Verizon is doomed with only Android? - BusinessWeek 10/19/09

Google's Android's popularity could be its major downfall

October 19, 2009


* Analysis by: GLG Expert Contributor
* Analysis of: Android's Spread Could Become a Problem
* Published at: www.businessweek.com

http://www.glgroup.com/News/Googles-...all-44193.html

Summary

In the absence of a recognized international standard supported by
major mobile producers(e.g. Open Handset Alliance) for their use of
operating systems software such as Android and Symbian;the widespread
and rapid growth of users/manufacturers using Android etc. are bound
to face major problems regarding commonality of software and
interoperability of devices.
It would also lead to serious stability,security and performance
problems as highlighted in several of my previous analysis.

read link for the whole discussion

http://www.glgroup.com/News/Googles-...all-44193.html

He didn't even mention that compared to the iPhone this Verizon thing
looks and feels like a clunker, so 90's.


Heavy Android's will replace the pocket pencil protector for the well
groomed dork.

Here is an interesting bit of email about Android I got from a
developer/blogger this afternoon...

Author: Tom
Comment:
I've been appreciatively following this phone for weeks. Though I
assume everything about the phone will be as great as folks are hoping
it will be, I just bought a different phone. Why?

Reportedly the Droid comes with 256 MB of memory that can be used to
store applications. A fundamental flaw in Android is that applications
cannot be loaded from a memory card. It is purposely designed that
way. This means there is a hard limit on how many apps I can load and
things I'll be able to do with the phone. I don't like that
limitation.

Also, I thought about what kind of software I would like and did a
search of applications under WinMo, Android, and Iphone. If you have
used your imagination and searched what is available, you know what
I'm going to say there. To me it was pretty amazing what I could find
for the iphone. Stuff I never would have expected; lots of surprises.
I searched for the same things in WinMo and Android and got a much
clearer feel for the difference in the three.

Sure, people will be developing for Android like crazy now. I was
thinking about developing for it myself. I'm primarily a Linux user,
not really an Apple fan. But the no apps on memory card constraint
paired with the mediocre memory on board the Droid turns me off. I
want to even be able to develop a 100 MB app for the Droid, or two
great 50 MB ones, without people having to dump most of the rest of
their apps in order to use them.

After buying the iphone I now have over 160 applications loaded at any
time. A lot of variety there; I mean all kinds of fun stuff. More is
definitely better. If I can't have that, what's the point in getting a
smartphone? How many apps could I fit on the Droid? A tenth as many?
Less if they're bigger apps? What good is it to have great new
hardware if I'm limited so much by how many things I can run on it? To
me, if you're going to have an 'open' phone, great, but go all the
way.

There are several things I would definitely change about the iphone,
but it seems clear that it is the phone that I can have the most fun
with for at least the next year, maybe more.

I think in a couple of years with models like the Droid but with a lot
more memory, or the application memory restriction removed, plus a lot
more applications available, I will be able to consider Android more
favorably.

---

Now in all fairness you can hack the Android to use slow, very
slow..., SD expansion memory to store app data beyond the 512MB
boundary. You could pay really big bucks for fast premium SD memory,
but who wants to do that? That conundrum is a 'big ball of hurt'.

This design flaw may be one source of the reported sluggishness in
Verizon's Android. If Mattel, I mean Motorola, gave you the better
memory it may have been a better user experience instead of a Motorola
'Dud'.
The bottom line is that the sweet spot, as Tom observers, is currently
with Apple's iPhone.

