It is really sad when columnists write sensational columns yet fail to do basic research of their claims. Case in point: PC Magazine’s Sascha Segan, who has a piece up today entitled Has Android Already Failed?
For example, Mr. Segan writes:
But the Android pipeline seems terminally clogged. Six months after T-Mobile released the G1, there’s a grand total of one more Android phone available: the HTC Magic
Clearly, if “the Android pipeline” is “terminally clogged”, then the other mobile device OSes must have done significantly better when they started out, right?
So, how many devices were running the iPhone OS six months after launch? Ummmm…2 (iPhone and iPod Touch).
Then, there must have been scads of Windows Mobile devices, right? Well, no, Windows CE — the progenitor to Windows Mobile — started with 2.
Palm OS? 2. Symbian? Near as I can tell, 1. Only Blackberry, which might have had a whopping three or four by the time they got to phones, was higher than those.
So, it would seem like Android’s progress is on par with the other mobile OSes at similar points in their respective histories.
He goes on to write:
But to actually build devices, you need a solid SDK, a clear idea of Google’s role, and a development ecosystem that’s at least as cozy as Windows Mobile’s.
A third-party developer SDK is immaterial for building devices, as evidenced by the fact that Blackberry somehow managed to ship quite a few devices without one. He offers zero evidence that “Google’s role” is somehow slowing device manufacturers. And, of course, even Windows Mobile didn’t have a “development ecosystem that’s as least as cozy as Windows Mobile’s” back when it started, either.
But wait! There’s more!
Android’s customizability was supposed to appeal to wireless carriers, but most carriers seem unimpressed. Verizon proclaimed support for Android in 2007 and never followed up. AT&T says it’s still mulling it over. Sprint is focused on the Palm Pre, for now. That’s a pretty weak show of support.
Mr. Segan is suffering from “ugly American syndrome”, assuming that the only wireless carriers in the world are those in the US. So Orange’s six handsets and SFR’s Android development contest and Vodafone’s upcoming HTC Magic release apparently do not count.
More of the second page of his piece is credible. Android is definitely not optimized for netbooks, though I suspect DataViz might quibble on his claim of no Android “desktop productivity applications”. It would certainly help if there was Google marketing akin to Microsoft’s early Windows Mobile marketing efforts. And so on.
But, of course, that apparently was insufficiently sensational, so he concludes with:
Android has one last chance: It can wow us this fall. The CTIA Fall trade show in October needs to include a full-bore assault of Android models from multiple manufacturers, in multiple form factors. If that doesn’t happen, we’ll just have to toss Android into the big pile of Linux distributions that tried to breach the consumer market and failed.
If you looked at Windows CE, Palm OS, Blackberry, or Psion’s EPOC (precursor to Symbian) at the one-year mark, none of them would exactly have had tons of momentum. Yet, in the eyes of Mr. Segan, in one year, Android is toss-worthy for merely achieving as much, if not more, than many of its competitors in that timeframe.
Now, truth be told, it would be nifty if there were more handsets. However, it takes a while to adopt a new mobile OS. Motorola announced its Android intentions last year, and their first devices are not yet available. Trust me, though, they’re working on it, and I expect other device manufacturers need similar time.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s not peaches-and-cream in Android-land. However, it’s not nearly as bleak as some columnists apparently want it to be.
