Android was a super idea for creating a mobile platform for the rest of us*. That is to say, a mobile platform for those of us who, for one reason and/or another, couldn't use an iPhone. After Android was announced by Google and embraced by mobile device makers, I could hardly wait the years it took for the first Android phone to come out.
By that time the Apple iPhone had been through a couple of software iterations and, more importantly really, had been hacked with the "jailbreaking" crew and had been opened up, against Apple's wishes, to hundreds of cool "apps" to extend the iPhone's use beyond the vision of even the great Jobs.
Actually; by the time the first Android device actually came to market, Jobs and Apple had seen the light surrounding apps and had opened the "App Store" to mind-blowing sales success and Apple was actually bringing out the second generation of iPhones and iPod Touch's.
So Android was slow to get out to the market. OK; because, after all these years, Apple still has it's iPhone shackled to one bassackwards mobile service provider, and, so the only thing that can stop Android from competing seems to be leaving the field open for the Android invasion.
Unfortunately for us -- the function-starved users -- it turns out that Android is its own worst competition and, as such, is bringing itself down. At this point Apple has nothing to fear from Android.
There are really two things that keep Android from satisfying the users' desires and from threatening the iPhone dominance. First is "multi-touch". Apple seems to have the touch-screen gestures involved in its wonderfully intuitive iPhone interface all locked up in patents. If Android devices can't use those or similar gestures, then they simply can never compete. Period. Fact. Done.
But assuming for a moment that Android systems can come up with suitable touch-able gestures, then there is a bigger problem that Google and Android have to overcome for the users' happiness -- and Android's marketability.
That is Android-to-Android compatibility. This is on the hardware platform level -- for versions of Android -- and on the virtual platform level for apps and interfaces.
This year, 2010, the floodgates appear about to open for Android devices. But already at the trade shows and in product announcements and, indeed, on the product shelves at mobile phone stores, there are Android devices that are running -- and that can only run -- different versions of Android. One phone will run Android 1.5. Another runs version 2.0. And another runs 2.1. And the 1.5 gizmo can't run 2.0, and the 2.0 can't be upgraded by the user to 2.1 unless & until the hardware manufacturer creates a special release of Android just for that device.
Worse for the user; the device makers are able to create proprietary user interfaces on their devices that make their version of Android work completely differently from some other maker's version of Android. So, from the users' point of view, what is the point of Android? To have a cut-down, cut-rate version of the iPhone? (Actually... no "cut-rate" to it. Still expensive, but definitely functionally cut-down.)
And even worse than that, not all Android apps work on all Android devices.
What the heck was Google thinking by allowing this chaos to ensue?
Until users can depend on functional consistency from one Android system to another -- like gestures and app's function -- Android is never going to be a market maker. In 2010 it will make a big splash, but unless the multi-touch and cross-system consistency issues are fixed, a splash is all that Android will ever be.
* (Sorry Apple, but the shoe fits. "...for the rest of us" was Apple's slogan for the Macintosh, when it was new; meaning that it's technology was more accessible than the other microcomputers on the market at the time.)
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