Today Google announced the availability of the Nexus One smartphone, a phone built by HTC but directed and branded by Google. It is designed to take full advantage of Google's Android operating system, which has been used in a handful of other phones by other manufacturers already. However, that's not the reason I'm feeling a vague sense of de ja vu today. I believe we are actually witnessing history repeating itself.
For decades, a war has raged between Mac and Windows. The former is a a complete hardware and software solution where both parts are wholly controlled by the manufacturer. The latter is a software-only solution that is designed to work with whatever hardware is engineered to be compatible with it, regardless of the source. Does that sound at all familiar? Anyone?
Well it should, because that's exactly what's going on now with iPhone vs. Android. Apple makes the hardware and software for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Google makes the Android operating system and allows anyone that wants to to use it to run their hardware.
This is significant. The iPhone has been slowly taking over the smartphone market over the last few years because it got a pretty good head start on some key technologies. In fact, it made headway in to the market even though the original version of the iPhone lacked several features that other phones already had, such as higher-quality cameras, built-in GPS, and MMS messaging (all of which were addressed later with updated software and new hardware). However, the user-friendly operating system, driven by a nice multi-touch display, along with features like a web browser capable of viewing pages that were not optimized for mobile devices, made it a hit with consumers.
Today, though, none of those features are revolutionary; they've been copied by several other manufacturers. What once was the industry standout has now become the industry standard, and that standard is being raised every few months. Apple's problem is that they are one company competing against an entire industry of innovation. As phone manufacturers continue to outdo each other, Apple will quickly find itself left behind - again - unless it continues to innovate as well.
This is, of course, the same challenge that Apple has always faced. They make good computers, but the rest of the industry is united under the umbrella of Microsoft's operating system, even as they compete with each other to push the hardware to new capabilities. Therefore, if a consumer decides on a Windows-based PC, they have far more choices than if they chose a Mac. This has allowed the Windows-based PC market to overshadow the Mac market for years.
Android, on the other hand, is going to inherit Microsoft's challenges. Namely, how do you keep your operating system stable when there is so much diversity in the hardware it works on? They've answered that question, at least in part, by making it open-source, but that approach hasn't helped Linux gain anything more than a foothold in the PC market. Furthermore, the Android marketplace is filled with apps that will work on one Android-based phone but not another, due to hardware differences and/or modifications to the operating system. iPhone owners, on the other hand, can log in to the App Store and know that any software they can find will work (discounting any developer-introduced bugs).
Apple's iPhone will lose relevance if it can't keep up with the technological advances of the rest of the industry. Google's Android OS will lose support if it can't maintain homogeneity across all the hardware that runs it.
Welcome to 1984.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
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