Cell phone manufacturers have traditionally treated the OS on the phones as proprietary and specific to their brand so as to protect their investments in the models and differentiate themselves from other brands. We all know of the various products out there that have their own OS that cannot be used on other phones and allows them to have features that others do not. The iPhone is a typical example of this. In the smartphone arena, this uniqueness is very important.
Google has changed all of this with the Android OS and have multiple manufacturers using the OS, such as Motorola, Sony, HTC, Samsung, T-Mobile, etc. This is an impressive list of manufacturers and indicates the value that Android brings to the market. Recent reports regarding smartphone OS sales have the Android OS ahead of both RIM and the iPhone, which is very impressive.
The Android OS has even made it to the tablet world, with Dell’s Streak device. It is difficult to know the impact that the Android OS will make in the tablet market as things are very fluid and product announcements from numerous manufacturers are not making it to product delivery. But the track record of the smartphone OS is very positive and we can expect continuing improvements for the tablet market.
The Android OS offers us an alternative to vendor supplied OS’s and many have experienced problems associated with those OS’s. Since Google has dedicated significant resources to this endeavor, we can be assured of continuing quality improvements with each new version. With Android 2.2 planned to come out in September on the new Droid X, we are looking forward to many other related items. The Developer APIs being provided allow for addons that will work across phones and not be limited to a single smartphone. This provides opportunities that previously did not exist.
With Google behind the Android, we can continue to expect continuing improvements to enhance our smartphone experience.
