guaranteed minimum revenue surety from Google,” according to Barron’s Tech Trader Daily.

Barron’s picked up a research note from Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research saying his “contacts” contend that HTC’s Android handset — the so-called Google phone — will be delayed until the first quarter of 2009.

Additionally, Chowdhry’s “contacts” tell him that another problem Google is having is attracting software developers to the platform. They’re too busy writing code for Windows Mobile, Nokia (Symbian), Research in Motion (BlackBerry), and Apple’s iPhone.

That’s no surprise. These guys actually have phones, real working phones, to develop for and test.

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Mobile browser more important than operating system

by Steve O'Hear

August 6th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsComments Off

In light of the move towards cloud computing, the Web browser is fast becoming the most important application on any mobile platform, whether it be the Nokia-led Symbian OS, Apple’s iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, LiMo or any other. An argument I made recently in relation to Android and fears that native third-party applications running on different versions of the Google-developed OS could face compatibility problems.

See also: Android, it’s the browser stupid

Today GigaOm summarizes the thoughts of Bob Morris, head of mobile marketing for ARM Holdings, the company that designs “cores” for chips that power mobile devices. Morris goes one step further by arguing that the importance of the browser now supersedes the operating system itself. Browsers are the new application framework, he says, and as a result ARM is researching how to optimize their cores for specific Web browsers not just the various operating systems.

“Morris believes the increasing number of services accessed through a web site such as Facebook or Gmail are what chip vendors and device makers needs to pay attention to”, writes GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham. As a result, ARM recently inked a partnership with Mozilla and other vendors to build a Linux-based mobile computing device designed for Web browsing.

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Q&A: Nicolas Gramlich of anddev.org talks Android, Google’s developer relations, and more

by Steve O'Hear

July 24th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsView Comments

Talking down Google’s Android mobile operating system has become pretty easy of late: An incomplete and buggy SDK, favoritism towards select developers, a general lack of transparency, and valid concerns that the platform could become fragmented and that Google has ceded too much control to carriers.

Yet, for the most part, the initial excitement and optimism over the long term potential of Android remains. Not least for 21 year-old Nicolas Gramlich, a computer science student at the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim in Germany, and founder of anddev.org, an online community for Android developers. “Android’s main attraction is its simplicity”, says Gramlich, which enables the rapid development of “feature-rich applications”.

See also: Interview: zintin CEO talks iPhone, Android and mobile future

“One can create an application that uses Google Maps, get the current GPS-position or read out the accelerometer within 10 lines”. The integration with Google Maps is especially tight, he says, something that doesn’t currently exist on other mobile platforms. And Gramlich should know. His first Android effort is a free navigation app called AndNav!.

In a short Q&A with last100, Gramlich discussed the slow progress Google appears to be making in updating the Android SDK, the company’s relationship with the developer community, competition from iPhone, and more. Read the transcript, edited for space and clarity, after the jump.

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Nokia buys Symbian, opens fire on Android, Windows Mobile and iPhone

by Steve O'Hear

June 24th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsView Comments

Nokia buys Symbian, opens fire on Android, Windows Mobile and iPhoneThe boldest moves are made from a position of strength, not when the chips are down and you’ve very little to lose. Nokia’s decision, announced today, to acquire the remaining 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn’t already own and make the mobile platform open source, is bold to say the least.

Symbian unified platform: UIQ, S60The ambition, says Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, is to create “the most attractive platform for mobile innovation and drive the development of new and compelling web-enabled applications.”

To achieve this, Nokia will join other industry players, initially AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, to form the non-profit Symbian Foundation, although any company can join.

Together the foundation will unify the Symbian OS with its various competing User Interface layers – primarily Nokia’s S60 and Motorola and Sony Ericsson’s UIQ – into a single open platform for “converged mobile devices”. The new foundation, in which Nokia has the biggest seat since it will swallow up all of Symbian’s current employees, will oversee the process of releasing the new OS under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license – a transition that will take two years – and become its long-term custodian.

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No surprise, Gphone reportedly delayed

by Steve O'Hear

June 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsView Comments

According to the Wall Street Journal, mobile phones powered by the Google-led Android platform – the so-called GPhone – are unlikely to see the light of day until the fourth quarter of this year at the earliest or, more likely, early next year. Perhaps not all that surprising considering that Google elected not to build its own hardware, and instead is working with over 30 partners to bring Android-based handsets to market.

