spreading funkyness

This article from Business Insider got me started. Since I have to time to address potential fanboy arguments let’s go this way. For each time you think I am a fanboy I’ll think of you one of the following:

- troll
- user who has time to loose with lower quality devices/experiences
- user who likes to accumulate stress

Right now that Eric Schmit is promising that Android will soon beat iOS (whatever is the meaning of beating in this context), Android’s throat is getting more and more exposed. I can’t provide evidence but I started to feel a while ago that Android has found his way: more and more devices released and much buzz around the topic. But I always got in mind a few key aspects:

1. Fragmentation: it is not easy at all to build an homogeneous experience across many different devices
2. Too much fanfare about the number of devices activated per millisecond
3. Nobody has ever revealed how many dollars has Google shared with developers

While the second is mainly related to marketing and the too much diffused tendency to reveal meaningless numbers, as a UX designer, developer and entrepreneur I am pretty sensitive to points #1 and #3. The first is pretty a technical reason: developers have to write more code and carry more stress with respect to iOS. The third point is pretty a mystery to me: Apple is known to be pretty secretive, especially when prototyping, but is proud to reveal key numbers to attract more on their platform. Rhetoric questions for developers/entrepreneurs: which market would you dive in? the one where you know the current volume or the one you don’t know anything about? While reflecting on this please don’t fall into the childish thought that “more devices more potential buyers”, unless you are a rookie. Just consider that you are making money by selling applications, and a higher number of devices does not imply a higher number of sales. The key value is the “willingness to buy”, and the internet is full of articles supporting the idea that iOS users are more prone to buy applications than androiders.

Getting back to the main point of this article the new announcement from Samsung, that won’t allow upgrades to the new version of the OS on old devices, is really exposing Android’s throat to attacks. While it was relatively easy to copy (umm … take inspiration from) iOS and its ecosystem, now I think that Android has reached a pretty unsolvable issue: the one of upgrades. People who bought an iPhone 3gs (released in June 2009) can still happily use it today with iOS5 and the iCloud. Can you find a similar example in the Android world? I doubt so. The reason is exquisitely technical: relatively young devices have not enough hardware power to run new versions of Android OS. It is just a physical limit, and I think there is nothing to discuss. My opinion is that it is due to lack of vision. One of the few upgradeable devices is the Galaxy S2, because it is a flagship product, and preventing an update on that would mean users migrating to other devices in a hurry.
I am not a fan of Microsoft but if you bought the first model of Windows Phone you can still happily run the latest version of the OS on that. This means being on track.

Besides technical reasons I think that there is an issue related to the approach. While it was possible to “decouple” hardware and software on the desktop (and Microsoft has built his empire on that) this is much less doable in the mobile world, where hardware power is limited.

Here are a few suggestions for Google, makers and users.

Makers

HTC, Samsung and colleagues should follow Amazon approach. The only way to attack a well established market are a few. You can work on:

• the best product
• the best solution
• the best price

Amazon, to attack the tablet market, is betting on the best price. I don’t see a simpler way for competitors to undermine Apple’s iOS ecosystem. Building the best product or solution would take a lot of time.

Google

Google should close the gates, reorganize all the code to be more tightly coupled with hardware. They should put a lot of effort in rendering, demanding that (when possible) to the hardware. They should also devise crystalline rules about installation and updates. In 2012 I should not connect my phone to a computer to update the OS and I should not be forced to buy a new device to have the latest version of the OS. The recent acquisition of Motorola
is going toward that direction. If I were HTC or Samsung I’d be a bit worried, for I suspect new versions of Android will be super optimized for Motorola hardware. That’s the only solution I see for Android to resurrect.

Users

In the current situation, my suggestion is to go cheap. If you buy a $500 Android phone which is not OS-upgradeable it is not easy for you to afford a new purchase. If you have bought a $200 one, you have saved $300 (with respect to an iOS device) and you can think of using that money to buy a new model in one year.
Of course it is not easy to spot which models are upgradeable before you buy them (see crystalline rules above).
In general, we are told that a Google-approved Nexus device, should be eligible for upgrades (my addition: provided that hardware is powerful enough). So if you really like to buy an Android phone/tablet I strongly suggest to stick with those models or buy the new ones which will be released by Motorola in 2012.

Conclusion

While Google and friends are just chasing the highest number of activations per day, exposing his throat to competitors’ weapons, Microsoft and Apple are pointing on good experience, simplifying data migration and assuring compatibility with old models.

I’d like to conclude with a set of questions:

• where is all the “freedom” that Android supporters claim?
• do you realize that openness and (supposed) freedom, in the long run, are more costly than “closed-source” competitor solutions?
• do you see all the ifs you are going to face buying an android powered device?
• do you know that all this is due to a business model

?

• Not convinced yet? Have a look at this graph.