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Hi, I'm Paul, but you can also call me Todd and I won't get upset.

Android Dev Day

Paul.Todd | 03 February, 2008 12:38

On Thursday Google had a developers day for their Android platform. Unfortunalty I arrived 10 minutes late and I thought it would be like last year when there were 1500 devs so I could just hide in the background - but oh no, there were a about 30 select dev's there.

"El Reg" had good writeup on the dev day and has hilighted the two biggest issues - security and openess.

Whilst I must applaude the vision of Android that Jason Chen (Developer Advocate for Google) outlined - its awsome, I kind of wonder how this is going to play out with Operators and Manufacturers who might just use it as a way of getting a cheap cell phone OS and gutting the intentions of Android.

It was interesting to see that the members of the OHA (Open Handset Alliance)have an anti fragmentation agreement, but Jason could not say whether or not this precluded Operators from removing essential components like the software installer which is very important as Operators could remove this component and have a free phone OS with none of the problems of customers reducing ARPU by calling support for help with after market applications that are interfering with the phone - ie this is not an operator problem it is the app developers problem but customers always phone the company with the name on the front screen!

This was the vision behind Symbian Signed, namely that the program should ensure applications have not been tampered with and that they have a certain level of quality, both of which appear to be missing in Android and I am going to be interested in seeing how Google solve this.

All I can say is 2008 is going be an interesting year for mobile applications!

Andy Holt from TMobile (I apologize if I got your last name wrong Andy) also had some insights during the post presentation drinks sessions where he outlined some of the challenges operators have in getting customers to find and use applications on the phone. Sometimes it does take research and focus groups to realize that not all customers are techies. It looks like there is a lot of opportunity in finding avenues to get customers more engaged with using the phone over and above making a phone calls as they really battle to translate the PC method of application aquisition to one on a mobile phone.

I also hooked up with a FN Champion and a couple of guys from Symbian as well so hi guys it was great meeting you folks and hope to see you at the Symbian smartphone show and/or next Champions day.