Android vs. iPhone: Why Openness May Not Be Best
Open or perish. It’s a meme that’s been embraced as fact ever since Eric Raymond published his seminal essay, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.” If you are not “open,” (i.e., open source or open APIs), you don’t get it, and you’re destined for obsolescence. But while there is an appealing logic to this premise, the reality just isn’t that black and white, especially when it comes to the mobile arena.
Consider the different approaches to openness taken by the two companies with (arguably) the greatest product differentiation, most thriving ecosystems and potent cash-flow generation engines in the business: Apple and Google. The former (Apple) is more proprietary, with an integrated approach to hardware, software and service. The latter (Google) is generally perceived to be more open, taking a “loosely coupled” approach to systems and services. Both are breakout businesses, with legions of devoted followers. So which approach is better?
Apple is widely lauded for delivering a superb user experience, offering great synergy and seamless integration across its different product offerings, but it’s also an occasional bully, self-selecting which services and offerings it anoints as value-adds, and which it blocks as deleterious (Flash) or redundant (Podcaster).
Google, by contrast, is pretty prodigious in terms of rolling out a lot of product offerings, and its openness has encouraged the proverbial thousand flowers to bloom (e.g., site-optimized mapping functions have become endemic to many third-party sites, thanks to Google Maps). Critics note, however, that many of Google’s products are uninspired and unfocused from a product lifecycle perspective.
So, let’s look at Apple’s iPhone platform, and compare its prospects to those of Google’s Android.
With the iPhone, Apple has collapsed desktop, mobile, web and media experiences and integrated them across hardware, software and service layers, in the process delivering a great user experience, creating a thriving marketplace (via iTunes and the App Store) and catalyzing a powerful developer ecosystem (more than 20,000 apps and 500 million downloads). Naysayers counter that Apple’s approach is proprietary, and thus, doomed to entropy.
Android, by contrast, is open source, isn’t married to specific hardware or service providers, and addresses the segment of the mobile device builder market not named Apple or BlackBerry maker RIM.
Android enthusiasts tell a story that sounds like the Microsoft vs. Apple PC Wars. A visionary, but proprietary hardware/software vendor starts making money hand over fist when into the void comes a software vendor that works with multiple hardware OEMs (and service providers) and over time becomes ubiquitous, relegating the proprietary vendor to niche status. This time, the story ends with Google triumphantly emerging as the unified stack that ties together mobile, PC and web universes.
There’s one small fly in the ointment, however. While device makers can do pretty much “anything” with an open platform, in order to deliver a superior user experience, Google will either have to take on the burden of supporting “anything” or set limits on what will work on any particular instantiation of the platform.
Of course, setting limits makes Android less open, reducing leverage across the entire ecosystem. It’s a problem for all open source platforms, and as an old embedded systems guy, I can tell you that all the issues are only magnified with mobile devices. Why? Because performance, reliability and user experience really matter with mobile devices, making integration key, which is a conundrum for the open source approach.
The reality is that openness is just an attribute -– it’s not an outcome, and customers buy outcomes. They want the entire solution and they want it to work predictability. Only a tiny minority actually cares about how or why it works. It’s little wonder, then, that the two device families that have won the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of consumers, developers and service providers alike (i.e., BlackBerry and iPhone) are the most deeply integrated from a hardware, software and service layer perspective.
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p class=”western” style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>That’s not to say that these challenges aren’t solvable, but it is suggestive that the inevitability of Android is far from a straight line, and that open vs. proprietary is less absolute than the zealots would like to believe.
Mark Sigal is a digital media and Internet platform entrepreneur who has done eight startups, four of them as a co-founder.
Android (at least until now) has pretty much been an ignoble flop in terms of sales (i.e. the G1), so its already a conclusion that being “open” doesn’t guarantee audience interest. It needs big time work before it will really be ready for prime time.
This is such a great article. I could not agree more with what you have said here. I too have come from a long engineering background and find the Apple platform being closed is more attractive to developers and consumers alike. All of the issues you brought up are spot on and only contribute to the fact that to increase the usability, stability and ultimately user experience of a product it is much easier to worry less about the specific hardware the software is running on.
You can go further and abstract back to the OS wars. Apple having control of the hardware and its OS allows the user experience to be the same across the board. To me, a consistent user experience is critical to a mobile platform. I agree with Apple’s approach to not allow multi-threading of apps. This would inevitably cause usability issues.
I was a Windows developer for 18 years and since I now develop on Apple, I must say, the advantages the closed system offers out weighs the openness 10 fold.
Android will dilute the user experience by having SO many devices and software will have to adapt to these devices etc. Eventually, something like the DROID may get some traction at which point developers will code explicitly for the device. If this happens and explicit development occurs for a particular Android device, you might as well have a closed system like Apple.
That’s my 2 cents worth.
@David, thanks for the note, and put a bow around your comment, “Eventually, something like the DROID may get some traction at which point developers will code explicitly for the device. If this happens and explicit development occurs for a particular Android device, you might as well have a closed system like Apple.” My guess is that few people get the ramifications of this one.
Re: “device makers can do pretty much anything”
I think it will be in the interest of all vendors using Android, to try to stay mainstream on the stack. That way they benefit from collective development, testing, support & documentation. It also ensures that all Android apps run on all Android devices.
Where vendors may diverge is at the UI level…to differentiate their products. In some cases, it may not even be obvious that Android is running underneath.
If what I said is true, then the stack will be the responsibility of the OHA members (including Google) while the UI customizations will be the responsibility of the vendor making them.
Clearly and well stated. This isn’t too different from all of the hullabaloo over DRM. Truth is most people don’t care, just a loud, vocal minority who, being a very web integrated group, are disproportionately represented in the comments blocks on websites where such issues are covered.
I think that “openness” (and I use quotes here intentionally because there are so many definitions of what that is, exactly) is just one tactic that technology providers can use. It’s important to understand that “open” is not an end but a means to an end. For most businesses, the objective is disruption.
> Android (at least until now) has pretty much been an ignoble flop in terms of sales (i.e. the G1)
And the Mac was an equally “‘ignoble flop” at a time when the only available Mac was the 128K ‘toaster’ in 1984. Way too early to call winners and losers.
Android’s strength, in my opinion, will become visible when it starts to branch out beyond phones: we should be seeing Android-based netbooks by year end, and there’s no reason it couldn’t run on full-power notebooks or even desktops eventually.
