tuesdayDeveloper;

Google’s Android OS is doing very well, on phones at least, but according to some surveys people would rather have an iPhone. It seems that a lot of people have only joined the Android ranks because it was available on their network and the iPhone wasn’t. This could be a problem for Android since all three of largest mobile phone providers may be offering the iPhone soon since AT&T and Verizon have it already and Sprint may soon join the party.

When it comes to tablets, Android tablet sales are still lagging quite a bit compared to the iPad. There are several possible reasons, some say that iPads are better, perhaps its due to the large number of apps Apple has to offer compare to their competition. No matter what the reason, however, Google has a great OS and it should be doing better than it is.

So what can Google do with a stagnant tablet market and a phone market that may not be so successful in the future? Well, the whole $99 fire sale HP just had could give us one hint. If Android phones and tablets where significantly lower priced than their iOS rivals, that could win over the masses. Of course, Google is subject to the manufacturers choices of hardware and prices, and they don’t control the pricing of the products that hit the market—but the could. Here are two ways that Google can make their platform more successful.

1. Subsidize

The United States Government has subsidized corn production in the US so much that you can find corn byproducts in just about every food you pick up in the grocery store. (Of course this only hurts the farmers and its not good for us either, but that is beside the point of this article.) Why can’t Google subsidize its products?

What if Google started paying manufacturers to produce the hardware of systems running a certified version of Google Android. This would have some big advantages. First, it would limit the customization that OEMs can do to the system and provide a more seamless experience for users moving from one device to another (something I know Google wants). Second, the price savings would go to the customers, meaning that more Androids will be running around than ever before because people love inexpensive toys. (The OEMs wouldn’t suffer like farmers do with corn production, since there isn’t really a middle-man.) Third, it may even bring some Android OEMs back into the fold of consistent experience (Amazon has completely overhauled Android, changing the UI and removing the marketplace…that’s not good for Google.)

If Google subsidized the purchase of certain types of hardware for systems that had the Android Marketplace, Google as the default search engine, and respectable hardware, customers would get a great deal and would flock to Android the way people flocked to the HP TouchPad (even though the thing has no perceivable future).

2. Make the Marketplace More Enticing

There are a couple things Google really needs to with their Marketplace, including making discovery easier, but I’m going to focus on something else.

Amazon has the right idea of offering a free app everyday. When I do finally get my own Android device, I will surely install Amazon’s App Store, simply so I can reap the benefits. If Google did this, or perhaps a “buy ten paid apps get the next one free” kind of deal, the Marketplace would surly be more successful attracting more developers. Google doesn’t really care if they make money on their Marketplace, they really just want people to make more Google searches, so this Marketplace strategy is really intended to attract more users to attract more developers to get higher app numbers to attract more users (who will then make more Google searches when they use their device).

Conclusion

Google is certainly one of the big mobile OS powers, but the game is still new enough that things can change quickly. Google better start acting with some strategy before, say Microsoft, gets ahold of these ideas and makes their platform more enticing for the users.

What ideas do you have to make the Android platform better?

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So the most recent Windows 8 preview is out:

Initially my thoughts are pretty generous. The new Windows 8 stuff looks like a well thought out system, but then they also show a full version of Windows desktop running on this touch screen laptop.

While I wonder about how well a system like this would do (partially built for keyboard and mouse but crammed into a tablet, but also a system obviously built for touch expanded to a desktop) my real questions go deeper than the UI.

Tablets (at least all of the ones that I know of that aren’t just convertible laptops) all use solid state storage. This is good for several reasons. First, it keeps a device small and light. Second, it makes devices faster than a slow rotating harddrive based system would be. Solid state storage is ideal for tablets, but it also has its drawbacks.

At the moment, solid state storage is expensive. At tigerdirect.com, solid state harddrives with 120 GB run around $300, if you search for regular harddrives, your first results show 2TB for a mear $80. That’s 16 times the storage for about 25% of the cost!

The cost of solid state drives is typically the reason you only see tablets with 16 – 64GB. Of course solid state harddrives will come down in cost eventually, today they are only affordable by the masses with less capacity.

So coming back to a Windows 8 tablet, how much storage will just the operating system take? If you take Windows 7 and add more onto it for the touch stuff you’re looking at a significant chunk of storage. My Windows 7 VM (with only a couple added programs) takes up more than 20GB of storage.

So without any files, I’d expect Windows 8 to take up the same amount of storage. Not including any programs. Not including huge music/video collections.

One of the reasons iPad has been successful is because it is so affordable, its base model starts out with 16GB. Most of that storage is free when you get the device. For Windows to provide the same amount of free space on a Windows 8 machine they would have to have at least 32GB. Of course that is still in competition with iPad and its upper models, but it also means that Windows tablets can’t compete with the lower models on price.

Perhaps I’m blowing this out of proportion. Maybe an OEM will make an inexpensive model with lots of storage and still beat Apple on its pricing. What do you think?

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A ZDNet writer, Christopher Dawson, believes that Flash will continue to rise and that Apple will eventually begin to support Flash. Maybe, but I’m doubtful.

