Google’s Android

Google just launched it’s Android project that’s part of the Open Handset Alliance.

Quite an interesting concept. It seems to be much more low-level than even the Symbian OS.

They’re offering at $10m prize to application developers. Sometimes I wonder what kind of applications are worth building onto the phone? A better way to take notes, a better way to store your contacts?

I’m not sure if innovative applications will come out of this. For that matter, would people use it? It’s a classic chicken and egg problem: handset manufacturers need to adopt it. And they wouldnt adopt if there were no applications.

And in the era of iPhones and Web 2.0, the fun part is at the application layer and not so much at the operating system area. It’s also much more worthwhile to write a flash app or java app and deploy through J2ME/Brew than to write an android app. For that matter with 3G and good quality web browsers able to run ajax coming to mobile phones, it might be better to concentrate on create web apps that can transcode on to the smaller form-factor of a mobile phone.

However, all is not lost. 1 thing about Android that could be good is providing people with deep workflow customization. Imagine being able to download themes which can change the entire workflow and UI of your phone. Say for example a Hello Kitty theme that totally metamorphosizes your phone into a Hello Kitty gizmo with its own workflow, menus, fonts. I think that would be the “next big thing” after ring tones. The thing we’ve learnt most about the mobile market is that customization is the where the big aftermarket is and for most consumers, it’s about experience customization rather than being able to run the most apps on it. Running apps is only for that very small niche of power users.

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