Android. We know the name but do we truly understand the ideals behind it?

A few points to mull over before we begin this piece:

• Android is Google’s brainchild.
• Android is property of the public.
• Android is, and has been, a boon to mobile manufacturers, app developers, and retail outlets.

Think about the above for a moment. Imagine a world without Android. Would we still have diversity in the market? Would Windows Phones have Android’s market dominance in a competitive battle with iOS? I surmise it wouldn’t but let’s backtrack for a moment. Google develops each release of Android. However, leaked ROM’s, forks and mods are by and large the public’s doing — and are, in some cases, the product of commercial intent, like what Amazon has done — but regardless, Android’s development is largely the product of enthusiasm for the mobile environment, and the support of open-source software.

Ownership of Android

So who really owns Android? This may seem like a rhetorical question at first but let’s look at the third item on the list for an answer. If there were no Android, mobile manufacturers, app developers and retail outlets would be stuck in the days of old. We’d have a world with Apple vs. Microsoft going at it, both being closed to public development for the most part. The world of mobile computing and telecommunications at large would be vastly different, possibly even bland, simply because the third option does not exist. Shelves would be full of Samsung and Sony tablets running Windows Phone adaptations. The only alternative would be iPads. I don’t know about you, but that’s not a world I’d like to live in. Choices are good, and so is competition.

Open-Source Solutions

The support of Android, in general, is a vote of confidence for crowdsourcing. It’s a statement of trust and intellectual wealth being passed about in the hive, as opposed to the “closed door policies” that exist under the two aforementioned companies. For those who are really paying attention, I haven’t mentioned Symbian specifically because Nokia isn’t a big player in the mobile software development world anymore. Loyalists who use nothing but Symbian, swear by it’s reliability and utilitarian appeal, are welcome to it. Symbian hasn’t done anything groundbreaking like the other competition has in recent years. Case closed.

Android is the futureproofing of mobility, and it could be that Google someday decides to pack up and move to the next town. But for now we have a beautiful synchronicity between consumer adoration and developer intelligentsia creating some visually exciting and productive apps and devices. When you leave the show content to the audience, great things can happen. This is something that research and development in big companies can’t co-opt. It’s an organic human response to the lack of creative solutions on the market at the time of  Android’s initial release. Continued availability is just the evolution of an idea funded by the enduring human quest for information.

NEXT: Samsung Readying iPhone 5 Contender with Herculean Strength

Google on Track To Hit 1 Million Androids Activated Per Day By October 20 The Numbers are in: Android is Still Number One

Ever since Google announced it was buying Motorola, industry watchers have speculated if Google was going to make Android a closed source platform exclusively for Motorola’s devices. That will never happen and here’s why.

The Financial Perspective: Revenues & Gross Margins

Google’s revenues from the mobile segment are currently derived from advertising, while Motorola’s are from device sales through carriers and retailers. So let’s compare how much money Google can possibly make over the next few years by following its open source strategy versus a Motorola-focused proprietary strategy.

For the purpose of this analysis, I have taken very conservative estimates for Android revenues, to emphasize my point. I have also restricted my analysis to smartphones, so the numbers are even more conservative.

First, let me list out my assumptions for this analysis:

Proprietary Strategy

Average Selling Price - Motorola’s average selling price has been estimated by Forbes as $226.30. However, this most likely includes sales of feature phones as well. So I have considered the average selling price for smartphones in the US, which is about $135, added to the average carrier subsidy of about $280.

Gross Margin - Gross Margin is essentially the difference between the price at which Motorola sold a smartphone and the manufacturing cost of the device. Motorola’s gross margins over the last few years have consistently hovered around the 25% mark, so that was a safe estimate to take.

Annual Growth in Gross Margin - This annual increase in gross margin would be driven by increased prices, as following a proprietary strategy would most likely put Motorola’s devices at a premium in the market.

Open Source Strategy               

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) - This is an estimate of the advertising revenue Google makes per year on every Android user. The details of this analysis are mentioned here.

