The BlackBerry and iPhone, which have
appealing and high-volume mobile platforms, are addressing opposite ends of a
spectrum. The BlackBerry is rock-solid for the enterprise business user. For a
consumer device, it's hard to compete with the iPhone for ease of use and the
"cool factor." Android, a young and yet-unproven platform, has the
potential to play at both ends of the mobile-phone spectrum and perhaps even
bridge the gulf between work and play.
Today, many network-based or
network-capable appliances run a flavor of the Linux kernel. It's a solid
platform: cost-effective to deploy and support and readily accepted as a good
design approach for deployment. The UI for such devices is often HTML-based and
viewable with a PC or Mac browser. But not every appliance needs to be
controlled by a general computing device. Consider a conventional appliance,
such as a stove, microwave or bread maker. What if your household appliances
were controlled by Android and boasted a color touch screen? With an Android UI
on the stove-top, the author might even be able to cook something.
What is Android? Android is a
software platform and operating system for mobile devices, based on the Linux
operating system, developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It
allows developers to write managed code in a Java-like language that utilizes
Google-developed Java libraries, but does not support programs developed in native
code.
Android has been criticized for not
being all open source software despite what was announced by Google. Parts of
the SDK are proprietary and closed source and some believe this is so that
Google can control the platform. Google will continue to make money from online
advertising, but now seeks to extend this onto mobile devices
With Android being part of the Open Handset
Alliance, the other members of the alliance will follow T-Mobile’s lead and
unveil their products for Android. For instance Qualcomm have announced that it
is working on more than five Android based handsets to be released during Q1
2009.
Android being free also means that
smaller handset manufacturers don’t have to worry about the (very large)
headache of writing and maintaining an operating system.
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