Anyway, this article generally suffers from the Highlander Fallacy: the belief that in the end, there can be only one. In practice some people will prefer closed, some will prefer open, and different providers will serve each group.
“Android’s strength, in my opinion, will become visible when it starts to branch out beyond phones: we should be seeing Android-based netbooks by year end, and there’s no reason it couldn’t run on full-power notebooks or even desktops eventually”
Nothing Apple hasn’t done already… just so you know, the iPhone is a Mac OS X mobile version…. Apple is one step ahead in that matter. I agree with your second statement, there can obviously be many players, the idea here is which one will have the biggest market share. The answer so far, is obvious, not Android anytime soon. RIM and Apple are at the top, and Apple’s market is growing while RIM has become stable.
“Where vendors may diverge is at the UI level…to differentiate their products. “
The problem is if the vendor UIs diverge too much, the application market will become fragmented. Windows not only provided a common hardware interface, it provided a common user interface for all PC applications.
So? It’s just the UI that would be fragmented, not available apps or other customizations. Look at the HTC Hero for example.
You really have to take into account how much work was put into the iPhones OS before release and how much work was put into Android before release (along with the fact that it uses components of the already polished Mac OS X).
Android is technically a rushed product.
It has nothing to do with being Open or not, it’s just how much time was put into each product.
At some point, Android may catch up to the iPhone or even surpass it (in some ways it already has).
I am inclined to agree with this. Just a cursory glance at the Issues list shows where the prorities of people are. There’s a very loud minority screaming for FLAC support. FLAC. Something that is a definite minority when it comes to audio formats. But getting FLAC on Android is one of the highest voted issues right now. The completely broken and almust unusable email client? Farther on down the list. It’s all too common in the OSS world – functionality is far less important than whiz-bang-flash stuff.
I can’t pick what IMAP folders I want to use for what (Like I need my phone creating its own Sent folder!) but soon I’ll be able to listen to FLAC on my phone. :|
[quote]functionality is far less important than whiz-bang-flash stuff.[/quote] Funny — that’s what free software people keep saying about the closed world.
Anyway, I think one of the reason why FLAC not being support is a big thing to people with android is that it’s expected to be there — after all Android is running a Linux stack where FLAC support is pratically always a given.
I suspect the issues with email not being high on the list has to do with people having android phones properly don’t use their phones for email all that much. Besides, it’s pratically a given that the issue will be fixed — it’s too important not to.
“…in order to deliver a superior user experience, Google will either have to take on the burden of supporting “anything” or set limits on what will work on any particular instantiation of the platform.”
As the Brits like to say, bollocks.
First, “superior user experience” is in the eye of the beholder. I have had two iPods, including an iPod Touch, and I dumped both of them. In particular, for me, the iPod Nano’s user experience was dreadful. Clearly, there are any number of people who think the iPod line is the epitome of user experience…and for them, it probably is. For others, like myself, it is not. To assume there is a single definition of “superior user experience” flies in the face of reality.
Second, Google itself does not necessarily have to lift a finger to deliver a “superior user experience”. Case in point: TiVo. Some people think the TiVo’s user experience is “superior”, while others do not. However, there is little question that Linus Torvalds and Linux did not “have to take on the burden of supporting “anything” or set limits on what will work on any particular instantiation of the platform” for TiVo to create its user experience. Android is not significantly different. Some device makers will create a platform that uses Android as a foundation but delivers their own flavor of “superior user experience” (a la Sonar, http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/19/sonar-hopes-to-power-social-featurephones-we-get-a-demo-2/). Some device makers will ship vanilla Android for people whose idea of a “superior user experience” involves their own level of customization. Other device makers may take yet other approaches.
In fact, it is only through having an open platform that Android will be able to meet the varied definitions of “superior user experience”, because it will take more than one firm (Google) to implement those definitions.
I agree. Each person’s user experience differs. I have seen many iPod user not happy with the user experience.
In 1999 -2002 Apple had iLife suite. ( iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband.) Those days mp3 was on the computers with iTunes or quicktime on Mac and WMplayer or Winamp on windows. Thought there where thousands of mp3 player non of them were good in easily handling 100 or more song.
I used to take my laptop where ever i go to play music. Sometimes thumb drives. Now in 2001 Apple introduced iPod. Its meant to sync all my music of my laptop (i.e iTunes). So, virtually all my iBook music is with me in the form of iPod (with same playlist and songs i organized on my itunes).
Later version allowed me to sync contacts, Photos from iPhoto, Home made movies by iMovies, my calender etc. Now Apple has wireless devices like Apple TV, iPhone and me.com . I have to just say sync. Nothing more.
This is one of the best experience i have found on any computer platform. Its the approach many people fail understand. Once the library iPhoto, iTunes, is build and synced. Its there with just few clicks away.
So, iPod can be best used if you have a organized iTunes , iPhoto libraries and contact, calender works on iPhone, iPod which is great.
Bottom Line>>>>> Common data is Music, Photos, Videos, Contacts, Calender and more
While on the move. My iPhone lets me access the common data. During jogs my iPod let’s me access the common data, While watching Apple TV lets it lets me access the common data and while i’m a Mac its the Common data and even if i’m abroad still i have access to my common data with me.com
So, Virtually i can carry any device and not stuck to just laptop. Imagine this the way Apple works from 2000.
you hit the nail on the head…..all of your personal information (music, photos, contacts, calendar, videos, etc) sits in one place and can be synced easily to many devices from anywhere you might be. Nothing can be more convenient and simplistic than that, and only someone who’s experienced that convenience and simplicity can appreciate Apple’s approach to a closed system. Great comment rmbig. I guarantee if anyone commenting on this board used all of Apple’s products (music, photo, video, contacts, calendar and apple tv) for a few months, they would finally understand the benefits of what Apple is doing to make getting your “common data” easily accessible from anywhere. Unfortunately, unless you’ve experienced it, you can never quite understand or appreciate it……….This comment is coming from someone who got frustrated with the constant bugs of a Windows Environment (freezing, resetting, viruses, help desk calls at 10 oclock at night) and was willing to try an easier way (though more expensive) to streamline everything easily…happy holidays to all
Gotta agree with kevin. Looking at expanding into the mobile space, there’s so much that’s appealing in Apple’s end-to-end approach and only 1 physical device format. How do you develop for Android if the platform specs change? It’s the browser wars all over again. Yes, it’s a surmountable problem, but it’s taken years to work out of the chaos that created, and that just gives Apple more time to solidify its position.