As I’ve repeated probably a hundred times, tablet computers are the future. Most people don’t need anything more than a simple and inexpensive device to check email, browse the web, maybe play a few games. That fact aside I think that tablets will become more and more popular and we’ll start seeing people with more diverse needs, needs that future tablets will be capable of doing. So we’ll continue to see the rise of tablet computers. The question becomes, who will be supplying those tablets. I admit that Android based phones are becoming increasingly popular, but my guess is that tablets will be even more popular than they are.

It seems that everyone either is selling a tablet or will be coming out with one soon, but really the market belongs to Apple at the moment. It’s obviously a challenge for new tablet makers to compete with Apple, we haven’t seen any option that is as inexpensive as the iPad, though some have competitive prices if you count subsidies (which are paid for in subscription costs later by the user). If any company wants to compete with Apple, they have to live with the price range that is defined, without subsidies, just like Apple did, which may mean they leave out a few features.

But as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, another ZDNet writer pointed out, this is a difficult thing to do. Apple’s prices are just too low for other flash banner waiving competitors to compete. Their only hope is to simplify the hardware and make their devices cheaper—which doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. By the time that tablet competitors realize what they need to do Apple will have an even greater lead than they have now, meaning that Apple wins. Apple doesn’t have to support flash because they will be the industry standard that everyone is developing for.

In other words:
Flash-allowing tablet systems are too expensive.
Apple will continue to sell better than other competitors because they have the right prices.
Apple will continue their lead and remaing the industry standard.
The industry standard still won’t support Flash.
Developers will develop with HTML5 and other non-Flash tools to reach a larger audience.
Flash will die because it isn’t supported.

Now I could be wrong, if tablet suppliers want to, they can build a more competitively priced product that blows Apple out of the water, but now, do you really think that’s going to happen?

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As soon as I saw the preview for Android 3.0, optimized for tablets, I was in awe just like everyone else.

The preview is amazing, right? I agree, but previews can be misleading. There are a couple unanswered questions: How is the battery life? How big of a tablet are we looking at? I may have mentioned that I don’t want another 7 inch tablet, I’d say that’s pretty important to me.

The answers to these questions will determine how they do against Apple’s iPad. I’ll explore a few key features that will be important if Google (or anyone else really) want to take on Apple.

Multi-touch
I know that Android has multi-touch, but it’s still not on par with iOS devices. It looks like transitions are smoother and more responsive, but then again I didn’t see any fingers either. If multi-touch isn’t improved based on what Android devices has now,people will continue to eye other options.

Battery
One of the best things about the iPad is that it will last a long time. Specs say that it will roam the internet for 9 hours without a charge. One of the ways they accomplish such great battery life is by dumbing down multi-tasking—but people love it. I for one would be willing to give a little battery time for more processing, but I wouldn’t bet that everyone is. If the battery doesn’t last long (I’d say at least 5 hours) … well, just don’t count your chickens… or baby bots.

Apps
Yes, Google, I know that you’ve got every possible version of every possible app on the internet from word processing to photo editing, but people are still a bit wary of that concept. To many, an internet app is a slow app, not everyone has lightning fast internet. The people I’ve talked to about their iPads say they can do more than 90% of their work on their tablets. They also all have Pages and Numbers installed. So, Google, you might want to think of a mobile version of Google Docs that syncs to a users account.

Screen Size
There’s not much you can do on a phone in way of real work. You can check your email, you can play a few games, but when you want to do real work you pull out a bigger screen. It does look like there will be a lot of variety (I’ve seen anything from 7-10 in screens) so there should be something to make everyone happy.

The advantage Google has over Apple is that Google has other’s developing the hardware for them (which leads to lots of diversity), the disadvantage Google has that Apple doesn’t have is that Google has other’s developing hardware for them. They don’t have as much say as Apple does. Googe doesn’t have one hundred percent control of multi-touch, battery life, apps, or screen size—so lets hope that the hardware vendors are listening too. I will say that if Google can live up to their preview of Honeycomb, they’ve got an awesome start when it comes to tablets.

Did I leave anything out? Let me know in the comments.

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Perhaps I’m unusual, but I can’t be the only one who wants a bigger tablet than the iPad. The Galaxy Tab from Samsung is coming out and it’s smaller than the iPad. This seems to be a trend. All of the iPad “Contenders” have been smaller, many significantly smaller, and I’m sick of it—I want a bigger screen!

Now, I realize that Android has a long ways to go before it is really as fun and easy to use as the iPad (two things that guarantee success), but they can at least make it easier with a larger screen. Rumors say that Apple too is coming out with a smaller iPad. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think they’ve already got one I guess people want something in between, but why?

To me, the iPad has been such a success because it is more pleasant to use than an iPod Touch or iPhone, more or less because it’s bigger. It’s easier to read and interact with the content because there’s more space to tap, pinch, see, etc. (While I’m on my soap box, how many multitouch fingers can you even fit on a screen the size of the new iPod nano?)

My message to all tablet developers out there, make ‘em bigger! I’d like to see a 13 in tablet soon. Eventually I’d like to have a very large touch-screen desk computer, but in the mean time I’d like to see Android tablet developers get their act together and build something that is really comprable to the iPad.

Here’s your chance to tell me I’m crazy. Do you like the smaller-is-better trend?

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