By “Welcome to Mobile Phone Island where Mt. Android is about to erupt on all the little peon hills that claim to be mobile operating systems. For so many years those heaps of crap sat dormant and now, when Mt. Android flings gobs of hot handset lava all over the world, those punk bitches had better hope they don’t go the way of the Stegosaurus. And they think their little spiky tails are so kick-ass…”
Those are the exact words Eric Schmidt used at Google’s 3rd Quarter Earnings Report to explain Android’s competitive landscape. Okay… not the EXACT words. According to TechCrunch here is what the Google CEO said:
Android adoption is about to explode. You have all the necessary conditions.. a critcial period.
Close enough… right? He also re-iterated that Android now has 12 devices in 26 countries on 32 carriers. Pretty darn impressive considering the “real” push hasn’t even begun yet. What we’ve got on the market right now are “feelers” – manufacturers and carriers first foray into the Android land. Next year I think you’ll see Android make the upgrade to more of a “staple” where you see it consistently used as a featured operating system in a carrier’s “stable” of smartphones. Okay, I know what you’re thinking… enough with the “quotes”…
Done and done.
It is coming ladies and gentlemen. We knew it was coming. You probably did too. But seriously… Android is about to take the world by storm. And those 2012 market share projections? If the cards are played right they could be blown out of the water. Or out of the lava.
I’m getting pretty tired of playing the waiting game for a legit piece of hardware. I thought the Droid was going to be my choice. More and more signs point to 2010 as the year of the Android, and I’m continued with the choice to wait for something that can out perform the iPhone. Why must they play these games!
I agree that it’s about to reach critical mass. Think about it. In the US, T-Mobile has had the G1 for some time, followed by the myTouch. Now Sprint has the HTC Hero and, soon, the Samsung Moment as well. The former has iffy hardware but the sophisticated Sense UI, and the latter has stellar hardware. Now Verizon is getting the Moto Droid and one or two HTC Android phones before the end of the year. With the exception of AT&T, Android phones will soon be available to all customers on the major carriers. I’m sure AT&T will pick up Android soon enough as well. Even this very moment, Android is available to far more people than the iPhone is in the US. Once the push really starts, this could be huge!
The more competition in upper market, the quicker the prices will go down for everyone. I hope we will see many high end devices coming to the market between now and march 2010.
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Especially with that promising cortex a9 processor. By the way will the archos phone be the first to be powered by one, the omap 4440 or will it only have the 45nm version of the cortex a8 aka the 3640 ?
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Still no news of any android phone featuring a nvidia tegra… and 32gb of ROM… and featuring fm trans/receiver and a light sensor and hardware keyboard ! :>
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One last thing: i really want to see mobile phone nude prices (without contract) go down, so that i do not depend on one mobile carrier.
@ matt
as soon as the STD becomes available in europe (with 3.5G in 2100mhz) it will be mine , as i am tired of waiting.
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I just entertain the meager hope of being able to choose my carrier, which i probably won’t be able to.
bait Fake Steve Jobs much?
I’m really keen on Android but I’m tired of waiting too. I’m guessing most of those 12 handsets are just variations of the same handset. Even if they aren’t, the choices for any given country is still quite limited so the fact there are 12 different handsets across the world is a bit irrelevant. What happened to the 18 to 20 handsets by the end of the 2009? I thought these would be 18 to 20 different handsets available to each country (or at least most countries). Android is very good but I’m very tired of hearing all this hype about how Android is about to take off.
In the US TMobile has been great, and it has been ignored how much they have expanded their 3G in the last few months. Sprint jumping on board has also been nice.. The major boost is going to be Verizon though. AT&T will probably continue to just kick back with the iPhone for awhile.. That is, until more an more people actually use an Android phone and it becomes clear that there is a nice alternative. Once the market starts to noticeably shift, then AT&T will add an Android. Kill the iPhone ? who cares ? .. It won’t kill it, but Android will outsell it, and much sooner than 2012.
I wouldn’t call the Samsung Moment, “stellar hardware.” Better hardware than current phones and a few upcoming phone perhaps… but by no means “stellar.”
Mainly, the 800MHz ARM11 based chip is basically what was in the orginal iPhone, only at a higher clock. It by no means can be compaired to the performance of the OMAP34xx processors, or a Cortex-A8 based chip at 600MHz or even lower clocks for that matter.
As for the rest of the phone — it’s nice to have the AMOLED display and all… but a higher resolution would be a nice change of pace, and the camera isn’t all that special in terms of resolution compaired to the last year of Android phones. In my opinion, the keyboard looks to be the phone’s best feature at the moment, but time will tell.
Yes Android is about to explode. But what we’re seeing here is a wait and see by manufacturers. Testing the market, namely T-mobile taking the lead. But it doesn’t matter if there are 100 Android devices that are subpar. The power of the Android is being let down by lack of imagination. From design, UI to something that supposedly killing the almighty iPhone. There isn’t anything yet. What Apple did was put a product out that hit the ball running. And they’re still going strong. No worries for them yet. By the time excellent hardware is common place Apple would hit another home run.
Story would be far more impressive if pictures worked.
Yeah!!!!!
“For so many years those heaps of crap sat dormant and now, when Mt. Android flings gobs of hot handset lava all over the world, those punk bitches had better hope they don’t go the way of the Stegosaurus.”
I love this site.
It is cool that finally there are signs of good hardware coming out for Android, with the Acer Liquid and Sony Ericsson Experia X3 maybe being released next month with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors inside. Also good to see some leaks of Android 2.0 looking good.
But where is a hint of a phone with the Nvidia Tegra SOC? C’mon why does it have to take 2 years for the damn thing to come out? Not to mention all these Tegra MIDs that should cost only $99 or is it $200 or $300 now?
@ Wesley
Rumor has it nvidia realized their tegra was penalized with an arm11 and are coming up with a cortex-a9 version.
still, seeing how beautiful and smooth the zune hd graphics are, i wish the STD was harboring one.
Dunno wat u guys are bsaying about d long wait time.. all i do wish is when dam darhwares come out lets get a feell of it back here in Nigeria.. Allota us can afford them u know
Dunno wat u guys are saying about d long wait time.. all i do wish is when d dam harhwares come out lets get a feel of it back here in Nigeria.. Allota us can afford them u know
Shouldn’t that be “hot java handset lava”?
Unable to resist the urge to link to my predictive blog post about this very topic (complete with volcano metaphor) in August 2008. It’s all happening now! It was such a different world a year or two ago.
http://www.cookingcapsules.com/2008/08/repost-of-reply-i-made-to-techcrunch.html
I agree that it’s about to reach critical mass. Think about it. In the US, T-Mobile has had the G1 for some time, followed by the myTouch. Now Sprint has the HTC Hero and, soon, the Samsung Moment as well. The former has iffy hardware but the sophisticated Sense UI, and the latter has stellar hardware. Now Verizon is getting the Moto Droid and one or two HTC Android phones before the end of the year.