Apple really has created a great little mobile space that’s super developer-friendly (i’m judging only by # of apps created by indies), and via iTunes has created a viable revenue-generating marketplace. Most of that credit has to go to the relatively simplicity that comes with developing and supporting a single device, IMO.
@kevin
In the first part I stated that the stack should remain intact, so applications launch & run properly on all Android devices (i.e. to avoid application fragmentation).
The UI changes I am talking about are the layout of the screen, the organization of the app launchers, whether hardware buttons or GUI buttons are used, colors, graphics, etc.
Touch Revolution is one company using Android for home appliances. At CES, they demonstrated some totally different screen interfaces for Android.
The big problem with android is not the platform itself. The platform is wonderful. When it comes to android is marketing. First off the G1 is a horaable looking device. Its a brick basically with a keyboard. Most people dont even know what a OS is. So you need a pretty phone first to hook the people in. The g1 is not this phone. The hard were on the phone is barly enough to run the os without it crashing. If android was marketed better it might do well. But they re no where close in terms with apple. Apple has a giant grip in the mobil market . Anything that comes out that has touch in it will be compared to the iphone. Android needs to not go up adgest iphone but come out as a alrtintive to iphone
We are focusing our efforts on the iPhone for the simple reason that the platform is performing in terms of customers actually making purchases of content and applications. Additionally, we support two devices and three versions, as opposed to “supporting anything.” This is key from a design perspective. Much content should simply not be on every mobile device, regardless of the network capabilities. If we are looking at visual marketing, why should a small screen be considered visual? The iPhone and the G1 are the minimum, but until Android has interactions which separate it from the mobile web, application development, and our efforts, will be stuck in the past.
I certainly do not condone Apple’s behavior with the respect to applications. Our platform would frankly be perfect for paid adult content, but we have decided to avoid that, as has Apple. But podcasting! Come on! Mobile OS X is several years old, and it will grow. Hopefully, Apple will grow in it’s comfort with competitive content, and not quite offensive content. Can we say the word f*ck already! Mobile OS X is BSD, just like the real one. An open version would be cool. I doubt that will materialize though, but it could cut Android off at the knees. In that scenario Apple would retain the interface. OpenMoko running Mobile Darwin!
“The reality is that openness is just an attribute -– it’s not an outcome, and customers buy outcomes.”
Well said. The reason Open Source worked so well in the ’90’s is that the developers of Mozilla, Apache, and such were only competing against MSFT, and those guys are hopelessly inept.
As for “open” platforms (completely different from Open SOFTWARE, run by volunteers), like Windows, with many OEM’s– many believe this so-called “competition” between Dell, Gateway, HP jump-started the PC industry. In fact, it has been a disaster; it is one reason Macs area always better– the “whole widget” is designed at once.
“The reality is that openness is just an attribute -– it’s not an outcome, and customers buy outcomes.”
Well said. The reason Open Source worked so well in the ’90’s is that the developers of Mozilla, Apache, and such were only competing against MSFT, and those guys are hopelessly inept.
As for “open” platforms (completely different from Open SOFTWARE, run by volunteers), like Windows, with many OEM’s– many believe this so-called “competition” between Dell, Gateway, HP jump-started the PC industry. In fact, it has been a disaster; it is one reason Macs area always better– the “whole widget” is designed at once.
Hi Mark,
I think you missed another point here. The lack of openness on mobile platforms may also be attributed to the restrictions imposed by carriers. Think about this, the joost app on iphone works with wi-fi but not with 3G, because ATT wouldn’t want it that way. On an android there would be no such restriction, but is it good for t-mobile? Apple is trying to balance the interests of the consumers, the carriers and themselves. Google will not be able to deliver that with their openness.
Let there be a few bittorrent clients on android and let people start downloading movies on their android phones and lets see the reaction from t-mobile. :)
“The open source community seems to value openness more than innovation. In the post-iPhone era, for example, Android (while open source and backed by the largest Internet company) isn’t leading the innovation charge. That honor belongs to Palm (another propriatery, vertically-integrated platform) with its upcoming Pre.
Ironically, if the iPhone platform can fail to dominate the smartphone market because it’s too closed, the Android platform may fail because it’s too open.”
Agora phone exposes Android’s Achilles Heel http://counternotions.com/2009/01/19/agora/
Can I just mention that Kogan are just an importer of cheap rip off goods from Asia. They have never had quality products and it comes as no surprise that they would bring out an Android phone based on some cheap BlackBerry rip off. I feel this would never be an issue for a company like HTC, Motorola or Samsung who would adhere to standards. Don’t blame the OS because a hardware manufacturer is trying to cut costs and make a bad phone. I’m sure as with any OS, PC, Phone or otherwise, there are minimum specs to run it. Try installing Windows XP on a computer that can’t deliver more that 640×480. It’ll install but some apps won’t run very well because there’s not enough screen res.
You realized that the consumer will have to break his head to figure out which one is better.
How many instances are there where consumers chose (paid) for open solutions when closed solutions were also available? What comes to mind specifically is the video game industry. Most console owners are also PC owners. Instead of just buying the game (typically about $10 cheaper) for the PC, they spent extra money for a console and more money per game. The console is closed and proprietary with Nintendo, Sony, and now Microsoft leading the pack (though yes, Sony having particular problems at the moment). It is an industry dominated by the consumers choice to pay for the closed system.
As best as I can tell, across industries, open is an exception, not the standard. The only people who make noise are developers.
As if “performance, reliability and user experience” don’t matter with my computer desktop?
Sorry, but I fail to see the logic trail here.
OK so now we’ve read the opening paragraph, where’s the rest of the argument? I don’t disagree with what has been written but there is a lot more to the scenario than presented here. Where is the app developers perspective, or the carrier’s or indeed the users viewpoint. This could be a really interesting starting point for a discussion but it just doesn’t go far enough.
@ Screen Sleuth, don’t get me wrong. It’s way to early to reach conclusions about Android. We’ve seen the appetizer but the main course has yet to arrive. Always remiss to reach conclusions about barely 1.0 offerings.
@HereAndNow, I totally agree with your thinking, and this is closer to the LAMP model but I think that Google’s goals with Android are bigger, and to be clear, it’s not merely UI, but core services, developer tools, back-end marketplace functions, a whole gestalt that have to come together to be more than a “SO WHAT, it’s better (sort of) than a typical Motorola and Nokia phone, but not a game changer.” That’s the conundrum – go for units and ubiquity or differentiated experience and high margin business – not absolutes but harder to execute in a loosely couple, open model, I believe.
