3 ms·

I hinted at this in another post, but I want to detail it a bit. In short: I think you're wrong. Android can win this by me-too'ing the iphone as long as it ha

by enjo 17y ago

I hinted at this in another post, but I want to detail it a bit. In short: I think you're wrong. Android can win this by me-too'ing the iphone as long as it has strong differentiation in hardware. Do you want a small stick phone? How about a blackberry style one with a physical keyboard? What about something flashy like the side-kick? Do you want a highly customizable phone with brightly colored cases and add-ons? Android can rise to address those quirks. That high level of segmentation shouldn't be discounted. A cell phone isn't just about software. It's a highly personal choice. If Android succeeds in becoming a mobile operating system with a vibrant 3rd party application base... well then they can win by appealing to a large number of segments through support of a number of form-factors. The issue of course being that supporting all of those form factors in anything resembling a consistent way is VERY difficult. It's something Symbian has never really figured out. If anyone can...it's Google.

pospischil 17y ago
Thats a valid point -- the big issue on this one is, how do you handle the varied screen size/varied capabilities dilemma? Or rather, how do you get developers to target so many different devices? I think you get stuck with devs building for the lowest common denominator. To illustrate the point, consider an imaginary situation where a android has 3 phones on the market, with equally split distribution: 1) black and white 200x300 screen 2) color 320x480 screen 3) color 800x600 screen Which one do developers build for? Multiply this by different capabilities (one has a compass, the others don't. One has a high quality graphics chip, the others don't, etc.) In this latter case, you can really see that it will be difficult to get a significant amount of developers to take advantage of all the capabilities of the phone. I think gruber talked about this a while back, but all I could find with a quick search was this: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/24/g1-flaws http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/24/g1-flaws

by enjo 17y ago

pospischil 17y ago

Thats a valid point -- the big issue on this one is, how do you handle the varied screen size/varied capabilities dilemma? Or rather, how do you get developers to target so many different devices? I think you get stuck with devs building for the lowest common denominator. To illustrate the point, consider an imaginary situation where a android has 3 phones on the market, with equally split distribution: 1) black and white 200x300 screen 2) color 320x480 screen 3) color 800x600 screen Which one do developers build for? Multiply this by different capabilities (one has a compass, the others don't. One has a high quality graphics chip, the others don't, etc.) In this latter case, you can really see that it will be difficult to get a significant amount of developers to take advantage of all the capabilities of the phone. I think gruber talked about this a while back, but all I could find with a quick search was this: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/24/g1-flaws http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/24/g1-flaws