Could Google’s Android Be The Cellphone Savior?
Written by Evan SchumanNovember 7th, 2007
Much has been written this week that's critical of Google's Smartphone Consortium effort. What those critics don't see is the sorry state of today's cellphone market.
For years, American technology leaders have gotten used to seeing the U.S. no longer globally technologically dominant. But nowhere is that lack-of-dominance more pronounced than with cellphone technology. That's why I saw this week's Google Android news as something that was exciting in its potential to shake the industry up. Trust me: this is one sector that truly needs a lot of shaking up.
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One Comment | Read Could Google’s Android Be The Cellphone Savior?
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-Christine
November 8th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I’m interested in the closing message of your article…
“Am I suggesting that Android will work and will somehow deliver great things by the end of next year, as promised? Not necessarily. But I still hold out a lot of hope, given how much this industry needs it. I’m not so sure that necessity is the mother of invention—I’ve always felt that unrestrained avarice always did that job so much better.â€
I worked in a technical capacity (cell phone protocols) in the European market from 1999 to end-2006 and recently moved out of it, feeling that the whole cellphone concept was drifting without enough direction (is it a cellphone, is it an MP3 player, is it a (god forbid — screen size? Hello?) movie / video portal, where’s my battery gone?) but your statement here shows where the American mobile phone industry in particular went wrong.
ETSI in Europe (now 3GPP) pursued an agenda of developing a fully specified interoperable standards framework for all elements within mobile networks from the start, continuing for the next 20 years and over that time came up with GSM, GPRS, 3G… etc with all manufacturers onboard. This takes an age (the usual committee thinking) but we ended up with a competitive environment where the manufacturers compete to supply (largely!) interoperable components to mobile networks.
Contrast this with the American networks, who invented many totally incompatible standards and thought that market forces (the avarice of which you speak) would show who was the fittest… then watch the debacle unfold, resulting in the US ultimately being staggered (especially when visiting Europe) by the roaming capability of mobiles in the rest of the world and picking up the technology in the US (finally!) comparatively recently with guys like Verizon going for GSM/EDGE and even 3G… Even something as simple as receiving a simple text message, which is free in Europe, is apparently charged for the US with some tariffs (this may be old info)? That doesn’t exactly encourage adoption, does it…?
That avarice you spoke of is what has left the US mobile market in such a horrible mess… do you agree?
Good article though, I’m very interested to see what the Android API has to offer, having done some programming on the Symbian platform (which was a little painful).