The future of Android is becoming more focused, structured and linear, according to Google's latest announcements at their I/O session. The biggest news is that Ice Cream Sandwich - which is essentially a mashup of Honeycomb (Android 3.0) aimed mainly at tablets and the more well known and distributed Android mobile OS Gingerbread (Android 2.3), will be deployed universally to all handsets and tablets. The aim here is to unify the experience and have less of a "fragmentation" that seems to be the concern for many.
With the current rate of handsets coming with dual core processors and bigger screens, the gap and distinction between phone and tablet is becoming smaller than the gap between laptop and tablet. I think it's essential to start planning for a unified look between either platforms and a universal experience as Android starts to approach maturity - something Apple has achieved to a certain extent with the iPhone and iPad.
As we move towards more focused to data services, in the next 2 years voice calls, sms and other similar add-ons will be the exception rather than the rule. It's already a case in my personal lifestyle, but with Google's other services being integrated into the latest iteration of Android and a true universal convergence of devices, voice, sms and similar offerings will be effectively irrelevant. Everything will be focused on data. Google Voice + Chat could essentially replace voice calls and sms, indefinitely. I see similar things happening with the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft, whilst Apple already has Facetime but seem to be the weakest link going forward.
Supporting Devices
I'm glad finally there is some work to universally support devices for longer and is being taken up by the members of the Open Handset Alliance. The whole argument of Android's fragmentation has been due to the various different versions of it on various differing specs and features of hardware. Hopefully this will remedy this, although I do think 18 months is quite short, but going forward not so much if the pace of developments around mobile is sustained.
Beyond Mobile
Android long term has been always planned as a convergence OS, which would essentially work on almost anything, it was designed to be flexible. I said 2.5 years ago Android would take over everything and would be everywhere in 5 years time, and this seems to be where Google is also planning to go with Android Open Accessory, Android Home.
Fridges, Ovens, TVs, Car Dashboards, Garage Doors, Lights and Doors could essentially all be running on Android, interacting, syncing and communicating together - all controlled by your Android handset / tablet. A truly connected future.
Google Music
Just a little side note on what Google Music is and why in my opinion it won't be anything more or better than what we already have with services such as Spotify. The whole cloud streaming concept is a good one, I like the concept and idea behind it, but like many things at the moment, it's more of a case of trial and error until it can be 99.999% full proof and the infrastructure to support such services can built and perfected.
Only open to the US in usual Google exclusivity which gets all those first time exclusivity people excited, it essentially offers backing up your music collection to the cloud and streaming it wherever you go. Which is fine. But here is where the problems start.
- Streaming - I don't necessarily want to stream my music, especially high quality content which would require a lot of bandwidth. Also we don't have a 100% signal everywhere we go, if I have signal it's likely I would be using my data connection for other means; e-mail, Twitter, RSS, podcasts. Whilst that can be remedied with offline storage my point here is; then why bother with streaming? It's not like storage is an issue here. Maybe in 2000 when storage was a big issue and we couldn't fit our collection of music on our devices, it would have been a good idea to be able to stream / download our music to our walkmans, phones etc then. But now? Not necessary.
- Who Profits - This is the bigger point, who profits from the use of this services? Operators and distributors. The user has minimal profit from this situation. It's a system designed more to make it easier for those cloud shops to be able to distribute their wares and make profit wherever you are. Essentially you the user become a walking, living, shopping trolley.
I personally think a more connected service would be better. Give us devices with more storage, give us a faster, more reliable and better network to utilise this service. Have total sync with the cloud, hand-held and desktop. Use the cloud as a backup storage for my desktop and hand-held device. Have the content locally stored on the hand-held and desktop and sync / backup via the cloud. If I download content on the go, give me the security of knowing that's it's also been synced to the cloud and my desktop, with me as a user having to do minimal work. There are many ways to extend this use case and improve on how cloud streaming can be used more effectively, but in essence until we get the infrastructure to be able to support it, it will be a test service.
This is where operators can come in to help ease and improve the situation and help progress a lot quicker. This is an ideal chance for them to stop thinking the old dinosaur way of marketing; selling minutes, sms bundles and data bundles. Create a fast reliable tiered data network. Sell prioritised speed data packages over amounts of data. Tier the the speed of data user subscribe to rather than the amount they can use. For those looking to utilise such services as streaming music / content - bill them for data speeds as they require. If the network infrastructure doesn't exist, start building it, don't get left behind.
0 comments:
Post a Comment