Annual Growth in ARPU - This is an extremely conservative figure, given that growth in ARPU is driven by growth in user base. An ARPU growth of 10% is probably more realistic, but I’ve taken this figure to be on the safe side.

Average Daily Android Activations for 2012 - Given that android activations have already reached 850,000 per day, it is a fairly safe assumption that they would surpass the 1 million mark this year. So I have considered an average figure of 1 million for the year.

Annual Growth in Activations - This is an average growth rate in daily activations from 2012-2016. This, again, is a fairly conservative figure, as daily activations have grown by more than 100% over the last year. This growth should be driven by a sharp increase in global smartphone penetration, which is currently around 30%.

Active Android smartphones discarded - This is an estimate of the percentage of active Android smartphones from the previous year that are discarded in the following year. This excludes refurbished, reused, or re-sold phones since those would still be active Android devices from which Google can earn advertising revenue. Just to add, although I’m sure this is fairly obvious, this number is much higher than any reasonable estimate. I have taken this figure to get an even more conservative estimate of advertising revenue.

Comparison of Revenues & Gross Margins

Based on the assumptions highlighted above, let’s first have a look at Google’s mobile advertising revenues from the Android platform, only considering smartphones sold from 2012-2016.

Wow, that is considerable growth from Google’s current open source mobile strategy. Now let’s have a look at the sales volume Motorola would need to achieve (taking into account both device sales revenue & advertising revenue from those handsets) to meet these revenue targets.

This volume growth is much higher than any reasonable expectation from Motorola, considering their revenues over the last 3 years have mostly been flat. In addition to this, Motorola’s marketing and distribution expenses (Motorola’s operating margin is currently negative) would far outweigh Google’s running expenses (including a mobile advertising revenue share with carriers and OEMs). Therefore, the actual expected volume growth could be significantly higher than this.

Expecting Google to turn Motorola into another Apple, to just match a conservative estimate of their mobile advertising estimates is asking for too much. Google is many things, but a great consumer marketing company, it is not.

Google’s Options

At this point, it is clear that Google did not buy Motorola to convert it into the manufacturing arm of a proprietary Android platform. Rather, Google primarily bought Motorola for the following two reasons:

1) To acquire Motorola’s patent portfolio, to defend the Android platform against frequent attacks from Apple and Microsoft

2) To prevent Motorola from using its patent portfolio to attack other Android manufacturers

Now, Google has a couple of options in front of it:

1) Sell Motorola’s Hardware Business

It would make sense to sell Motorola’s hardware business, as it would put other Android manufacturers at ease. There have been rumors of Huawei being an interested acquirer, and the deal would make sense as long as the valuation was acceptable.

2) Hold on to Motorola for now

It might make sense for Google to hold on to Motorola for now, because Motorola owns some significant distribution relationships with retailers, carriers & cable TV operators, which could come in handy for Google. Google is making a major push into tablets and television, with the Nexus tablet and Google TV, and Motorola could help with that. This strategy carries the risk of alienating other Android hardware vendors, but considering the success and market penetration some of them have seen on the Android platform, it is not a very big risk. OEMs could always fork Android, like Amazon did, but there are some considerable risks with that strategy.

Conclusion

This analysis is not exhaustive in any way, but it does highlight the fact that even though Google has a few options in front of it when it comes to Motorola, using Android as a closed platform on Motorola’s devices is not one of them.

NEXT: HP CEO: Android will be Closed-Source in the Future

Google Planning To Make Android A Closed System? Android Top Platform in 35 Countries, Holds Almost Half of Global Market Share

One danger for open source software is the dreaded project fork. What happens is that someone writes lots of nice code and releases it as open source. Later, someone else starts to use the code but finds that the goals and aims of the original project don’t match theirs, and so, they decide to split away (fork) and start a new project based on a snapshot of the existing code. This never actually happened with Android (unless you count Amazon’s Android version a fork) but it came very close.

