5 Reasons Why You Should Take Android Seriously

Angelo Mathews • October 28, 2010, 13:26:29 IST

Google in the recently held I/O Summit, launched Android 2.2 also known as Froyo, dubbed as the game changer in mobile platforms, for Enterprises especially.

5 Reasons Why You Should Take Android Seriously

Android has been in the news lately for a lot of reasons, but what is it that you really need to know among these news. Google in the recently held I/O Summit launched Android 2.2 also known as Froyo, dubbed as the game changer in mobile platforms, for Enterprises particularly. So what is the real deal with Android and what are the top 5 reasons you should consider this buzz seriously.
1) Android!! Really??

A recent report by Canalys Research showed that Android based smartphones in the US grew a massive 886% in this quarter, becoming the largest smartphone platform in the US. Approximately 14.7 million smartphone units were sold in the U.S., which accounts for 23% of the global market. Now, if this was 2009 or even 2008 it well would have been the Iphone, with out any doubt. So, what does it really hold for Indian CIOs?

According to Gartner, Indian Android sales are at a very nascent stage, but then that was exactly the prediction Gartner made for Virtualisation in 2007 or for the Cloud in 2008. Well, you can clearly see the difference.

Let me give you another statistic, in the Google I/O Summit 2010, Andy Rubin, Vice President- Engineering of Google, announced that Android was being launched on 100,000 devices per day. Very recently he updated that figure to 160,000 devices per day. That’s means two new Android devices every second as you read this.

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2) Cloud Phone, With Cloud OS

The cloud has revolutionised the enterprise, now just imagine what it can do to your phone. Think ahead of the Blackberry mailing system and the enterprise level security protocols. Think of the very possibility of running your Enterprise Applications on the cloud from your phone securely. Enterprise mobility 3.0 perhaps!

This May at the I/O Summit, Google’s VP of Engineering, Andy Rubin said, “We’re developing new ways to harness that computing power, giving APIs to third-party developers that don’t exist on the device but exist in the cloud, so those APIs can be connected to from a third-party service and then pushed to devices.” The Android’s Cloud to Device Messaging API, provides a mechanism that servers will use to tell applications on the device to contact the server and fetch the recent/updated application or user data.

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3) Android 2.2 is here….

Froyo, was officially launched at this year’s I/O summit and there has been a lot of positive hype around it. With the capabilities it is supposed to show, it has been received well by the developer community. The key factor is that Froyo is not just open source, it boasts of device policy management APIs so that developers can write programs that can control security features of the device such as remote wipe, minimum password, lock screen timeout and other tools. And it doesn’t end here, the developer community would be particularly happy due to its enterprise and cloud capabilities.

Smartphones like the Nexus One have already been updated with Froyo, and soon we will also see updates coming for a range of HTC and Motorola phones like Evo 4G and Droid respectively. Froyo already enjoys Microsoft Exchange capabilities such as- account auto-discovery and calendar sync. With the developer community getting a reason to write programs for Froyo, the applications market is going to witness a boom in this space. One very critical API, however, is the Cloud to Device API, which allows programmers use Google’s massively parallel servers to write programs that offer mobile alerts, OTA to phone, and two-way push sync functions. If you wish to develop or test these capabilities, you can download the Android 2.2 SDK, here .

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4) It’s Android (read Google, and then read the Web) v/s Everyone Else (Whoever is left anyway)

There are already over 60 Android devices, coming from 21 OEMs up the market in 49 countries. It’s not just phones, recently a manufacturer also showed off an Android powered netbook and more recently, tablets powered on Android. With such massive success in the US and Europe markets, the next emerging markets is right here and you either decide to jump on as it comes or follow it after it’s left you.

With the new version of operating system, will come support for Flash, better security and presumably more stable operation. There is no doubting that this looks like a serious contender and should be followed closely for some room in your Enterprise Management policy. Froyo operating system is geared towards catching the eye of more businesses. While it won’t be confused with the lock-down cachet of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry platform, you can be sure of some solid enterprise capabilities.

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5) Open Source becomes more Open and still Secure

Google on June 23 this year launched Android 2.2 to open source, allowing programmers to offer applications that take advantage of enterprise capabilities and APIs that leverage Google’s cloud computing assets. Many users though, still feel that in a market owned by RIM and Apple, Android is still not completely enterprise ready, due to its security policies.

Well, security has always been a concern and will always remain till the end of time and there can be only proactive steps taken to mitigate security risks or flaws, when detected. Right now, Google is doing everything possible on that front and apart from doing the most important thing, listening to enterprises.

For now, most of the enterprises however, will wait and watch until there are more compelling reasons to really look into Android as a serious contender and watch for reasonable momentum in the market that would make sense investing in Android.

Written by Angelo Mathews

Angelo Mathews is Senior Producer for Biztech2.com's video content, and a self admitted technophile. In his blog, he tells you all you need to know about Android. see more