Why the very success of Android could mean trouble for Google

Is Android king already?

Android, the open source smart phone operating system that Google generously develops for the benefit of the handset manufacturers and the wireless carriers, is undoubtedly a commercial success, in particular in the US. Each major US carrier has a few Android devices in its line-up, consumer electronics giants like Samsung, Sony and Motorola have abandoned Windows Mobile for it, and the Verizon “Droid” brand is almost as well known as the iPhone. According to Google, 200,000 new Android phones are activated each day of the week, which could mean an installed base of 30 to 40 million devices at the end of the year.

So why are reputable IT on line magazines like Infoworld or self proclaimed experts like Rob Enderle writing about the “Android train wreck”; why is frustration about Android mounting on the developers and end users forums?

• Unlike iOS and the iPhone, the Android platform is not managed by the iron fist of a single owner, powerful enough to impose its control on the whole ecosystem. With Android, smart phone manufacturers and carriers are free to modify and to add to the base program provided by Google, and most of them have developed their own user interface layer and their own widgets, as a way to differentiate each new phone from the dozen of new Android devices launched every other week.  This code fragmentation is a promise for a software maintenance nightmare over time.
• Similarly, Google does not prevent the carriers and the cell phone manufacturers from removing modules from Android as they see fit, or from adding crapware in order to make a little more money, with a negative impact on the end user experience.  The Android app store is not curated, which opens the door to the distribution of malware and spyware, and could lead to a major PR disaster in the future.
• Over the last 18 months, Google has been launching new versions of Android frenetically, without ensuring (as Microsoft would have) that all the hardware manufacturers are following. As a result, Android phones launched today can have very different technical characteristics, and run on versions as dramatically different as 1.5, 1.6, 2.1 or 2.2, adding to the end user confusion.
• The high level of customization, compounded with the frantic pace of the Android evolutions and the disparity in hardware specifications, makes the manufacturers’ promise to provide OS updates to existing customers untenable, a major source of discontent for tech savvy consumers who form the core constituency of Android.

But the worst may still be to come.  Oracle sued Google a few weeks ago, for multiple patent infringements related to the use of Java in Android. 

Could Android fall on its face?

Android applications are coded with a combination of XHTML and Java. Google does not use one of the three standard flavors of Java but its own, and does not conform to the standard Java deployment architecture, relying on the Dalvik Virtual Machine instead: the Java language without the Java architecture, and without the Java license fees.

Since it acquired Sun Microsystems last year, Oracle is the “gardian” of Java, and the recipient of license fees generated by the millions (or billions) of not so smart phones which support Java Micro Edition. Android, with its Java without Java architecture, is a major thorn in Oracle’s side.

No judge will grant Oracle what it’s asking for – that 40 million of Android phones be whipe erased and bricked. But Google may have to pay very significant license fees to Oracle, and accept Oracle’s stewardship on Android, which would bring the development of the mobile OS to a stand still. If it happened, Google would look bad, very bad, for having embarked tens of thousands of application developers, hundred of thousands of large and small businesses and millions of consumers in the Android adventure, without ensuring that it had the simple right to do it.
 

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Another perspective on Android

The Carrier Rebellion, by Jean Louis Gassee: in his blog Monday Note, the former Apple executive explains how the carriers expect to take advantage of Android to regain the control of the market they had lost when Apple launched the iPhone. One of the most frequent rebukes of Android is that it gives carriers an opportunity to rebuild their “walled gardens”, at the expense of the consumer.

Infoworld has published a large number of articles recently about Android in its “mobilize” section. One example – an article complaining about code fragmentation, when it comes to the User Interface in particular.

For the geek in you, this contribution on the Java.net site where the author Osvaldo Pinali Doederlein explains that Android is nothing else than “Java Google Edition”.