However, now it seems that the differences have been resolved, and, as the Android code makes its way back into the main kernel, there will be benefits for Android and Linux developers alike. First, developers will be able to use the latest released version of the Linux kernel to run an Android system, without having to apply any Android specific patches. Second, the burden (and cost) of maintaining independent patches from release to release for Android kernel developers will be reduced and, eventually, eliminated. The unification is also good news for driver writers and component manufacturers, as it will now be possible to develop drivers and board support features against either an Android kernel release or a mainstream kernel release.

One big winner will be the CyanogenMod custom firmware project (and similar projects), as the developers will be able to pick which kernel they want to use from the main stream Linux kernel, without having to wait for an equivalent Android kernel to appear. This could give rise to projects which take the latest Android code and couple it with the latest Linux mainstream kernel, to produce new firmware for those who like to live on the bleeding edge.

Twitter, a micro-blogging super site, has recently released a newly acquired security software for its Android platform. The new software is an open source platform that allows people to freely use, share and expand their thoughts on the site. The software, TextSecure, was developed by Whisper Systems. The new software works by encrypting each text message before they are sent to their respective recipients, thus adding an extra layer of protection for its users. Considering the fact that Twitter is among the widely used social networking sites in the world, it will sure give its users the confidence they need that their tweets will not be accessed by the wrong hands.

Apart from being used by mere individuals, there are also a number of businesses that use Twitter as part of its efforts in bridging their gap with their consumers. Knowing that the new software has this extra layer of protection, they sure can appreciate it more. And also because the app is now an open source software, these businesses will have a better way of marketing themselves in a more personal note.

Even though Android is also an open source program, it did not integrate the Twitter app into its website. Typically, companies who buy good software tend to pull it from their rival systems so they can attract more customers. But in this case, there is no direct benefit, except for a better reputation.

Many feel that this new step taken by Twitter is an initiation of being more than just a social networking site. People feel that the company is turning itself into a software company highly influenced by so many digital markets.

 ‘We’ve always been interested in the ability for individuals and organizations to communicate freely and securely. In the year and a half since Whisper Systems launched TextSecure, we’ve received an enormous amount of thanks, feedback, and encouraging stories from users who have employed TextSecure towards those ends. We hope that as an open source project, TextSecure will be able to reach even more people, with an even larger number of contributors working to make it a great product.’ said the team behind Whisper Systems.

It sure looks like the company has future plans of turning its other software programs into open source too. As they mentioned, they are planning to open source their code in an ‘iterative fashion.’ The only thing delaying this from actually happening is the many legal requirements they need to submit.

Twitter is just one of the many free and paid applications that allow people to encrypt files and manage their own passwords on their Android devices.

To get TextSecure source code, click here.

[Source: ZD Net]

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Google’s (semi-)open source plans for Android drawing criticism Android to face open source competition from Symbian

Android’s rapid growth can be contrasted with the weak performance of the iOS, which is down 20.8 percent from 28 percent in 2010. This can be blamed on the fact that no iPhone has been released recently. Apple’s annual cycle of booming when an iPhone is released gives it no staying power compared to Android.

Another factor to this growth is the breadth and quality of Android software and hardware that has been released this year. The Galaxy S2 and HTC Sensation can be favorably compared to the iPhone and both have stunning implementations of the OS and hardware which give Apple’s offering a run for its money.

The other factor is that Android can be found in more than just one product. A fantastic array of Android phones are available for cheap via packages from carriers and they have the latest software and can handle some of the things that the more expensive smartphones can do, like the lower-end Galaxy handsets and HTC’s Wildfire S.

Android dominance may take a hit though when the iPhone 5 is released. Another threat is the iPhone 4S, the budget version of the current iPhone, which can steal quite a bit of market share because of its knockdown prices.

However, Android’s open and cheap nature lets it find niches in the mobile market that other operating systems can’t get to. This means Android can be a pretty hard OS to beat when it comes to dominating the market.

