Does Android Dream of iPhone?

Last month, I called iPhone "the defining platform of the early 21st century. The PC is dead—or will be. Long live the smart phone, er, iPhone." I made the proclamation for many reasons, but iTunes App Store tops the list.

Right now, the App Store has no rival on mobile phones, heck, not even on the PC. Now Google wants to crash Apple's App Store party. Today, on the Android Developers Blog, Google announced the forthcoming Android Market. Yes, it's an App Store knock-off and wannabe. But can it be?

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The App Store concept is developer nirvana. Apple provides a killer development platform, because:

• Pretty much everyone carries a mobile phone.
• Software distribution is built-in to the phone, which has enough data capacity to quickly download applications.
• The store provides a mechanism for easily pushing out software updates.
• There is built-in e-commerce infrastructure, so developers can charge for the software—and, more importantly, get paid for their work.
• Apple rights-protects applications, greatly reducing risk of casual or overt piracy.

But there are some problems with Apple's approach, and it has some developers complaining:

• In typical fashion, Apple seeks to control the entire ecosystem.
• Apple's control requires developers to sign strict NDAs and gives the company ability to pull pretty much any application at any time.
• The iPhone platform is largely closed; it's Apple way or the highway.

Android Marketplace would give developers another place to take their applications. More importantly, it would provide pretty much any phone manufacturer or carrier locked out of the iPhone ecosystem another platform choice.

I remain hugely skeptical about Google's ability to quickly bring Android to market or to really be more open than Apple. But Google's talk is good. From today's post:

"We chose the term 'market' rather than 'store' because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings."

Whoa, that sounds pretty flexible, doesn't it? Or does it? For the flaws in Apple's closed system, it also works to keep out the riffraff. Nobody wants to get malware onto their phone. Google's flexibility troubles me, when thinking about malware and keeping it out of the Android store. We'll have to see what Google does to ensure good application distribution and also a platform that protects developers from piracy. If Microsoft were launching a mobile marketplace, good security features would be enabled from Day One. (Please, let's not get into an argument about Microsoft security. The company does much better than what naysayers say.)

Talk is talk, but what's Google's walk? Google will only have an Android Marketplace placeholder when the platform launches. "Developers can expect the first handsets to be enabled with a beta version of Android Market," according to the blog post. And, whoops, only free apps will be supported at first. "Soon after launch an update will be provided that supports download of paid content and more features such as versioning, multiple device profile support, analytics, etc." No disrespect to Google, but much of its stuff stays in perpetual beta.

Google isn't the only iPhone competitor to watch. Nokia matters much more. Symbian has been in market for much longer than iPhone OS and has huge market share. Today, Nokia formally launched Ovi, an online sync and sharing service that competes with Apple's MobileMe. Nokia doesn't charge subscribers a hundred bucks a year like Apple does, and its service can touch many more mobiles—devices people already own. Nokia's hot to trot. Surely a mobile application marketplace is in the making.

The cell phone is the platform of the future. It's not a question of whether or not but whom? Which companies will lead that platform to its destiny. App Store gives Apple a great start. But destiny isn't always made by great starters. The Macintosh stormed the market nearly 25 years ago. Many of the characteristics that let the Mac whither on the vine apply to iPhone. That said, the mobile phone is more closed than was the PC because of the carrier model, which actually works in favor of Apple's App Store approach.

By the way, this blog's title nips from Philip K. Dick novel "Do Androids Dream of Sleep?"

[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com].

Related Posts:

• iPhone 3G: Software + Hardware + Services, Apple Watch, July 22, 2008
• Windows 95, Only Better, Apple Watch, July 14, 2008
• Is This Any Way to Launch a Platform?, Apple Watch, July 14, 2008

Posted by Joe Wilcox on August 28, 2008 9:39 PM