Android in 2010

Next year, dubbed “the year of Android” by many pundits, may not be as Android focused as the major phone manufacturers pipelines may have us believe.

Looking at consumer demand and trends, it looks increasingly likely that Android will gain significant market share next year. However, even with Android 2.0 devices starting to surface, consumer perception is that it is still the poor man’s iPhone OS.

However far this may be from the truth – and it is far from the truth – Android does appear to have a public image problem.

There are two reasons. The first is that there is a missing link for many consumers, myself included as an owner of a G1: the lack of a single environment from which any Android phone can be managed from a PC or Mac. It is widely acknowledged that one of the iPhone’s major strengths is iTunes and there is currently no Android equivalent to manage the transfer of music, podcasts, videos and application.

Of course, the true Google way of solving this problem would be to offer users cloud-based online music  storage that allows tunes to be streamed to your home and to your phone as well as downloaded. With a nice interface to sync with your phone, further development of the Google Discover Music service and a bit more of a holistic approach to phone/desktop integration, Google would be well on their way to a solution.

The second cause of this image problem is web browsing. Archos aside, we’re still waiting for an Android phone to match the iPhone’s ability to pretend to be a desktop browser. It’s not just rendering speed and screen size, it’s usability. The iPhone OS and Safari combine beautifully to provide a browsing experience that doesn’t have much downside compared to desktop browsing.  Google need to take their excellent Chrome browser and port it – with multi-touch and slick rendering – to Android. Advances are being made, but the bar has been set high by Apple.

If Google and the AOSP team can solve these problems, Android will be a competitor in 2010 and beyond, but until then – regardless of the virtues of open application development – Android will always be playing catch-up to Apple in the average consumer’s eyes.