Google Android – YAP
Windows Mobile, BREW, Symbian, Web, UIQ, Java FX, S60, Palm OS, MIDP, Pocket PC, BlackBerry, SMS, Widgets, iPhone, and now Android…
Gheez…
Android, Yet Another Platform?
Let’s try to predict… Android, a Linux-based platform for mobile handsets that supports local applications via some kind of Java VM that is not Java ME/MIDP-based, with support to some kind of C-based SDK, and of course with support of mobile web applications via a local browser web-runtime, and access to services on the web such as OpenSocial API and other Google APIs. Anyone will be able to write applications for it, but at the end of the day, the carriers will still have control…
Google and the Open Handset Alliance, will it really change the game? It is possible; the landscape is changing… But Google ain’t Apple. Time will tell.
Related to this topic see:
- Open Mobile Handset Alliance – Google’s Mobile Adventure (All About Symbian)
- See the other 1,550+ blog posts on the same topic (Google blog search)
ceo
You are dead-on in this analysis. Google is starting to display the same kind of cocky, “we can mold the world into our own image,” thinking that Microsoft started showing when they began to head downhill.
More on my blog at http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/11/google-android-.html
According to the press release, Esmertec will provide Java ME on top of Android.
“Thanks to the availability of our Jbed Java VM on the Android platform, we offer immediate compatibility to the standard Java ME world to enable Java ME-based mobile services with the Android platform.”
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20071105_mobile_open.html
Yes, seeing Aplix and Esmertec as members, I realize they would supply some kind of Java VM… hopefully minimizing new APIs or more fragmentation. Thanks.
ceo
Your analysis may be pretty close. May I predict that the Java will be pretty much the focus for third-party developers (and will be pretty open) and that the “native” Linux platform will be closed. November 12th should be interesting. Here are my thoughts, in answer to a question a friend asked, as to what I thought of Android.
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/sean_sheedy/archive/2007/11/on_the_android.html
Android guys simply cannot mention supports “Java” as Android seems to be truly open and free to use in commercial device products. Java isn’t free for commercial usage as most TCKs (e.g. all from Sun) are missing open source licenses. See for good discussion about this:
http://www.bugblogger.com/2007/10/gpl-sun-java-tr.html
Esmertec and Aplix sell commercial Java implementation products as they have got licenses from Sun (and others) to the required Java ME TCKs. What it means that they are happy to see them also to Android using device manufacturers.
What Java tech-ecosystem would need is fully free and open “Java”. I hope open handset alliance will eventually release also compatibility kits for free-Java but then everybody would start to use some other name for this technology. Hey OJ!
Yes both Esmertec and Aplix who are part of the OHA have their own Java VMs and MIDP implementations. It is going to be interesting to see how all this evolves, and what VM vendor wins on what handsets. This of course doesn’t address the Java fragmentation problem.
ceo