Android: momentum, mobile and more at Google I/O
(Cross-posted on the Google Code Blog) — This morning at Google I/O, the Android team shared some updates. It's hard to believe a little more than two and a half years ago, we were just one device, launching in one country, on one carrier.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years ago Android was a promising bet — coverage as far back as February 2009 framed Android's progress as elevating Google's mobile aspirations when the platform had little hardware to show for it. Since then Google has tried to shape the market directly, including its January 2010 push to sell phones straight to buyers, and by April 2011 the platform had passed the iPhone in smartphone market share — a milestone that itself set off a heated fight among fans over whether the numbers held up.
Today's I/O keynote is Google cashing in that momentum across every screen at once: Honeycomb coming to Google TV alongside Android Market, Ice Cream Sandwich unifying the phone and tablet UI frameworks, an Open Accessory Toolkit for plugging hardware into Android devices, the Android @ Home initiative, same-day streaming movie rentals in Android Market, and Andy Rubin hinting at a new Nexus device for the holidays — with Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 demoed on stage and handed to all 5,000 attendees.
First-order effects
- Developers at I/O leave with two immediate building blocks — the Open Accessory Toolkit for attaching physical hardware and the Ice Cream Sandwich framework preview for targeting phones and tablets with one codebase.
- Consumers get usable product the same week: streaming movie rentals live in Android Market starting today, and Google TV owners gain Honeycomb plus Market access rather than a closed set-top box.
Second-order effects
- With Android already confirmed past the iPhone in share as of April 2011, Apple's iTunes rental storefront now faces a rival bundling content into a free, broadly licensed OS, and RIM — already framed in March coverage as the platform bearing down on BlackBerry — faces a keynote that widens the gap in developer attention.
- Samsung emerges as Google's lead Honeycomb hardware partner via next month's Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch, forcing competing Android tablet makers to differentiate against a device Google itself is subsidizing for 5,000 influencers.
Third-order effects
- Android @ Home and the accessory kit signal the platform contest expanding past handsets into appliances and peripherals, making the operating system — not the phone — the unit of competition between Google and Apple.
- If Ice Cream Sandwich holds the fragmented phone/tablet codebases together as promised, OEM differentiation migrates down to hardware and services, consolidating software power at Google while the fan war over platform supremacy keeps both ecosystems' momentum in the headlines.
The trend: Android is scaling from a phone OS into a cross-device platform — tablets, TVs, home hardware, and content — turning Google's developer conference into the annual staging ground for its ecosystem ambitions.