The reasons given for the delay are plenty:

  • The operating system is still a ‘work in progress’, with the various partners continually lobbying for additional features. “This is where the pain happens,” says Android chief Andy Rubin.
  • Carriers need time to customize Android with their own branded services and User Interface, rather than sticking with Google’s own suite of applications.
  • At the same time, developers are complaining that it’s difficult to write for Android since Google has yet to lock down its own development.
  • China Mobile is said to be having trouble translating the Android software from Roman characters into Chinese.
  • Additionally, it’s claimed that, in a push to help T-Mobile deliver on its promise of getting an Android-powered phone out the door before the year is up, Google has been unable to provide the needed resources to competing networks.

All of the above paints a pretty bumpy road ahead for the GPhone, at least in the short term.

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Interview: zintin CEO talks iPhone, Android and mobile future

by Steve O'Hear

June 6th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsView Comments

Interview: Zintin CEO talks iPhone, Android and mobile future“Smartphones have historically been oriented towards business users. The iPhone is more of an entertainment platform”, notes John Jersin, CEO of mobile startup zintin. “Its not that there won’t be serious business applications on the iPhone, but the apps will have exposure to a different audience, and developers are very aware of that fact”, he says.

The brainchild of three Stanford computer science graduates, Silicon Valley-based zintin, like hundreds of other new startups, is exploring the new Internet frontier: Mobile. Described as a mix of social networking, media sharing and location awareness, zintin will debut first on the iPhone later this summer, while at the same time the company has already began porting the application to Android, Google’s open-source mobile operating system.

In an email exchange with last100, Jersin talked about the opportunities for developers that both iPhone and Android represent, how the two platforms differ in their approach to openness, and what the mobile landscape may look like in 12-18 months time.

Excerpts from our Q&A edited for space and clarity, follow after the jump…

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Android, it’s the browser stupid

by Steve O'Hear

June 1st, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsView Comments

Android at a crossroadsIt’s hard not to be impressed by the latest demonstration of Android, Google’s soon-to-be-released open-source mobile OS. While my colleague Dan Langendorf is reserving judgment until a killer application and real handsets emerge, I’m already sold on Android’s User Interface, which looks to have borrowed just enough from Apple’s iPhone, as well as some of the design Zen of the original Palm OS, to more than satisfy my needs.

Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. On the one hand Google wants us to believe that Android isn’t a direct response to Apple’s own offering (which, chronologically, may well be true), but at the same time is keen to remind developers that in contrast to the iPhone they won’t need to get Android applications certified by anyone, nor will there be any hidden APIs (application programming interfaces) accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators — another dig at Apple.

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Google demos Android again; it’s full of promise, but we’re still waiting for the real deal

by Daniel Langendorf

May 29th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | CommentsView Comments

android ioGoogle demonstrated its Android operating system again, this time at the I/O conference in San Francisco. And, well, it’s still full of promise, just in case you were wondering.

As you would expect from the company that brings you search and Google Maps, Android handles information delivery, location and navigation extremely well — or so we think. There’s still no actual Android phones to play with.

The coolest feature shown was a “compass” tool that automatically roams with the phone while a user looks at photos of a city map.

But the rest of what was shown was, well, underwhelming or just plain expected.

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Location-based services like Whrrl on iPhone to usher in Internet of people, places, and things

by Daniel Langendorf

May 27th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | CommentsView Comments

kocb logoGet ready for the Internet of people, places, and things. Thanks to the iPhone and Android, it’s just around the corner — no pun intended.

BusinessWeek reports that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm behind the iPhone funding program iFund, have chosen two companies as its top picks to date — Whrrl from Pelago and Home Security 2.0 from iControl Networks.

Kleiner Perkins, a big fan of location-based services, has extended an offer to one other startup and are “seriously considering” 10 others, whatever that means.

whrrlWhrrl combines the mapping capabilities of the iPhone with the ability to find information on your friends, where you’ve been, where anybody has been — in essence, connecting people, places, and things. Whrrl currently works on the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve.

iControl’s application isn’t as sexy as Whrrl — it is home automation after all — but it gives users the ability to communicate to the places and things important in their lives, namely their homes or businesses and what’s in them like door locks, air conditioners, lights, and so on.

Add these programs to the applications being developed as part of the Android Developers Challenge (Bread Crumbz, LifeAware, Beetaun) and you can see a locations, locations, locations trend forming. In Wired lingo, it would be:

  • plain old voice communications: “expired”
  • mobile Internet surfing: “tired”
  • using mobile devices to interact with people, places, and things: “wired”

“There’s going to be a ‘what’s going on around me right now’ button,” Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy told BusinessWeek. “You’re always one button away from that immediate context.”

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