Steve Follmer consulted in Silicon Valley for many years, where he co-founded live365.com. He is currently between startups and analyzing opportunities in the mobile space. Steve holds a BSE degree from Princeton University.
19th MobileMonday Taipei Event Report
19th MobileMonday Taipei: The Android Experience
Tonight at a Momo new venue, Yuma Southwestern Grill, we enjoyed presentations from two top Android developers. Spencer Riddering provided a sneak preview of his forthcoming to-do list app, überdo, and Eric Huang of jmap.cc showed off a weather application he developed in a mere 3 days. Both developers were elated with Android and its java-like environment. Strategy Analytics predicts that Android will top the market with 50 million units by 2012.
At this moment, Android is only available on the G1 unit through T-Mobile in the USA. But expect dramatic changes: the HTC Magic “G2″ is to ship next month, followed by as many as 10 models in 2009, from diverse manufacturers in the Open Handset Alliance: LG, Samsung, ASUS, Acer, Huawei, and Sony Ericsson, including 5 new Android models from HTC. Google has placed a dedicated team in Taiwan to work with manufacturers. Lastly, Android is anticipated on a netbook platform such as the eeePC.
Eric Huang of jmap.cc spoke in Mandarin about Android and his development experiences, supported with an extensive Power Point presentation in English. He explained the many parts of the Android platform: it is an application framework, the Dalvik virtual machine running atop a linux kernel, an integrated browser, optimized graphics, SQLite databse, media support, GSM telephony, Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi, camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer. Android Market is Googles answer to Apple’s App Store; it currently stocks about 2300 apps, both paid and free. Eric can be reached through his blog http://blog.jmap.cc
Spencer Riddering of Lean & Keen treated us to a sneak peek of their powerful to-do list application überdo. Like Eric, he entered the Google coding challenge and was ranked in the top quartile.
Clearly RIM has established a loyal base of business users, and Apple has a tremendous head start. Google has clearly come late to this market, but Google has come late to many markets only to later dominate them. Google also operates from a different business model, basically offering Android for free to handset manufacturers. I expect that the diversity of android handsets and its free OS and web services will put pricing pressure on Google’s competitors. An iPhone which costs $200 to manufacture costs the consumer $2400 over the course of a two year contract and this will not last. Lastly Google has a powerful array of cloud services that will be integrated with their handset. The interesting question is whether Google will be able to manhandle the operators as Apple has.
Come back in a year and lets see what kind of numbers can be put up by a dozen different gPhones from diverse manufacturers and carriers, at a lower cost than their competitors, and leveraging the power of a free, open-source, open-standard OS backed by industry leading cloud services.
links:
HTC to unveil new Android phone in Q2
HTC workforce up 46% as Android mobiles defy slump
Google betting on mobile Internet
Android Developer program
Taiwan Android Developers Group
Endagaget Taiwan Android Developer Forum
Android Market
Spencer Riddering
Lean & Keen
Eric Huang