@Jefferey McManus, thanks and agreed. Open means a lot of different things to different people. Part of point of post is not confusing attributes with outcomes, as many in this business do. I would reframe even disruption as applied disruption, as disruption for disruption sake is great if you are trying to kill someone’s business model but it may not be same as building a breakout business. Craigslist comes to mind as a pure disruptor – legions of dead but just a modest, albeit hugely successful, business.
Open always carries the implied Wisdom of the crowds. But it you try to quantify that you end up with something like( simplified and abbreviated):
wotc = soc *(probability * pobtdh)
wotc = Wisdom of the crowds soc = size of crowd pobtdh = permutation of been there done that (fail or success)
Which basically tells us that the wisdom of the crowds is best used to avoid mistakes of the past, and since it’s based on experience it’s a short term data based approach. But it’s really good at stabilizing a system, hence Linux is pretty stable. But progress in Linux (kernel) is directed by one Person Linus, who is happy with short term stable progress. On the other hand Steve J seems not to care about the wotc, and Microsoft and Google are run by it. So why is Microsoft so bad on security? Well it’s a long term thing and has to be designed and build in from the beginning, but crowds don’t like long term things. In contrast of Linux which is based on a few peoples ideas (Unix) who had some good design goals and a multi-user system in mind and didn’t care to much about wotc at the time of design.
We’ll see how Google handles long term design goals, so far I’m not impressed.
@Kevin, you nail it. Windows is largely a homogeneous platform so they never had to deal with a bunch of form factors, proprietary services of the carriers or the phone makers themselves (although plenty of hardware abstraction layer complexity, to be sure). In case of mobile, this starts to become a divergence point. A simple example here is that as a developer, if I can write one application for Android versus 15 (to support a lot of device variants), life is good. If I have to write 15 versions, that forces me to either build a lowest common denominator application or pick and choose. To be clear, this is one of the dilemmas Apple could easily face as they morph the platform into different form factors.
@Tom B, thanks for the comments. I think history shows that the PC is more of a homogeneous platform, and that consumers were willing to sacrifice performance and experience for price and platform uniformity in this realm. I think that they are trying to get away from this in mobile, which is why iPhone/iPod have become huge successes. Specific to history of PC, hat’s off to MS, though. As much as I am no longer a fan of Windows, their approach in PC wars is the singular reason that a PC on every desktop is a reality. An interesting data point is that there was a point in time when the whole integrated Mac experience was a core differentiator, and another when it was nominally better but not enough to counter the massive R&D associated with an OEM oriented platform (read Apple by Jim Carlton for more fodder on this one). Now, with rise of iPod and iPhone, desktop is becoming somewhat of an integrated media/info center so Apple has a self-affirming feedback, something I blogged about in:
“Holy Sh-t! Apple’s Halo Effect” (http://thenetworkgarden.bcom/weblog/2008/04/holy-shit-apple.html).
I think that this variable still is very potent in mobile/media especially, but history suggests that that might not always be the case. A lot of the opportunity is enabled by virtue of Microsoft somewhat collapsing upon itself. It would be a different game if they got their execution mojo back.
@Praveen, along those lines, there was a good post on VentureBeat last week teasing Android, saying that for an open platform they sure have a lot of restrictions. To your point, the more you try and reconcile your own selfish business goals, partner requirements and consumer experience needs, the more you start making seemingly binary choices. Case in point Hulu blocking Boxee just last week. Thanks again for the comments.
@Kontra, that is a really good point, and I am admittedly behind the curve on Pre (other than what I’ve read), but it well illustrates your point about being too open as a seeming hindrance every bit as much as being too closed is. Will check out the post. ☺
@Greg, that any PC owner can not follow the logic on the obvious sacrifices of performance, reliability and user experience in the PC realm demands a, “Huh, are you serious?” Oh, the many times it took 15+ minutes to restart Outlook, while my PST file had to be rebuilt for reasons I know not why; how performance degrades as more and more applications are launched, blue screens of death, let alone death by feature overkill. Office upgrade anyone?
To be clear, Apple is far from perfect in this realm, but I see this as a clear distinction between PC and mobile/media device realm. You can’t have phone calls hanging because some rogue process is taking your system down, you can’t have songs skipping because emails just arrived, etc., etc. Case in point, my Blackberry 7130. Unsexy, does two things really well – email and phone, doesn’t let a bunch of other stuff get in the way with that experience. Indispensable.
@ronald, interesting comments, and part of my knee jerk wrt open is that it is great where there are agreed upon, ubiquitously embraced standards or broad built in leverage to solve the problem at hand (as the solution builder defines it, not broad industry). Often, open is just a rallying cry, to which I counter that the great thing about open standards is that there are so many to choose from. That said, there are plenty of areas where there is little goodness to recreating the wheel, ample and diverse data points on all variants of the use case scenarios which benefit from wisdom of crowds contribution, and the layer of the stack is not where a business’s secret sauce lies. Everyone can theoretically agree on open is good until it gets to their proprietary differentiation layer, and then things become less open. Understandably, open Google doesn’t give you source to Google Search and you can’t use AdSense/AdWords to knock off Google’s PPC advertising business. As to Google’s innovation culture, Om had a great post on this one a week or so ago.
Kevin, For the most part I think you are right but an open platform is a more appealing long term goal for phone vendors and software vendors. Limits will have to be put on Android in order for it to flourish in the mainstream (it’s pretty far from mainstream right now). this will impact the openness of the platform in the same way Linux has been limited. It’s taken a long time for Linux and it still isn’t quite mainstream (NetBooks might get it there), I expect the Android market to behave in a similar way with an accelerated curve. In the meantime Apple have a pretty easy ride getting people to buy into their “walled garden”. Android is definitely a long-term play. I made some predictions about the Android market last week: http://rossmason.blogspot.com/2009/02/android-predictions.html
Cheers,
Ross http://twitter.com/rossmason
Outcome trumps openness in cell phones.
It’s pretty simple to me: Apple makes the PCs, best MP3s and the best cell phones. Why keep debating what the last 30 years of data have clearly stated???
Nicely human.
