How Android Becomes Popular ?

1.) Google

Google used to own Android, now Google is an employee of Android platform; is working for Android in all aspect.

Google bought Android (a start up) and developed it into today's achievement.

Google is a driving force behind such development. In other words, Google is one of the few companies in the world to have hired professional software engineers and developers to build source codes for open source projects.

Not only Google contributes in terms of technicality, it also invested much resources into the business part of it.

2.) Firefox

As the most popular web browser ever downloaded to both windows based PC and Linux based PC, Firefox having support Android platform fires up a lot of interests for Android platform.

If you are a Firefox user, you will want to try out Android platform, at least you have thought about it.


3.) Open source.

Download the source code now, and keep a copy at your hard disk.

4.) Windows 7 tablet not quite ready yet

5.) Open standard

Google lead the formation of Open Handset Alliance which main task is to develop open standards for mobile handset. The purpose of such movement is to encourage micro-economy while minimizing monopoly.

With open standards, win-win situations are most often expected. Manufacturers may not earn the highest margin, but they can benefit from cost savings from R & D. Traders may not make the highest sales, but they can expect longer product life cycle.

6.) Timely (in the iPod,iPhone,iPad Era)

The smart devices market has been around for many years. Thanks to Steve Jobs, smart device market is now divided into Apple and Non-Apple. For every single Apple mobile device, there are many competitors all geared up to compete with it. And it is not until recently that those marketing efforts didn't win much battles against Apple.

It is getting more expensive to maintain proprietary platforms due to the pace at which technology gets outdated and the pace which consumer trends overlap each other.

For a non-Apple manufacturer, it is simply not a good idea to invest in proprietary platform anymore. The risk is too high and no one has the time for it.

Thus, instead of selling brands and software platforms, mobile device manufacturers now are selling hardware which runs on Android platform. In other words, it is almost as if mobile device manufacturers are selling plastic container with circuit boards. You just need to know how to create the circuit board.

Make no mistake that manufacturing challenges will remain, they still need to have engineers and etc, the only difference is that they don't own Android platform.

With such business model, it makes sense to come out with new models more frequently and put more emphasize on marketing and compete with price war, product offerings and package.

One thing to take note, after the success of Apple mobile devices, we haven't seen another Steve Job competitor, not from Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry and etc. Competitor personality whose keynote addresses are more important to watch then a good movie and who is outspoken enough to punish competitors for their own mistakes.

Maybe all those marketeers are employees, they are not founder of the company and they are bounded by restrictions.

7.) Java

Android development platform is based on Java which is also considered to be open source programming language.

Java is a powerful platform and was a dominant factor in write-once-run-anywhere concept until Microsoft counter strike with the .NET platform.

Java has seen lower adoption rate lately (thanks to Microsoft .NET and PHP), however it is still very much in demand. Java programmers are the most sought after in the market currently.

Java is now controlled by Oracle which bought over Sun Microsystem.

Almost whoever came into the ICT industry after the dot-com crashed would have a finger or two on Java.

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