Eknath Kadam > Android Apps

Now that Nexus one will be available on all 4 major US carriers. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon. Its scary for Apple and iPhone. Its been almost 3 years and iPhone is still stuck with AT&T while its hardly 3 months and Nexus One will be available on all 4 carriers. Android is spreading like wild-fire. It will be no longer from now when we can see what happened to Mac in 80s may happen to iPhone again.

Apple’s got a lot of philosophical problems. You will never-ever see a keyboard on iPhone. iPhone OS will never be licensed to third party handset manufacturers. Carrier exclusivity still continues throughout the world. India and China has proven it long ago what can happen to mobile industry if handsets are not locked to a carrier. Watch out for the speed Nexus One can move now.

If Apple is to follow their regular  schedule, we can expect iPhone 4.0 in June/July timeframe. Unless 4.0 has some amazing new features, both in terms of software and hardware, it will be really hard for iPhone to compete with Android phones in general.

While Apple is smart enough to see whats happening in industry and for sure they have some secret plans to destroy the competition. Here are my two cents what Apple can do to destroy the competition completely.

1. Make iPhone available on all 4 carriers in US. (This is so obvious!)

2. Alternatively, sell the GSM version unlocked thru out the world. (Like Nokia does and now Google is doing.)

3. Exceed all the basic hardware specs and stay ahead of competition by at least an year. It may mean bigger screen with higher resolution, a front facing camera, faster processor, more memory, longer battery life.

4. Reduce the revision cycle for the hardware from 12 months to at least 9 months. Rest of the industry is moving very fast since they only concentrate on hardware part. Google takes care of the OS. Apple is making the whole banana themselves.

5. Allow multi-tasking for 3rd party apps. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but its something people are asking all the time and competitors are advertising against.

6. Lower the price. Its a hard pill to swallow for Apple as they like to enjoy the premium status. While this strategy is working for Macs, it will be difficult going forward to work for iPhone too.

Update 1: March 23rd 10. HTC introduces HTC EVO 4G. The best hardware specs on the market. iPhone 4G now have great competition. Apple faithfuls will wait and watch until iPhone 4G is introduced. If the 4G iPhone H/W & S/W specs are disappointing  a lot people will leave the iPhone.

Update 2: iPhone 4 has been launched and its hardware specs are super exciting. Retina display is just beautiful. Front facing camera with Facetime gonna rule. Apple’s A4 chip is fast enough to beat the competition. Multitasking is in, new hardware form factor is in. iPhone 4 will continue to rule another year.

Its been while we were working on this app. iPhone app has been a pretty good success and it was time for Android market. So here it is. UK Car Driving Theory Test is now available for android market.

If you have an Android phone with barcode scanner app, just point it on the following barcode and it will take you to the app link in Android market.

Great move from Google of giving every I/O attendee an Android phone. I felt a little sad when I heard that cause I was almost going to attend the conference and decided not to at the last moment.

Its a great gesture and definitely will inspire some developers to start develop for Android. But what about the Android app store? It is still in such a sorry state that I dont even want to check what new apps are out there, while I spend hours browsing iPhone app store.

For a moment I appreciated that Google hasnt put an approval system for Android apps, but now that seems to be a curse. A lot of junk and non-functional apps have filled Android app store. 5 out 10 apps dont work as advertised. Still no screenshots. Only few lines of description? And when will there be a desktop client for Android market? Unless Google fixes these issues, Android app market is doomed.

This is bit exciting. Festivals is now available for purchase in Android market for $0.99.

Makrand and I worked hard last week to finish Festivals. We set a target that by Thursday we will finish the app and by Friday we will release it. And here we are! Festivals is available in Android Market.

I am not excited as I was excited when Festivals was released for iPhone. But still, the experience was quite smooth. App was uploaded within minutes (no approval process) and available for download within seconds. Even the first purchase happened within the first hour of uploading it. And sales stats are always up-to-date.

Now lets get bit technical and compare between Android and iPhone development.

1. Android is easy to learn provided you already know Java and Eclipse IDE. iPhone has steep learning curve, if you are new to Mac and Objective-C
2. Android is still evolving in terms of frameworks and APIs. You have to write a hell lot of code for developing a simplest app. On iPhone, most of the important things are already taken care of by inbuilt frameworks. You write minimal code, focusing on core logic.
3. Developing interactive apps for Android is still very challenging. On the other hand, developing rich and interactive UI is very very easy on iPhone.
4. Android Market doesn’t have iTunes like desktop app. Developers can’t buy their own apps. Cant upload screenshots. App description is limited to 325 characters. There is very very less visibility for an app, particularly if its paid one. Unless Google brings radical changes to Android Market, I am very skeptical about its success. On the other hand, iTunes app store is way ahead of the competition. And Apple is working hard to make the app store better and better.
5. Android has a return policy, customers can return an app within 24 hours. Apple still needs to find a way to do something like this so that users can try an app without paying for it.
6. Overall Android platform, including the device, SDK and Market is buggy, tasteless and unexciting. On the other hand, you keep getting the wow experience with iPhone world, with device, with new APIs and the new cool apps.

Considering a lot of cell phone manufacturers are adopting Android, it has a great future. Though the platform is still new, it has a potential to be the only competitor  for iPhone.