Source: uSwitch.com

NEXT: Android to challenge the iPhone’s dominance in Korea

Android cuts into the Internet mobile browsing market share Android on over 50% of Smartphones in 2012 – One Million Daily Activations by 2013

This is pretty significant as it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for the platform and mobile computing in general. Android can now be easily ported to anything, from phones to GPS receivers, to in-car entertainment systems as well as other funky things nobody has thought of yet. It also allows companies to stop re-inventing the OS wheel and focus on building better hardware.

As long as Google can keep the project together, avoiding too many forks, everybody will win. Being open is Android’s killer feature and is why it will be remembered as a milestone in mobile computing.

NEXT: Google’s (semi-)open source plans for Android drawing criticism

WebViews app source added to Apps-for-Android Android to face open source competition from Symbian

Karl Rosaen over at the Android Developers Blog has posted about a new game he recently wrote and added to the open source apps-for-android project. Called Divide and Conquer, the game is based on the same premise as the old JezzBall game you might have played when you were younger: you navigate/draw a line to separate a bunch of bouncing balls without letting a ball touch the line as it is being drawn.

It’s no first person shooter or anything, but the source code might provide budding developers with some insight. You can download the source from the apps-for-android project here.

NEXT: Triangle, SpriteText, and Downloader sample apps added to Apps-for-Android project

New Flickr sample Android application debuts Android SDK v0.9 released: new home screen, features added, features removed

The guys over at the Android Developers Blog have posted a new open source sample application for would-be Android developers to examine. Called Photostream, the application is basically a client for viewing pictures from the Flickr.com photo site.

The sample application source code demonstrates some basic programming methods for adding shortcuts to an Android smartphone’s home screen, the use of themes, and how to use the HttpClient class to connect to remote web servers, as well as demonstrating the use of animations and basic image manipulation.

The Apps for Android project doesn’t actually provide a link to the Photostream source code as of the moment I am writing this, but I figure it will appear soon since the developers blog has said to look for it there.

You’ll find more screen shots of Photostream below.

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Google provides details on Android Market, its app store QuickOffice for Android ready – if we only had the phones…

So at least part of the edge in cost that Android would have had over the other smartphone operating systems on the market will disappear. Luckily for Android, though, while popular, the Symbian OS is often thought to be relatively difficult to develop for, which provides Android with a bit of an opportunity.

You can read more about today’s purchase of Symbian by Nokia at our parent site, MobileBurn.com.

NEXT: Google’s (semi-)open source plans for Android drawing criticism

Verizon joins LiMo’s board, bad news for Android? Video of Android running on a Nokia N95? Maybe.

Andy Rubin – Credit: Stephen Shankland, CNETNews.com

CNET has posted a lengthy look at how Google is dealing with the open source aspects of the Android platform, and how some open source advocates are less than pleased with Google’s actions so far. Google’s approach seems to be to develop everything in-house first, under controlled conditions, and then to release much of the code to the open source community once it is ready.

Andy Rubin, Google’s man heading the Android development project, said that about 8.6 million of 11 million total lines of code that make up Android will be made open source. CNET points out that the current Linux kernel is made up of roughly 8 million lines of code itself, so that seems to imply that most of the open source code in Android is likely to be from the kernel that is already freely available.

Another item that is causing Google to take some heat is its decision not to use the very popular GNU General Public License (GPL) for Android. Instead Google has gone with the Apache License, which will allow hardware manufacturers to keep any code they develop themselves strictly proprietary, whereas GPL would have required that all derivative works be given back to the community. As such, any UI extensions or applications developed by Samsung, as the story suggests, would not have to be made freely available to Samsung’s rival LG.

The article is lengthy, but certainly worth a read.

[via AndroidGuys]

NEXT: Verizon joins LiMo’s board, bad news for Android?

Google posts sample 3D World Clock code Tracking Android’s progress