3 ms·

I see that the author of this article is not particularly reassured, and neither am I. What I learned here is that Google employees are grandmasters at parsing

I see that the author of this article is not particularly reassured, and neither am I. What I learned here is that Google employees are grandmasters at parsing. ("The fact that the phone you bought three months ago won't work with the software we launched today does not meet the technical definition of 'platform fragmentation'". Imagine my relief.) I've also learned that, not surprisingly, Google engineers have no experience selling hardware. They seem to think they're still programming for the web, where you can push out ten new apps every week and people are happy about it. When a customer buys hardware they want some assurance that its makers will support it throughout its operational lifetime, and will not simply throw the unit over the wall, dust off their hands, and move on to the "more innovative" new product of the week. My hypothesis is that Google will continue to find that the cellphone market has a natural rate of product obsolescence that is difficult to fight. The good news is that the entire installed base turns over every two to three years. (To a programmer who has to support ancient garbage like IE, this sounds too good to be true - three years is actually really fast.) The bad news is that, in the USA at least, you can't really make everyone buy a new phone more often than once every 12 to 18 months, because the subsidies don't come along more often than that. To "innovate" the hardware any faster just produces a mismatch between yourself and the customers. One party or the other is going to be uncomfortable, disoriented, and potentially resentful.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
I dunno. One of Apple's big innovations with the iPhone was to take the carriers out the loop when it came to software updates. This remains a big benefit of their plug it into a computer strategy (aka "digital hub"). Google appears to be aiming for the same thing, but OTA and with a more carrot and stick approach. Look here's a shiny new version of Android with new features and better speed. Oh, you can't have it for 6 months because your phone vendor wants to muck around with it to no great purpose, well that's a shame, but don't get suckered next time you upgrade. You seem to be claiming it's all about hardware (apparently all phones released so far can do 2.1 if updates are available), when it's really all about carrier and phone vendor relationships. Personally if the maps app gets updated once a week then that strikes me as good for the customer, they shouldn't really have to care.
- lenni 16y ago
  You're saying what I'm thinking. I have a (European) HTC Hero and HTC combined with T-Mobile make the crappiest, most sluggish update experience possible. I am very disappointed with them - so much that will probably buy an iPhone next time around. Also HTC's Sense UI is a perfect case of what you call "phone vendor wants to muck around with it to no great purpose".
  - dlib 16y ago
    I also have a HTC Hero and exactly the same experience. I don't care for the Sense UI and next time I'll get a phone that runs the native Android UI (a Google phone or they should force that any phone with alternative UI's also can run the native UIso upgrades are possible) or an iPhone. The future looks good for Android but there's still a lot of work to be done.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  I agree: Carrier and vendor relationships are the root cause of the problem, not incompatible chips or anything. Maybe I should have used a different word than hardware, but I'll stand by that word rather than replace it with some airy abstract phrase like total product experience. When I say "Google is now in the hardware business" what I mean is: The average customer buys the physical phone, the OS, the carrier, the contract, and the warranty as part of one big package. Unless the customer is among the 0.0001% of customers who read Make magazine, they don't buy the hardware and software separately, nor -- in the USA -- do they get to independently shop for a carrier. They buy a package, and they call that package a phone. They want the whole package to work and be supported. If the new version of the Maps app doesn't run on their phone, my guess is that this average customer doesn't say gosh, the hardware is compatible, the software could theoretically work, and the open-source maintainers are on my side, but it's too bad about my platform's dysfunctional carrier-vendor relationship. They say "gosh, my phone sucks now". It's a problem for everyone. In Apple-land it manifests as "the iPhone has terrible reception and doesn't support tethering", though of course the iPhone hardware and software offer pretty good reception and do support tethering; it's AT&T that sucks. In Android-land it manifests as platform fragmentation: There is no one thing called Android; instead there are half a dozen little Androids no two of which are alike.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

I dunno. One of Apple's big innovations with the iPhone was to take the carriers out the loop when it came to software updates. This remains a big benefit of their plug it into a computer strategy (aka "digital hub"). Google appears to be aiming for the same thing, but OTA and with a more carrot and stick approach. Look here's a shiny new version of Android with new features and better speed. Oh, you can't have it for 6 months because your phone vendor wants to muck around with it to no great purpose, well that's a shame, but don't get suckered next time you upgrade. You seem to be claiming it's all about hardware (apparently all phones released so far can do 2.1 if updates are available), when it's really all about carrier and phone vendor relationships. Personally if the maps app gets updated once a week then that strikes me as good for the customer, they shouldn't really have to care.

lenni 16y ago
You're saying what I'm thinking. I have a (European) HTC Hero and HTC combined with T-Mobile make the crappiest, most sluggish update experience possible. I am very disappointed with them - so much that will probably buy an iPhone next time around. Also HTC's Sense UI is a perfect case of what you call "phone vendor wants to muck around with it to no great purpose".
- dlib 16y ago
  I also have a HTC Hero and exactly the same experience. I don't care for the Sense UI and next time I'll get a phone that runs the native Android UI (a Google phone or they should force that any phone with alternative UI's also can run the native UIso upgrades are possible) or an iPhone. The future looks good for Android but there's still a lot of work to be done.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
I agree: Carrier and vendor relationships are the root cause of the problem, not incompatible chips or anything. Maybe I should have used a different word than hardware, but I'll stand by that word rather than replace it with some airy abstract phrase like total product experience. When I say "Google is now in the hardware business" what I mean is: The average customer buys the physical phone, the OS, the carrier, the contract, and the warranty as part of one big package. Unless the customer is among the 0.0001% of customers who read Make magazine, they don't buy the hardware and software separately, nor -- in the USA -- do they get to independently shop for a carrier. They buy a package, and they call that package a phone. They want the whole package to work and be supported. If the new version of the Maps app doesn't run on their phone, my guess is that this average customer doesn't say gosh, the hardware is compatible, the software could theoretically work, and the open-source maintainers are on my side, but it's too bad about my platform's dysfunctional carrier-vendor relationship. They say "gosh, my phone sucks now". It's a problem for everyone. In Apple-land it manifests as "the iPhone has terrible reception and doesn't support tethering", though of course the iPhone hardware and software offer pretty good reception and do support tethering; it's AT&T that sucks. In Android-land it manifests as platform fragmentation: There is no one thing called Android; instead there are half a dozen little Androids no two of which are alike.