"Apple users seem to always get all the neat stuff - a nice iPhone perk"
<4.vic.healey@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e313d87e-8aa9-45dd-b97e-ec2c3167c4cc@p23g2000vbl.googlegroups.com...
> Here is an interesting bit of email about Android I got from a
> developer/blogger this afternoon...
>
> Author: Tom
> Comment:
> I've been appreciatively following this phone for weeks. Though I
> assume everything about the phone will be as great as folks are hoping
> it will be, I just bought a different phone. Why?
>
> Reportedly the Droid comes with 256 MB of memory that can be used to
> store applications. A fundamental flaw in Android is that applications
> cannot be loaded from a memory card. It is purposely designed that
> way. This means there is a hard limit on how many apps I can load and
> things I'll be able to do with the phone. I don't like that
> limitation.
>
> Also, I thought about what kind of software I would like and did a
> search of applications under WinMo, Android, and Iphone. If you have
> used your imagination and searched what is available, you know what
> I'm going to say there. To me it was pretty amazing what I could find
> for the iphone. Stuff I never would have expected; lots of surprises.
> I searched for the same things in WinMo and Android and got a much
> clearer feel for the difference in the three.
>
> Sure, people will be developing for Android like crazy now. I was
> thinking about developing for it myself. I'm primarily a Linux user,
> not really an Apple fan. But the no apps on memory card constraint
> paired with the mediocre memory on board the Droid turns me off. I
> want to even be able to develop a 100 MB app for the Droid, or two
> great 50 MB ones, without people having to dump most of the rest of
> their apps in order to use them.
>
> After buying the iphone I now have over 160 applications loaded at any
> time. A lot of variety there; I mean all kinds of fun stuff. More is
> definitely better. If I can't have that, what's the point in getting a
> smartphone? How many apps could I fit on the Droid? A tenth as many?
> Less if they're bigger apps? What good is it to have great new
> hardware if I'm limited so much by how many things I can run on it? To
> me, if you're going to have an 'open' phone, great, but go all the
> way.
>
> There are several things I would definitely change about the iphone,
> but it seems clear that it is the phone that I can have the most fun
> with for at least the next year, maybe more.
>
> I think in a couple of years with models like the Droid but with a lot
> more memory, or the application memory restriction removed, plus a lot
> more applications available, I will be able to consider Android more
> favorably.
>
> ---
>
> Now in all fairness you can hack the Android to use slow, very
> slow..., SD expansion memory to store app data beyond the 512MB
> boundary. You could pay really big bucks for fast premium SD memory,
> but who wants to do that? That conundrum is a 'big ball of hurt'.
>
> This design flaw may be one source of the reported sluggishness in
> Verizon's Android. If Mattel, I mean Motorola, gave you the better
> memory it may have been a better user experience instead of a Motorola
> 'Dud'.
> The bottom line is that the sweet spot, as Tom observers, is currently
> with Apple's iPhone.

When Palm added SD cards there was the same limitation you mention here.
There were sereval apps that would copy the app over to ram for execution.
IIRC Palm even added this itself. If the same approach is possible with
Android the 256mb may not wind up being all that big a deal.

John B. Coarsey, PE <jcoarsey wrote:

> When Palm added SD cards there was the same limitation you mention here.
> There were sereval apps that would copy the app over to ram for execution.
> IIRC Palm even added this itself. If the same approach is possible with
> Android the 256mb may not wind up being all that big a deal.

This is true. It's very much like a PC that loads applications from the
hard drive into SDRAM. There are some big advantages to having removable
storage. In a year there will likely be more applications for Android
than for Apple since the applications can be distributed freely. Apple's
control via the apps store is understandable, they don't want malware or
poorly written apps crashing he iPhone as was the case on some older
PDAs, but there's a downside as well.

But here's the thing, nothing is stopping Apple from implementing, in
the OS, some of the features that Verizon brags about in their Droid ad.
Things like a user replaceable battery and removable storage are nice
hardware features, but they come at a cost in both dollars and
reliability. A slide-out keyboard is something that some people love and
some people hate, but it adds thickness, and masses of switches on
handheld devices are notoriously prone to failure.

The next iPhone revision can easily add most of the hardware features
that the Droid has if the Droid does cut into iPhone sales.

The one thing the Droid has that the iPhone doesn't is Verizon's much
larger (and not saturated) 3G network, as well as the more extensive
U.S. coverage of CDMA versus GSM. The real danger to the iPhone that all
the pundits have been talking about is a "good enough" smart phone on a
much better network. The Droid doesn't have to beat the iPhone in
everything, it just needs to be pretty close and actually be usable in
more places and at higher speeds. Even an equivalent Android phone on
AT&T will not be able to compete.

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