What Google’s Android Means for the Industry

By Brodkin, Jon Reed, Brad

Experts see broad impact on wireless technology What, no GPhone? That was the reaction from commentators after Google unveiled its long-anticipated mobile phone plan last week.

At the moment, Google is not releasing any mobile devices on its own.Rather.it has collaborated with partners such as T-Mobile, Motorola and Sprint Nextel of the newly formed Open Handset Alliance to develop Android, an open source platform that can be used by third-party developers to create applications for mobile devices. Although Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, won’t comment on the company’s future plans to create a mobile phone of its own, he does note that “if you were to build a GPhone,you’d build it out of this [Android] platform.”

Even without a GPhone, Android is fascinating in its own right. Here’s a look at what Android means for the wireless market, for the enterprise, for open source, for Apple and Microsoft, and of course, what it means for Google.

Android and the wireless market

Because Android is an open source platform, it lets users connect to any network and will also let them add any application they want. Van Baker, a research vice president at Gartner, says if the platform becomes widely adopted.it could pressure the major carriers to loosen their grip on their wireless devices. Thus, he says, companies such as \ferizon might think twice before they disable Bluetooth on their handsets if they know their customers can easily switch to another carrier.

Dylan Schiemann, CEO of Web applications developer SitePen, says Android could go a long way toward prodding carriers to open their devices to more third-party applications.

The mobile carriers always want to control everything, but they’re showing signs of backing off on that,” Schiemann says. “Carriers have enjoyed a long period where they’ve controlled what you put on a phone, and where they’ve charged you for what you put on your phone. If the Android platform works, it could change that dynamic.”

While AT&T has yet to publicly comment on the Android announcement.Vferizon has given it a warm reception. Jeffrey Nelson, Verizon’s executive director of corporate communications, says \ferizon “welcomes the support of Google, handset makers and others for our goal of providing more open development of applications on mobile handsets” and that “the highly competitive wireless industry is demonstrating that neither legislation nor regulation is required to produce innovation.”

What Android means for the enterprise

Some analysts say the enterprise impact will be minimal because Google is making a consumer play with Android. But consumers like to bring popular devices to the office, using them for work and play “If it’s successful and people have it, it will come into businesses and we’ll adapt to it,” says CTO Dave Leonard of Infocrossing, an IT outsourcing provider.

It’s hard for IT departments to decide whether to support Google’s Android, because it’s a platform for developing phones, rather than a phone itself, says Ken Dulaneya Gartner analyst. IT departments are likely to pick one type of Android-powered phone to support and not support others, because they don’t want to risk lack of interoperability, he says. A better approach, says Dan Kohn, COO of the Linux Foundation, is to pick one set of standards that IT will support for calendaring, e-mail and so on, and permit use of any mobile phone compatible with those standards.

What Android means for Boogie

Because Google makes most of its money from its AdSense advertisement-distribution network, it has an interest in giving mobile-phone users broad access to the Web. If more people have access to Google on their desktops and mobile devices, then advertisers will pay more for ad space.

Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt describes Google’s target market: the entire universe of cell phone users. “There are at least 3 billion mobile users in the world today, and there are more mobile phones worldwide than there are Internet users or landline phones,” he says.”Getting people access to info is Google’s core mission, and mobile phones have to be part of that.”

Implied in that mission is that Google, in turn, gains access to consumers of advertising.

“Google is enabling advertising in a very real way in the handset world,” says Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer of Multimedia Intelligence. “You’re going to see a whole host of advertisinjsupported applications being … delivered … into the handset. Google is the most efficient provider of advertising in the online world.”

Android, open source and Unux

Linux has a major presence on mobile phones, but the entrance of Google and the Open Handset Alliance, which has 34 member organizations worldwide, adds to the momentum.

“We’re a huge believer in diversity of options on mobile phones,” Kohn of the Linux Foundation says. “Linux is an important, growing presence there. I think having the Google software as an additional open source option is only going to accelerate that adoption.”

Today’s mobile operating systems include the open source Symbian and the proprietary Windows Mobile. Kohn’s key concern is enabling interoperability so that Web applications designed for one open source phone work well on others. “Although there are a huge number of mobile phones using Linux today, there tends not to be great interoperability between them,” he says.

While Kohn welcomes Google’s presence, he thinks further crowding of the Linux mobile landscape might confuse matters. There’s already the LiMo Foundation, which makes a Linux platform for mobile phones; the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum and the Mobile Linux Initiative.

“We have so many darn acronyms and different consortiums at this point, that I’d actually hope to see a little consolidation,” Kohn says.”

What Android means for Microsoft

Nothing – but only if you believe Microsoft.

“We already have an alliance around Windows Mobile, with 160 wireless operators in 55 countries and with 48 device makers,” Scott Rockfeld, a mobile communications group product manager at Microsoft, says in a Computerworld story “Nothing new and revolutionary was announced” with Android, he says. “It was ho-hum compared to what we’ve done for the last five years with Windows Mobile.”

But an open source development platform backed by Google could eat into Microsoft’s market share, Dickson argues. They’re struggling because the Microsoft model is licensed software,” he says. “When you start licensing software for $20 or $40 on a handset that costs $100 to manufacture, that’s quite a hit.”

Forrester analyst Charles Golvin says Microsoft should take an approach similar to the one Google is taking with Android. “Competitors like Yahoo and even Microsoft stand to benefit should they embrace this approach,” he says. “The impact will build slowly over time as initially the devices using this platform will form a very small percentage of the market.”

What Android means for Apple

Apple’s iPhone will survive Google’s wireless initiative unscathed, partly because Apple’s focus is hardware rather than software and partly because it commands only a small part of the mobile-phone market, Dickson says.

“Apple is a fraction of a percent of the global market share in handsets,” Dickson says.”They’re just not that big…. Because of the size of Apple, I don’t see a large impact on Apple. I see Apple still providing innovative hardware solutions coupled with wellperforming software.”

Apple has little need to join Google’s open source initiative, according to research issued by financial-services company Piper Jaffray

“While Apple is a closed system, it does allow developers to build applications for the iPhone.We believe that Android will give many phone makers their first access to software with full Web- browsing functionality which the iPhone already offers,” says a research note issued just after Google’s announcement. “Apple is confident that its iPhone operating system is a compelling one, and developers will want to build applications for the iPhone.”

The Open Handset Alliance

What Is it? A multinational group of Google and 33 carriers, hardware makers and software groups that developed the open source Android platform, a “software stack” consisting of an operating system, middleware, user interface and applications for designing mobile devices.

The mission: Flood the market with mobile handsets and services using Android beginning the second half of 2008.

Read columnist Scott Bradner’s take on the GPhone non-news. Page 21.

Copyright Network World Inc. Nov 12, 2007

(c) 2007 Network World. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.