Cooliris Launches New Gallery App for Android Devices
If you own an Android device then you might not know it but the Gallery app used as the default photo browser in your device is made by Cooliris. Today, the company has introduced a new alternative gallery app for Android devices …
Context & Ripple Effects
Cooliris occupies an unusual position on Android: its Gallery software already ships as the default photo browser on many devices, so the company is competing against its own installed base by offering a second, opt-in app. The move lands two years after Kodak brought a social photo app to Android, part of a stretch where branded photo apps have been stacking themselves on top of the platform rather than replacing its built-ins.
That layering strategy has been building since GigaOm argued in 2011 that Instagram could become the mobile social hub, framing the photo app as the phone's center of gravity. The pickup here across Android Community, The Next Web, and Consumer Electronics Net shows the launch traveled reasonably wide for a utility-app release, riding the same current that comScore tracked when Android stopped losing US smartphone share at the end of 2013.
First-order effects
- Android users gain a choice between the preinstalled Cooliris Gallery and the company's new alternative app, splitting Cooliris's own default distribution against a product it now has to market.
- OEMs and carriers deciding which gallery to preload face a fork: stick with the incumbent default or adopt the new app, making Cooliris's bundle relationships the immediate battleground.
Second-order effects
- Branded photo apps following the path GigaOm mapped for Instagram in 2011 — and that Kodak tested with its social photo app in 2012 — get a template for displacing preinstalled utilities with opt-in products on the same platform.
- Google, as the platform owner whose stock experience the gallery shapes, faces pressure to answer with a tighter first-party photo experience rather than leaving defaults to third parties.
Third-order effects
- If defaults keep fragmenting into competing apps, the gallery layer becomes one of the last points of software differentiation on commoditized Android hardware — a market Canalys projected would reach 65% of 2014 tablet shipments.
- The structural question this raises is who owns the photo experience on Android: the platform holder, the device maker, or whichever third party wins the preload — with regulation-free market forces, not standards bodies, likely settling it.
The trend: Photo management on Android is shifting from preinstalled utilities toward standalone branded apps competing for the default slot on an increasingly commoditized platform.