Android Suddenly in a lot of Trouble

[HarryBalls]

http://www.businessinsider.com/andro...trouble-2012-4

This guy makes some interesting points. Does Google have re-think Android?

[Desktop Gaming]

My big issue with Android is that there is little consistency across devices and manufacturers, and, pardon my Barnsley dialect, but that makes it a right proper bitch to develop for.

[Applewood]

I must be missing something. The opening comments seems to state that "A = bad because B = C"

Don't make an App for Android because Instagram made a lot of money. Well, you got me - I'm shitting myself now!

[Nutter2000]

Well I do think it's a typical "business" article on a "business" website, meaning it measures success by stock prices and how much money they've raised from investors.

However, I have to agree that the trend figures don't look so good for Android, I do wonder if Windows phone has an opportunity to sneak in here and take second place especially with all the negative press over piracy rates.

I think it'll be an interesting year for Android and Google in general.

[Tobias]

I wouldn't take this article too seriously. Here's a fun qoute from it:

This week Verizon revealed it sold 3.2 million iPhones in the first quarter. Its overall smartphone sales were 6.2 million, which means it sold more iPhones than all other smartphone types combined.
AT&T reports later, but there's no reason to believe it won't have a similar ratio. And Sprint doesn't reveal its ratio, but it would be strange if it was the only carrier that didn't follow a similar pattern.
In other words, on the three biggest carriers in the U.S., the iPhone is outselling Android.

[Nutter2000]

Ignore me. Mis-read it.

[siread]

I totally agree that fragmentation is a massive worry for Android. It's a nightmare developing for hundreds of different devices and coupled with insane piracy (basically given a green light by Google themselves) it makes me want to cuddle up to Apple all the more.

[Applewood]

Agreed. But it's the user's perspective that matters and to them an Android is a cheap and powerful phone with a shitload of apps - it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Despite the various netsperts having to fill their weekly copy.

[mwtb]

I read this article a few days ago and I didn't see that the title's claim was supported by the content unless you just consider "being in a competitive market" as "in a lot of trouble".

There's bound to be a lot of back and forth as the mobile platforms fight for share on the consumer, developer, carrier and handset manufacturer levels. Android certainly has problems with fragmentation/compatibility, customer confusion and piracy but those problems are pretty much direct results of their strength and intentional strategy of providing an open standard.

The article seems very much written from the trader/investor perspective of "which share price is likely to get me a decent return this year". That's a question that's somewhat divorced from the realities of the platform market. It should be obvious that most of the players in the market have an interest in promoting more than one mobile OS and in particular in ensuring that Apple doesn't completely dominate.

[James Coote]

My big issue with Android is that there is little consistency across devices and manufacturers, and, pardon my Barnsley dialect, but that makes it a right proper bitch to develop for.

Have you actually tried?

I think android is an untapped opportunity, and developers need to stop whining about how hard it is and start working with the idiosyncrasies that make android unique

[Applewood]

Clearly someone who's not tried to deploy using GL ES. It's rare to find any bloody machine that just works before you starting hacking around all the bugs.

Our game still doesn't work in some situatons of doctored or just plain bad drivers, rooted and chipped O/S etc. Our game doesn't work on the xoom for example (one star). Well, apart from the one on our desk and the several thousand others that it does work on.

It's a cesspool of intern programming out there. I've seen some driver source - lock and grab the depth buffer into ram, clear it with a C loop and upload it back was the one thing I'll never forget.

There, an opinion from someone who tried and succeeded. Almost.

[EddieX]

Even though they want to be free and open, they need to close the system. The fragmentation is ridiculous. Even buying a tablet was a nightmare for me because I had to check which tablet would play this game or this app, etc. Wanted a Toshiba Thrive but then found out it had much more issues then some others and ended up with an Acer A500.

Phones aren't any better and the battery life sucks.

I like Android as a concept but there's some work to do.

If Windows is able to make a system that is clean from the start, they can start chipping away at Android.

[James Coote]

Ok, fair enough. I must admit all the stuff I've done on opengl-es on android has been relatively simple stuff for version 1.1