GigaOM is powered by WordPress, an open source application running on the open standards of PHP, SQL, XHTML, etc. In fact, there are very few major players in web technology that aren’t open, except for Flash, which Adobe seems to be making more and more open every day. While Android may not be as well-integrated an experience as the iPhone, it’s definitely more forward thinking to the near future when no calculations besides input, output, and network are actually done by client devices.
In other words, Android vs. iPhone isn’t going to matter within the next five years.
What’s interesting is, people look at the iPhone and see an advanced UI. I look at my iPhone and think it teaches all it’s developers about context. Right now it’s the security context, or compartment their applications can run in. But what is the difference between a security context and a context given meaning to data? It’s just one more step if you have learned to think about context.
So while Microsoft and Google are stuck in 20th century OS design, Apple has something build in already Google is just starting to realize. “Meanwhile, our understanding of the interplay between high-quality content, search algorithms, and personal information is just beginning.” http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/from-height-of-this-place.html
Where personal information is personal context. You most likely want that in security compartments for obvious reasons. Question is was that by design or pure luck?
“while Microsoft and Google are stuck in 20th century OS design, Apple has something build in already”
@Ronald: Damn right! Multitasking is so 20th century.
@allen
If you don’t have access to Multitasking does not mean it is not there. Actually multitasking is so 20th century, real lock free massive parallel systems use multiple path evaluation.
iPhone is still on the hill. I don’t like it too much but this is the true.
You cannot store files, No other browser, You cannot listen to music when you are playing games ? iPhone is for 21st century ?
Target audience for Android seems to be ‘the geeks’ and ‘anything but apple’ crowd. A small target market.
The iPhone is the Google of phones. The hoi polloi seems quite content with the iPhone, it has mindshare, it has buzz and most importantly it has the maker of the iPod behind it. The iPhone has well lodged itself as a popular culture and media icon, much like the iPod before it.
-S
Poor customer service, high bills, too much controlling, and more recently Apple only being interested in making money doesn’t matter how, are not the things that would keep the “whatever crow” happy.
I did appreciate Apple products and quality but I sure do hope they are going to work a bit harder on keeping up their rep. I am consumer who is interested in good products, good quality and good service and Apple was good in all those categories until about 2 years ago but very disappointing recently.
These people are too greedy to let go of single penny, leave alone losing a large chunk they incur using lincensing of products for such proprietery code.
Android is good. iPhone is better. And, unless another company gets the interface right, iPhone will stay on top.
Finally, there could be a true competitor for the iPhone – the Sony Ericsson Idou.
The touchscreen covers the whole, the ENTIRE front face of the handset. The Symbian interface is much more than a revolution. And, above all, a record breaking 12 MP camera is built in, as well as Xenon Flash and Walkman tools.
Read more about the Idou on my blog, at http://blog.stevewiilliams.me.uk/2009/02/21/the-sony-ericsson-idou/.
Android is a good thing! It is good when looking at what has been available prior. Once you start compare it to Apple and iPhone, it starts falling apart. Apple´s total control on device, developer environment and marketing window makes it very different and should probably not be comparred. Iphone will never dominate a world market, they are a niche product offered to the savy tech users and fashionable youngster. Nokia outsell apple any day. What Android is offering to do is to break the mobilephone market open, just like apple did with iPhone. they are very different and offer completly different advantages.
read more at http:boic.wordpress.com
thanks for a great post, sparked some good reflections on my own work.
Android is a good thing! It is good when looking at what has been available prior. Once you start compare it to Apple and iPhone, it starts falling apart. Apple´s total control on device, developer environment and marketing window makes it very different and should probably not be comparred. Iphone will never dominate a world market, they are a niche product offered to the savy tech users and fashionable youngster. Nokia outsell apple any day. What Android is offering to do is to break the mobilephone market open, just like apple did with iPhone. they are very different and offer completly different advantages.
read more at http://boic.wordpress.com
thanks for a great post, sparked some good reflections on my own work.
People tend to forget that in the early PC days, one had to INVEST a huge amount of money on PC hardware and software (compared to today). Once you made that investment, it was hard to change platforms.
In contrast, a typical mobile contract is 2 years. I didn’t invest in a $495 office suite for my phone, so it really doesn’t cost me much to switch. If the Palm Pre is better than the iPhone, I’ll get that. If, after 2 years, I think it sucks, I’ll dump it for iPhone 4, or an Android phone. At the most, I probably spent $20 on downloaded software, so who cares if I can’t use it on my new phone. For that matter, even if I keep the same “platform” (i.e. Android or Win Mobile or Palm Pre), there’s not guarantee that the software I bought would work with the new phone! At least with Apple, I’m more confident that my 99 cent application will work on the next phone, and I can transfer the app.
So I don’t see the big deal about OPEN vs CLOSED. They can co-exist happily, as long as each is profitable.
Look at the photography industry. Does anyone get bent out of shape about the fact that I can’t put my Nikon DSLR lenses on a Canon, or Olympus or Pentax?? Its harder for me to switch SLR platforms than it is to switch mobile phones! But nobody really bitches too much about that!
Neal
Excellent point. And for that matter I am using Android on an ATT Tilt, and even without development being completed its very, very, promising. Its gonna be interesting to see what happens when the Mobile Virtuaization Platform hits and you can run any OS you want on your phone at boot.
@Neal
Hopefully the world will become even better than the one you painted.
If we eventually get to web apps like Google demonstrated with HTML5 & Gmail recently, you won’t even have to learn new applications, if you change phone vendor or OS.
The world of mobile is getting more exciting every day!
Mark: You’re probably right, but this isn’t just my opinion. Most i’ve spoken to say (as others have said here), outcome trumps openness. Most general cell users don’t care about the “open platform” thing, and feel that at this stage, Android was released too quickly and half-baked. I actually am rooting for Android to release a 2.0 that kicks butt (being a software programmer myself), but they’re going uphill at this point.
A simple comparison is one from the desktop OS.
Android = linux
iphone = os x
Open source is great but Android will be hard pressed to match the “pretty” Apple interface. At the same time Android may provide a much higher utility and less stringent environment due to its open nature. Android will be to cell phones what linux is to the pc. iphone is os x w/out all the functions.
@commonsguy:
TiVo is a bad example – it is a closed ecosystem running on an “open” OS that was heavily modified, hence the “anti-TiVoization” aspects of GPLv3.
I believe it will take another year or so until open source is the best option for phones. With the rise in open source software and operating systems its only a matter of time until all phones will be open source as most people not only want free software they need it. I know open source is not always free so I’ll also say that allowing members of the software community to help develop major software will always increase the no of tech savey users.
