Ignition: Add to the army of Android

By Ross rubin published on May 22, 2011 3: 20 PM Android, as Andy Rubin (no relation) has pointed out on several occasions, playing a numbers game. And at Google I/O, the company of their shared development some large: 100 million enabled devices with 400,000 is added every day. However, as in many games, different players may reach or exceed each other at different points. Just ask Nokia and RIM. To stay on top, operating system vendors implement strategies to lock users in. Consumers from more money sink in iPhone apps, for example, the incentive would have to be with that platform; the same is true for accessories that use the dock connector of 30-pin Apple that has existed since the third generation iPod.

Android have become the OS main vendor of smartphone that grants licenses to your operating system with the notable exception of Nokia (who almost did), Google demonstrated that it is intended to not only move Android in other devices with sufficient computing power as tablets andeach once again, TV sets, but now has his sights set on almost everything that you can not run Android feed directly on it. Google is taking two approaches: one for the things that connect Android devices and other things that do not.

The accessory Android open platform aims to match, if they should not override the wide range of accessories that have emerged around 30-pin Apple that began as a simple way to provide a load and audio. On the one hand, unlike Apple, Google is building its accessory platform in the almost ubiquitous USB connector. Perhaps more importantly, without any special connector to license, is not charging to companies for use of the protocols of accessories. This should omen to add Android support to peripherals to the traditional to the emerging as several monitors health and exercise bike at Google I/O. On the other hand, the wide variation of where is placed the connector can do difficult things for peripherals that depend on a physical device positioning as a speaker and car. (There have been problems with 30-pin products also as Apple has changed the size, power criteria and authentication over the years.)

Meeting these challenges, however, is child's play compared to Android@Home, seeking to capture one of the most elusive challenges in consumer technology: the adoption of home automation. Through a new standard of illumination of low power consumption, developed by Google, radio can be embedded within bulbs themselves without adding significant costs, potentially avoiding the need for electricians install them in wall switches. Philips Semiconductors demonstrated also outside such a small radio. While this represents a milestone towards the adoption of consumer, cost, complexity, low awareness and standards of home automation market notoriously fractured they have defended among technology cool and save money and massive adoption. Now what's more, while we have heard talk of utilities energy offers automation based on Zigbee in homes through smart meters for years, they seem to be the interest of other suppliers of services, with Verizon announcing that used standard rival Z-ola of intelligent energy and home automation service. ADT and Vivint security services providers also support Z-Wave.

While the accessory Android open platform is a natural extension, Android@Home is Google in territory where there has been no successful standard model and any model pioneer as the iPhone to reset expectations. Bring home automation to the masses will require an ecosystem at least as strong as the around of Android own development.

View the original article here

Ignition: Edge of the shot

By Ross Rubin published on May 8, 2011 8: 30 PM each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. As much as their countries of origin, Apple and RIM share much in common, but the contrast in important ways. Both companies were among the few that produce their own software for their mobile phones. Apple, a pioneer of personal computing, sees the expansion of the market in smartphones. RIM, a pioneer of smartphone, sees the expansion of the mobile computing market. Looking at offer tablets, Apple has been just as firm in denouncing a 7-inch screen as RIM has been defending, the latter says that it is about creating a portable device with the Guide.

Apple designs products for consumers that have relevance to companies. RIM designs products for companies that have relevance for consumers. This also has been evident with the Guide, that it has taken the heat for its lack of native email and calendar options. RIM consciously put on hold because he wanted to appease the CIOs concerned about data theft, although it meant a launch product less attractive for consumers. Another parallel: RIM has suffered delays of AT & T in support of bridge, as Apple wrestled with AT & T tethering support on the iPhone.

In fact, when Steve Ballmer took the stage at BlackBerry World in Orlando, it brought back memories of a scene that leads out of pirate films of Silicon Valley, when Bill Gates appeared on screen in the Macworld Expo in 1997 to announce an agreement that would make Internet Explorer the default Mac browser. Fourteen years later, Google has replaced Netscape as a rival to Microsoft and the BlackBerry has become a prize of Bing.

Despite some errors and loss of significant market share, RIM is far from the State of the financial crisis that Apple was in the back. However, in both cases, the appearance of a CEO of Microsoft has been a sign of confidence in a platform that Microsoft competes. Do so, if Apple could throw own of what Steve Jobs has called his "near-death experience", RIM regain its luster lost too? He has hit a pothole on the road in the middle of a transition or is in free fall as Nokia was before your recent revision?

Apple has an advantage demonstrated in comparison with its neighbor to the North, and has been a keen sense of the moment. As the big cats which named its Mac operating systems, Apple has shown a strong pattern of attack in the industry at the right time. When the appropriate components are quite affordable, Apple wraps in a delicious layer of the user experience to drive mass adoption. RIM, meanwhile, has seen since growth from vanish challenge iPhone and its competitor mercenary Android.

However, one reason for optimism is the punch one-two procurement of RIM QNX, who manages the agile plumbing, low level of the BlackBerry Tablet OS, and TAT, which is to give the user interface RIM historically efficient but boring with a sense of imaginationfantasy, and exploration. We have seen the beginnings of RIM Assembly of these parts in shows such as the implementation of the Guide to scrapbooking and also in the renewal of the calculator workaday with flourishes such as see the history of calculation getting uprooted as a role of a harvest add computer. Here, RIM - like Apple - controls his own destiny. In contrast to the position of Nokia with Windows Phone 7, need not, for example, to maintain reigns in a direction of user interface to avoid disturbing coherence with competitors.

The challenge, as it was recognized several times in the world of BlackBerry, is time. The main components are there. RIM is now competing races to synthesize their acquisitions. You must create a competitive experience with space to grow through a series of their own core applications, those of its developers and, most importantly, expand from a platform of dual-core Tablet PC in a revitalized line of BlackBerry phones. The sand in the hourglass is the willingness of companies and clients of the company which RIM says still have strong demand for its products and the confidence in its approach.

Ross Rubin (@ rossrubin) is executive director of industry analysis of technology of consumption in market research and analysis firm NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are their own.

View the original article here