Android officially enters Japan

Japan's largest mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo Inc has tied up with Google to promote Google's mobile services such as Gmail, search, calendar and Picasa, to users of its mobile Internet service. DoCoMo is also considering offering an Android-based phone in the second half of 2008.

I came across many news reports with this information. Curiously, not one of the reports mentioned Android by name. In fact, none of them even mentioned any of the other Google products by their name, instead referring to Google's search, e-mail, scheduling and photo-saving features. Also, although this is an official and formal tie-up between DoCoMo and Google, there is no mention of whether or not DoCoMo joined the Open Handset Alliance. These omissions are rather conspicuous.

[Via journalgazette.net]

Is Google's clear vision short-sighted?

Fortune magazine has a dramatically titled article: Is Google spinning out of control?:

Google has just announced two extraordinarily ambitious strategic gambits in the span of a week, and I'm not convinced that it can pull either of them off.

First the company announced OpenSocial, a hasty attempt to smother social-network phenom Facebook by pulling together an alliance of more than 50 of that upstart's peers and competitors. The idea is twofold: to make it easier for software developers to build universally compatible applications and to open up social websites to newfangled forms of targeted "social advertising," something Facebook actually started offering the next week.

Then Google (Charts) took the wraps off something even bigger: a grand plan to redefine the cellphone. Through the so-called Open Handset Alliance, Google will provide software and programming protocols for others to employ in building a new class of smartphone handsets and cellular information services. Once again, the unspoken goal is to create handheld billboards for blasting even more ads at us.

The article acknowledges that Google is trying to create a platforms in the online social networking and mobile communications space. But then, it says that the author is not convinced Google can pull it off simply because "this kind of software is hard"! Okay, thanks for stating the obvious. Anything more? The article concludes with the following statement about Google's "clear vision of the future" :

Google doesn't seem to take into account the most fundamental rule of high tech: Don't mistake a clear view for a short distance.

Seriously, does anybody really think that Google is so short-sighted?

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!