Android + Cyanogen + Motorola+ Google Will Make iPhone a Winner
Yep, that’s right, I said it, iPhone is going to be a winner.
But this isn’t over any hate towards Google, Android, Cyanogen etc. but just more of the fact that Android is at a point of heading down 2 roads. One road leads to Android being fragmented, losing alot of it’s value. The other road leading to a community using different devices but one central set of app’s. I better explain what I’m talking about.
Motorola recently announced that they are using a “derivative” of Android. I knew they weren’t using the stock Android as they have added their own user interface “Blur”. But they’ve recently explained the reason for them having their own SDK (Software development kit). It’s so they can offer developers custom API’s. Now for the non-technical folk, this basically mean I can write an app that will do cool things on Motorola phones, but that same app won’t do the same cool stuff on other non-Motorola phones. In one sense this is great, if Motorola open up the Blur API it might make adding social networking into an app more exciting and easier, BUT on the other hand this means if I’m writing an app and decide to use Motorola API’s, then I won’t get the same experience on another Android device. So I now have to test it on 2 devices to check for differences (Possibly developing for 2 different API’s) or I only develop for Motorola. (Just for the record, I do understand that at the moment all Motorola API’s are fully compatible with the standard Android API, but how long is that going to last?).
Now lets take this whole Cyanogen fiasco, firstly I have to side with Google on them telling Cyanogen to stop distributing the Google apps i.e. Mail, Calendar etc. BUT where I side with Cyanogen is there seem’s to be no reason why he can’t include Android Market. Think about it, if you had an Android device without the Android Market, it loses alot of functionality. Put it on the device you’ll probably download Google Mail and Calendar straight away. So why don’t Google just allow everyone to use Android Market in their ROM’s, then Google can monitor who is downloading their apps.
So the alternative, someone creates their own market place app, which ROM makers like Cyanogen can include with their ROM’s, but even if everyone uploaded their app’s onto this new market, how good would the market itself be? How good would the app’s be, especially the app’s to replace Google Mail etc? And surely this just fragments everything, the Android version running on the phone, the markets on the phone, then chuck in a bit of API differences along with the ROM differences and you run into a bit of a mess.
The beauty of the iPhone is that everything is in one place, sure you have jail broken devices and a market place for those devices but overall people are happy with the stock iPhone OS, using the one app store. Android is heading down the road of multiple app stores, multiple API’s, multiple ROM’s and it’s just going to mess everything up for the common user.
I just hope Google finds a way that they are happy for ROM makers like Cyanogen to continue their work, with out making the ROM’s virtually useless, by simply giving the ROM makers the Android market to include so users can download the Google Apps that, for now, are the best options available.