Gareth garethtech.wordpress.com
@aep528:
Android is less restrictive than GPLv2. Thats why it will enable companies like TiVo to come up with their own UI and be competitive but still be compatible with others. Don’t people like HTC touch more than any other windows mobile implementation? Once a platform enables closed UI layer, vendors will start using it. Vendors dont want to develop all applications you see… Just the UI and basic and common applications which fit with it…
99% of consumers don’t care about open or proprietary standards. They care about what their phone looks like, what it does, how slickly it does it, and in the case of the millions who use Ipod/Itunes – 80% of the digital music market – they care about being able to listen to their music and use a phone without carrying two devices. It’s really no more complex than that.
I’ve been for closed systems in many cases because as Apple often prove, it just works. You get consistent quality and performance in line with the original designers intentions. Most of the open software I have used has felt like it lacks polish and consistency. I am certainly glad it is free.
I personally have a G1, and I love it. It is a great product, and as it develops I feel that it could lead to bigger and better things. And seeing how new this technology is, I feel that given some time, the Android system will be able to compete with that of the iPhone. And possibly surpass everyone’s speculations and predictions.
I respect Apple for their “revolutionary thinking” but seems like they have forgotten the major part of “superb user experience” is customer service. I see them falling behind and going downhill unless they have a “new” revolution up their sleeve (which it just about seems too late to introduce since 3G S merely fixed some problems as opposed to introducing something new). iPhone is not yet even capable of allowing use of multiple application at one time while Palm Pre is out in the market and about 2 years ahead apple it seems. iPhone OS or Android, choice is easy and happens to be Android because there are device about come out that will be capable of doing so much more than the hardware of iphone could even dream to support. Apple needs to wake and stop controlling so much that a user needs to jailbreak the iphone and use a third party tweak, simply to see the weather icon on the springboard display the actual temperature. It is ridiculous!!!
The iPhone is certainly capable of running apps in the background. You can, for example, be on a call and switch to the calendar app to add an appointment at the same time. You can also run many apps while the iPod app plays a song. You can also download things from the itunes store in the background (such as other apps or songs) while you do other things.
Outside of those circumstances, the OS at this point in time just doesn’t allow multitasking in effort to preserve the responsiveness and battery life of the product. I mean forget running 5 apps at once, have you noticed how fast the battery drains when using 3G vs. Edge with running a single app? Have you used a Palm Pre or G1 and had multiple apps running at the same time? The device becomes very unresponsive and the battery doesn’t last very long. People expect to be able to go a whole day without charging their phone.
iPhone OS is Mac OS X and if you’ve ever used Mac OS X you know it multi-tasks with the best of them. The limitation of the current iPhone implementation is there on purpose to preserve the user experience given the hardware limitations.
In my opinion people who knows little to nothing about technology will prefer the Iphone because of it’s easy to use software. They will not know that they are limited to what only apple will bring them. Another thing is that the Iphone is only for At&t while the Android platform will eventually go to all Mobile carriers. If everyone uses the Android we all will be or can be connected with each other no matter what service provider we use. I’ll have to say the Android will soon prevail over the Iphone.
In my opinion people who understand technology will always go for the iPhone – that’s why every mobile developer I know is falling over themselves to develop for it. The only ‘freedom’ most developers want is the freedom to make money. Before iPhone mobile application development was a pretty closed shop, now we read everywhere stories of nine year olds downloading a dev kit and developing their own apps. If you want to see the ‘advantages’ of open, then just switch to a linux os for a week. Android is a great idea, and i’m sure with Google behind it will mature – but it does not compete with the iPhone as a pure consumer device. -in my opinion ;-/
Performance: I can accept iPhone is better in performance curve, since it is well integrated with the device. If more performance it will meet all the real time things needed for the user. I know real time things are needed for public safety devices, military devices, NASA devices etc. Security: Next the security of the device. iPhone is more secure since it is closed and one big guy is controlling it.
I feel you have the above 2 things in your mind for supporting iPhone as pure consumer device.
Lets come to Android:
Performance: Android is having less performance since, it is using virtual machine and similar to the Sun Java. I’m sure that performance of the Android can be improved if better hardware is used. We must not forget that hardware performance is increasing as time goes. Security: To my opinion any software (whether open or closed) can create a security architecture. Using software anything is possible. Google will be easy to change their mind to put strong security in Android and at same time it is open.Open doesn’t mean that we can compromise security. Security is main factor for all of us, no matter open or close.
Does iPhone have this? – Device diversity (Ability to create innovative new device based on the operating system, with less effort and less cost) – Easy to learn (Android uses Java a very user friendly language. Java captures the real world thing lot better than other language and is easy to learn. A child can also learn it) – Cost of the final device is cheap (Developing countries cannot afford to buy expensive things. Expensive things means more pirated software. Cheap may not be factor, only if money is not a factor for human. I think this money factor not going to happen soon.)
From a developer view point, the iphone Object C language is really bad for development and it only run under Applce OS environment. Android is using JAVA which has been used by millions developers with thousands open source projects. If any hardware provider support Android operation system i think many developers and designers will bring us more applications better then app store.
Might be cheaper to develop in JAVA vs apple’s sources for the business, but for the developers just gives us more to do right now.
Background on me. A former Apple hater. Now I use a Mac and an iPhone because they’re the best. CTO and senior software engineer. Ex-CEO of a technology company. Well-versed to the point I could write books about platforms, development, and how those two interface with business models and market penetration and wars for platform dominance.
So am I going to come out and say iPhone and Apple are going to dominate? To the uninformed it looks that way. After all Apple just had its two highest revenue quarters in history and just sold 7.4 million iPhones IN ONE QUARTER. The answer to all this is no.
Android is about to take over the whole damn planet for so many reasons I can’t even go into. 1. Platform independence. You’ve got every mobile device maker who has fallen behind in the smartphone wars back in the game. Samsung. LG. Palm. Sony-Ericson. Their ticket back into the game? Android? The scenario? Competing with each other over who has the best Android. Androids EVERYWHERE. Even as cheap pay-as-you-go phones. 2. Platform independence. Java. There are 50 developers who can write in Java, for every one developer who can program in Apple’s Cocoa. There’s no App Store approval process or 30% royalty, either. Who cares if performance is a little slower? Java offers and will continue to improve, higher performance options for how its code gets compiled. 3. Java. All the open-source freely available Java code in the f’ing world is already out there to be used in new Android apps. All the software apps already written in Java are just a port away from being on Android. 75,000 Apps in the App-Store? Nice. 1,000,000 apps just a port away from the Android store. Whoa. 4. Platform ubiquity. The Android operating system is open and available for use in ANY device. Look at the company called Touch Revolution. They’re putting Android in home appliances! Those are going to be networked and controlled from your Android smartphone. You’ll control your microwave and stereo from your Android remote, while you’re in the backyard! That’s just the beginning. Netbooks. Everything is going to get Android controlled and Android interconnected.
