Well the first Andriod phone, the G1, is being released soon and I'm curious what else thinks of the entrance of Andriod. Personally I may be a bit of an Apple fanboy but I'm not anti-everything else that isn't Apple, especially since I am also a fan of Google. While Andriod may be a competitor to the iPhone I don't really see it a threat to it, the iPhone may be for diverse tastes but is limited to GSM, exclusive carriers in several countries (that aren't always the best carriers, ROBBERS Canada) and while the price isn't bad its still high end hardware. Android may compete with the iPhone in this area but I doubt it will take much of any business from Apple, I can see it basically as filling the gap for the rest of the market (CDMA, low end phones and other carriers) in this new vision of smartphone/MID combo dvices at a low consumer price.
Both companies contribute to Open Source and while they compete they will continue to share technology and products as they already have (Googles Chrome built from Apples Webkit & Apple using Google Apps on their iPhone). I can see the development communities for both becoming intertwined once Androids market is forced to adopt some regulations and they institute a pay market. We already see evidence of that in one of the most promising games built specifically for this new flavour of OS & hardware, Parallel Kingdoms.
The iPhone 3G set a new bar for pricing (regardless of some paying more in the longrun via contracts) for such a functional device that is forcing the smartphone industry to follow suite, along with Android it will cut down significantly the marketshare for Windows Mobile, Palm, etc, which has less functionality (still waiting for Google Docs or a mobile iWorks or 3rd party equivalent) and in the case of WinMo costs the hardware makers more. That being said, I am not overly impressed with Android as of yet or the G1 although Google not controlling the hardware has little choice in its first phone, I'm sure there will be much nicer devices on the way and improvements to the OS. You can't expect Googles first venture into a complete OS to be nearly as polished as OS X and I think it should still be titled a Beta version. Still I believe in Googles abilities and they are no lightweight, Android will nicely compliment the iPhone and the newer innovations of RIM's Blackberrys (yes I'm Canadian and quite proud of their success and innovation) in evolving the mobile market.
I owned a fancy Motorola cameraphone four years back and paid more than I did for the iPhone because of the craze of cell phones but after a month I realized the technology was essentially junk so once my contract ran out I went back to wandering around with quarters searching for payphones. Everytime I went into a store that sold cell phones I would tell the salesmen that I wasn't interested and cell phones weren't worth the money. I stand by that, these new devices are as far apart from traditional cell phones as cell phones were from landline phones. I also predicted to my wife (during the iPhone rumour days, before its announcement) that traditional cell phone makers would end up being overtaken by handheld computers from the computer industry. Well looks like I was at least partly right, Google making a open source mobile OS kinda came out of left feild. Still only a couple of the dominant traditional cell phone makers such as RIM, may retain their place in the market without the help of the Open Handset Alliance.
Both companies contribute to Open Source and while they compete they will continue to share technology and products as they already have (Googles Chrome built from Apples Webkit & Apple using Google Apps on their iPhone). I can see the development communities for both becoming intertwined once Androids market is forced to adopt some regulations and they institute a pay market. We already see evidence of that in one of the most promising games built specifically for this new flavour of OS & hardware, Parallel Kingdoms.
The iPhone 3G set a new bar for pricing (regardless of some paying more in the longrun via contracts) for such a functional device that is forcing the smartphone industry to follow suite, along with Android it will cut down significantly the marketshare for Windows Mobile, Palm, etc, which has less functionality (still waiting for Google Docs or a mobile iWorks or 3rd party equivalent) and in the case of WinMo costs the hardware makers more. That being said, I am not overly impressed with Android as of yet or the G1 although Google not controlling the hardware has little choice in its first phone, I'm sure there will be much nicer devices on the way and improvements to the OS. You can't expect Googles first venture into a complete OS to be nearly as polished as OS X and I think it should still be titled a Beta version. Still I believe in Googles abilities and they are no lightweight, Android will nicely compliment the iPhone and the newer innovations of RIM's Blackberrys (yes I'm Canadian and quite proud of their success and innovation) in evolving the mobile market.
I owned a fancy Motorola cameraphone four years back and paid more than I did for the iPhone because of the craze of cell phones but after a month I realized the technology was essentially junk so once my contract ran out I went back to wandering around with quarters searching for payphones. Everytime I went into a store that sold cell phones I would tell the salesmen that I wasn't interested and cell phones weren't worth the money. I stand by that, these new devices are as far apart from traditional cell phones as cell phones were from landline phones. I also predicted to my wife (during the iPhone rumour days, before its announcement) that traditional cell phone makers would end up being overtaken by handheld computers from the computer industry. Well looks like I was at least partly right, Google making a open source mobile OS kinda came out of left feild. Still only a couple of the dominant traditional cell phone makers such as RIM, may retain their place in the market without the help of the Open Handset Alliance.
