Android: The Consequences Of Open
Source: Todd Hixon
The link above leads to a post by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler about the perils of the open Android OS to Google: major competitors will hijack Android by building their own version, and then lock Google’s services out. MG observes that Amazon is starting to do this: the Kindle Fire redirects attempts to go to Google’s Android Market to the Amazon App Store. Facebook is rumored to be working on an Android-based Facebook phone. Both Amazon and Facebook have search ambitions. And, MG points out that Windows, to which Android is frequently compared (e.g., by me), was never open: it was completely controlled by Microsoft and could not be hijacked or otherwise copied.
Android really is much more open than Windows, although not 100% open: key Google services for Android, including the Android Market, Maps, and Nav, are part of an additional package called Google Mobile Services that Google licenses at its discretion. And Google held back the open source for the v3.x “Honeycomb” OS release for nine months. But, Android is open enough that competitors are taking the ball and running with it. IMHO, that is the acid test of “open”.
The openness of Android is creating real competition at the platform level, similar to SQL or TCP/IP. That’s exciting, and those comparisons suggest that a truly open standard does not necessarily prevent a strong market leader. It does indicate that the rate of investment and innovation in the Android platform will be very high, and competitors will explore different strategies. That will make the ecosystem as a whole bigger and more powerful. Google will lose some share and control, but the slice they keep will be from a bigger pie, and the chance for any other platform to succeed, like Windows, will be much smaller. And even if it is not wired in to every version of Android, Google can compete for opportunity on (most of) the Android platform, by offering better products and services, just as it has done successfully with its Chrome browser (this post is written on a Mac using Chrome).
The story of Android tablets in 2011 illustrates this. Google did a Microsoft: it closed Android temporarily and worked with a half-dozen favored OEMs to develop a tablet OS that would contend with the iPad. It was only partially successful: Apple will sell about 39 million iPads in 2011 versus 7-8 million tablets using the new Android tablet OS (v3.x). Amazon and B&N ran with Google’s ball and developed low-price tablets based on Android 2.x; they will sell about 6-7 million this year, and Amazon’s Kindle Fire looks to be the Android best-seller. And, a host of less known companies will sell about 10 million Android tablets, many/most low-priced ($100-$250 retail) units based on Android 2.x. Amazon/B&N have opened a new segment of the market, and lots of other competitors are flooding in. Next year, with Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) openly available and new CPUs and Chinese ODMs entering the market, this segment is set to explode. Amazon may lock Google out, but the other Android competitors will be delighted to have Google services on their products. The open ecosystem delivered success even as Google’s own product strategy sputtered.
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