H Erin,
Appreciate the feedback, and hard to argue with your logic, although I’ll try. ;-)
Java on the Client has been meh, and I can’t think of many killer apps on client side, ESPECIALLY for mobile. Can you?
If we were talking Server side, different story. The other main TBD is fragmentation. So you are Verizon, and you want to have the coolest apps on your phones, plus you want to incent families to stay en masse on your Android powered phones; or you see Droid as a contender to the iPhone throne. Do you push proprietary extensions that showcase specific device functions, and on specific proprietary services on your network or do you settle on an LCD so those same apps can run across multiple devices, multiple carriers?
I think that if you are Verizon (or Motorola, for that matter), you only care about the rest of the ecosystem to the extent you don’t see a hard SHORT-TERM cost. My point here is that open platform plays work best when there is a layer that everybody sees as commodity but integral. Once proprietary differentiators are involved, it becomes every man and woman for themselves, the needs of the many be damned. That is where fragmentation starts.
Not to say that Google/Android won’t manage that, but having been in the platform business 15+ years now, I have repeatedly seen how the myth of write once, run anywhere is just that, a myth. It’s write once, tweak everywhere and then test, test, test, test. That’s why you often see mobile dev teams have a relatively small dev team footprint but massive QA and platform compatibility testing org because you get the matrix from hell, which Android won’t solve in total.
Regardless, it should be fun to watch play out, because the outcome is far from a given, and not necessarily zero sum either.
Thanks again for your detailed take.
Mark
As a developer on the Windows Mobile platform from a long time before apple, and before it was called Windows Mobile for that matter…. the issue isn’t so much closed vs open.
In fact, from a software dev point of view the iPhone is as open as you need, it gives a clear api and boundaries that I can build software in. Where does iPhone win for developers? Hardware consistency.
The issue is I build an app, the phone I have is WVGA say, has 5 hardware buttons. Great, there’s a market of say 20,000 potential. Then the next device comes out, but it has 1 hardware button and a larger screen. I have to re-engineer my application for a new control mechanism and retune all my artwork for the new resolution. This WILL be the case on Android, a developer will be continually retuning their app to keep their potential userbase up to make the app profitable.
But with iPhone? There’s one resolution, one control mechanism. That’s it, build once and sell to everyone. Even if Apple does something more significant in a future update, there will still only be 2 formats to support and the total userbase available to those formats. If I develop for Android, I could be supporting 15-20 different devices pretty quickly to even hope for a similar userbase to sell to.
The analogies to Microsoft and the OEM pc, irrelevant, all the PC devices followed a fairly similar form factor and usage, ie 101 key keyboard, mouse, screen. Every phone I’ve owned has differences is screen, buttons, touch performance… nightmare.
Right. I think this is often forgotten by those of us on the open source side of things. Openness is great for so many reasons. No one can take away your software, theoretically. Someday, all handsets could run the same applications in theory.
The reality? Every single phone carrier will want to put their own stamp on their Android phone. The most interesting thing to me since I switched FROM Android/Windows Mobile/Palm OS to iPhone is how you absolutely don’t see AT&T’s fingerprints on the phone.
Aside from the mess with Google Voice, AT&T is largely absent from the iPhone. Contrast this to Sprint where every phone gets Sprint TV, Sprint MP3 store. Or T-Mobile and their T-Zone nonsense. The carriers, in the end, aren’t going to lay down and simply be dumb pipes for data. They want to make money on the phones, so the platform will fracture. That’s a fact.
So strangely, 12 year Linux user and everything, I find myself now supporting Mac / iPhone because it’s easier, more predictable and there is more polished software.
android: open consumer experience, same ole bullshit for developers.
came here from tim’s battle for the web post on oreilly radar. android may be an “open” platform, in that its being given away and it has a couple less gatekeepers than apple imposes, but its a far cry from a really open platform. from a developer perspective, its still a proprietary platform, where you code to androids specific API, and have to play by androids rules. if you want to see a company that is leveraging an open platform, look at palm and nokia. the pre leverages one of the two open platforms in existence: the web. maemo developers leverage the other open platform: linux (open sourcing of maemo underway in the mer project). these “platforms,” the pre and maemo, are just portals into real open platforms, viewports used to look at rather than sets of legos used to build with. thats what open really means, not dictating merely how code is distributed, but being so ballsy as to say you wont strictly govern how code is developed.
When this article was first written on February 22, 2009 (just 10 months ago), there was only one clunky Android phone with a weak battery (the HTC Dream, T-Mobile’s G1). Now there are much more choices, just 10 months later, actually most of the phones came out in the last 3 months (September, October, Nov. of 2009). Reference http://androidcompare.com/time-l.html
I agree that for the most part Apple does deliver a superb user experience and the company is very innovative. However Apple is not the only one. Look at PalmPre’s WebOS. It is almost unanimous from many reviews that the WebOS has a much more superb user experience.
Not all customers look for performance and reliability, or else everyone would be buying V8-engine cars (for performance) and drive Toyota/Honda (for reliability). Customers want choices and that is what Google brought, Openness, which brings choices: http://androidcompare.com/phones.html
No one company can bring an “entire solution”. Its just that customers needs are too diverse, and people are simply very different and like many different things. People want choices. Why does Apple produce so many different models of their Macs? Because it allow people to have choices. Yes, predictability can be a problem in an open environment. Good example is that Android supports camera and electronic compass. If a phone does not have these hardware, certain apps may not work like it was intended. In cases like this, customers will have to decide. Manufacturer are not going to shoot themselves on the foot. They will want to make a product that works and reliable. What better way to do this than to have an open system at your disposal. Manufacturer can examine the source code and modify it to make it work for their hardware.
@John, certainly a valid counter-perspective, and not suggesting that all customers are uniform.
But, I would suggest that the writing is already on the wall that Google will face some tough choices in terms of how they steward Android moving forward.
