Monday, November 26, 2007

State of Organizational Development for Android

Technewsworld asks: Will Developers Embrace Android?

The article seems to be based on information from mostly organizational developers. The article says at the very top:
The idea of creating an open source blank slate for mobile phones is appealing to developers, but many have their priorities set for them by their employers. With mobile development growing ever busier, dropping everything and working on Android often isn't the main goal.

No wonder the article said, "Lots of Interest, Not Much Action", as far as Android development goes. If you mostly talk to independent mobile development organizations, of course they will say that they are focussing on their existing clients and on the handsets/platforms which are already popular in the market. We don't need an article to tell us that.

As far as organizational development goes, we would expect that the bulk of it is happening right now among the members of the Open Handset Alliance. It would have been more interesting to know the state of Android development in the OHA. Where are they right now? What is the progress in the development of different versions of the g(od)Phone? What are their experiences working with Android? Do they have any early prototype hardware / software to show us?

I keenly looked for any mentions of OHA members in the article. There was one small quote at the very end from Sprint Nextel, which was not very encouraging:
It's too early to tell what will happen, but the company's philosophy is to be open, said Scott Sloat, a Sprint Nextel spokesperson.

"It would be against the grain to sign on to this, and then say, 'Hold on a sec, we aren't going to let you do these things,' " he said. "By the same token, we owe it to the customers to make sure their data is protected. Yes, we are going to be open, but we have a duty to make sure the customer and network are protected."

Protect customer and the network! Hasn't that been the constant tune of all carriers for why their phones and networks are so closed? From the sound of this, even some of the OHA members don't seem to be too enthusiastic about giving us anything that's too 'open'. I must say, no surprises there!

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