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Has Google broken Android?

21st Mar 2013
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Just six years ago, the modern smartphone as we know it today arrived on the scene with then mobile industry newcomers Apple and Google unveiling their first generation devices. The rest is history.

The rest being in this case Blackberry, Nokia & Microsoft, the then dominant mobile platform vendors. It should be noted that all three are in the midst of mounting valiant fight-backs with fresh new operating systems and devices, and may well secure some form of market tenure albeit on markedly different terms than they enjoyed prior to 2007.

The most interesting thing today, though, isn’t how Apple & Google literally stole the market from the incumbents overnight, but rather where they go from here.

The post Steve Jobs era at Apple is being defined by a somewhat careful, safe progression that some would say isn’t anywhere near daring enough. There is certainly a ring of truth to such criticism, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be the Apple exec that votes to mess around with an iOS recipe that’s currently delivering well over $100 billion of revenue just to satisfy a few critics. I’d take the revenue and a hearty pat on the back from the shareholders any day!

Android is another kettle of fish.

Initially conceived as a means to secure the future of Google’s crown jewels – it’s search business – by ensuring that the existing mobile platform vendors couldn’t freeze out Google by blocking it or making it hard to use Google from their devices, Android is now the biggest mobile operating system in the world, certainly in terms of handset volume if not usage*.

Compared with rigidly paranoid control Apple exerts over iOS, Android has been best described as an unguided missile. Google may have brought Android to life but Google certainly doesn’t control it and device manufacturers are free to deploy Android in line with a pretty flexible set of guidelines.

And therein lies Google’s growing problem.

The first big name to fork the Android platform in a meaningful way was Amazon who launched its Kindle Fire devices just over a year ago, with a very Amazon flavoured version of Android.

And now there are growing rumours that Samsung, the worlds biggest smartphone handset manufacturer is set to follow Amazon’s lead and create it’s own fork of Android later this year.

Why might that be a problem for Google?

Aside from the fact that Samsung’s smartphone business now makes more dollar profit than the whole of Google - which strategically seems somewhat unlikely to have been an objective of Google’s original rationale for launching Android in the first place – if some of the world’s biggest technology companies start fracturing Android into a number of quite discrete platforms all for themselves, Google might find itself right back where it started when it first decided to buy the fledgling Android OS back in 2005 – again facing the spectre of a freeze-out.

Last week Google deposed Andy Rubin, the original founder of the Android business unit that Google acquired and the person who has been Google’s responsible adult on the Android project for eight years.

Marry all this with the fact that Chrome, Google’s desktop replacement OS is not exactly eating up huge chunks of market share, and you can only conclude that Google is lining up for a big, hard reset on its Android project later this year.

What that will look like is anyone’s guess, but I’m looking forwards to finding out.

* Xero recently shared some interesting mobile usage statistics on its blog.

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