Rumors that they are coming out with a Google phone featuring the “real” Android are early indicators that platform fragmentation risk is (potentially) being ignored so as to put the platform’s capabilities in the best potential light — as Apple continues its own rapid innovation and strong execution, and isn’t sitting on its hands to be outflanked by Android.
Similarly, the very openness of the model suggests that you could easily end up with carriers and handset makers building their own proprietary capabilities, custom Android Markets, etc. so as to differentiate from all of this openness.
In the abstract, we might say that this is a good thing, fertile ground and all, but it’s not just consumers that will have to make a choice in such case; it is developers too.
Whether to support all phones and deal with lifecycle of tweak and debug, focus only on the best selling few (and ignore the rest) or target a lowest common denominator of functionality (and fail to showcase the more whiz bang capabilities of the platform).
If interested, I blogged on this topic recently:
Google Android: Inevitability, the Dawn of Mobile, and the Missing Leg http://bit.ly/87URNI
Check it out.
Mark
Well one thing is obvious. Since this article Android has gained a lot of hype and traction for 2010. We’ll see how it plays out. I haven’t looked at it’s sdk, or app store, or used an android phone… But I want to get a fast android phone with a touch screen and a real keyboard anyways :-)
My guess is android will be both loved and hated this year, with some phones giving it a good name and others a bad name. Much like windows and linux and anything else that isn’t controlled end to end.
I think android will do much better than linux though. Phone makers are making phones with android in mind, whereas manufacturers don’t generally make machines with linux in mind. Apple does fine because they only support a very small subset of the hardware market.
I agree with somebody else who said mobile phones unlike computers don’t yet have the staying power though. You get a new phone every couple of years and thus far so long as it makes calls, takes pictures, has email, sms, calendar, etc the rest is fluff. I don’t have any ‘must keep’ apps from previous phones and I’ve had several palms and windows phones. The iphone isn’t any different. for example (it’s old now but the point is obvious) http://www.installerapps.com/2008/04/28/the-top-50-iphone-applications/ I couldn’t see a single app in that list that is a must have. The few that were somewhat useful are available on all major smart phones. It’s fluff, and given the form factor and touch only ui, it’s going to be hard to get better than gimmicks for the average person.
If the android wants corporate penetration they need to compete with BES and blackberry. This means management, remote policies, etc, managed by the company buying the phones and not by apple or google.
So far android looks to be trying to compete with apple, which is good news from RIM. I think the wide price range in phones will help them do well in volume, but the jury’s out on whether they get the geek crown from apple. I suspect it won’t be this year, and maybe not next year either.
@Andrew, the good news is that with Android, someone will build the phone that has the combination of ingredients that you want. That is the absolute goodness of the Android approach, a conceptual rainforest of diversity in terms of HANDSET options.
The cost, though, (I believe) is that that choice will come at the cost of increased fragmentation of the SOFTWARE platform, even more so now that Google has muddied the water by rolling out their own, branded phone, which despite what Google says (or a grin and bear it, Motorola, might say), is bad news for handset makers. You can’t simultaneously be an arms dealer and a warlord.
As to the Linux and Windows analogs, like you said, Linux is very horizontal, whereas Android is (relatively) focused on a specific segment, and also has the benefit of iPhone to point the way in terms of the types of apps that will proliferate on top of it so that alone suggests a beachhead for Android. (Sidebar: Call me old school, but the diversity of apps will drive the success of Android more so than anything.)
By contrast, say “Linux” and all that I can think of is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python); potent, utility and ROI bearing, to be sure, but faceless, nameless. Windows is a different beast altogether, and facing the slow demise of entropy from supporting so much legacy, so not worth talking about much (in this context).
To your last point, which is a good one, Google seems to be competing with Apple, but in practice, their target is Symbian, as that is the current alternative for the “anyone but Apple” handset coalition, and the one reason even a pissed off Motorola won’t abandon Android; they’ll just fragment instead.
(If they’re smart, though, Motorola will get the cajones to buy Palm before Nokia does.)
Thanks again for the thoughts.
Mark
Android just needs time to grow. Although iPhone Os really kicks ass and more users are getting hooked in it we can never disregard the fact that it is made by google.
Agreed, but remember, it’s not like Apple is sitting fat and happy on the sidelines. Their rate of innovation, and mindshare gains with developers and consumers continues unabated.
Mark
More thoughtful than your average blog post. Light not Heat. I could get used to this.
The one facet to this excellent article is the idea that I don’t think Apple really wants to dominate anything, I think they just really want to make the best stuff. Perhaps it comes from having almost no PC market share and finding a way to survive despite that. They are self contained because they had to be. Google on the other hand has ambitions that include absolute concepts like “all the data” yadda yadda yadda. Both companies have succeeded wildly but I believe they have very different view of what success is.
This is the main flaw in the ESR/OSI argument that openness will win because it’s more beneficial for developers. The RMS/FSF argument, on the other hand, is that software freedom is important as a goal in itself.
We’re now in a situation where closedness, or mixed closed/open, is perceived, wrongly or rightly, as more beneficial for developers. In that situation, Raymond’s argument does break down, I agree with you—and you’re not the first to point it out. The second argument, from the Free Software Foundation, holds firm. All the apps in the world couldn’t change the fact that the app store is what it is and that consumers not in the dev program have basically zero rights.
Thanks for the perspective, Sandra, but I would argue that that renders openness to the bucket of taking vitamins or eating your broccoli; namely, something that you ought to do, but not akin to aspirin or penicillin – necessary pain relievers or fundamental lifesavers.
More to the point, the free software argument then doesn’t really factor the reality that these types of decisions don’t take place in a vacuum. There are economic and market decisions involved, all of which leads me to re-affirm my sense that it depends upon what problem you are trying to solve, and what outcome you are trying to facilitate relative to the openness vs. proprietary equation, which is hardly an ALL or NONE decision to begin with.
Cheers,
Mark
[...] Android vs. iPhone: Why Openness May Not Be Best Open or perish. It’s a meme that’s been embraced as fact ever since Eric Raymond published his seminal [...] [...]
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[...] In the mobile realm, this implies a platform that is synchronized across hardware, software and service layers. This synchronization is necessary to deliver a superior user experience, which is what consumers now expect post iPhone (I cover this topic in more detail in my guest post for GigaOM, ‘Android vs. iPhone: Why Openness Might Not Be Best‘). [...]
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