How to re-make Android become "controllable"

Li Na

Although Google's Android operating system currently has a great market share, but Google has been the challenge is that the fragmentation of Android. According to the application developer OpenSignal statistics, in 2013 there are a total of 11868 different Android devices.

Re-make Android become "controllable", which is Google has been trying to solve the problem.

Google recently announced the Google developer I / O, Google released the "Android One" program, which is specifically for mobile phone manufacturers to provide a hardware reference plan. In simple terms, Google will provide a set of hardware blueprint, commitment to participate in the "Android One" plan of mobile phone products will enjoy the system automatically or priority upgrade treatment, and manufacturers only need to be responsible for the production of mobile phones can, and, in order to have the market Competitive, carrying the plan of the phone will cost less than 100 US dollars.

"This is Google's new attempt to oppose Android's fragmentation, although it is not yet possible to predict the effect for now." Chen Feng, vice president of Rockchip Micro, revealed to the "First Financial Daily" that in addition to cooperation with MediaTek Google , As well as Intel, the two sides and Google's cooperation will be extended to television, tablet and other fields. And to some extent, Google will therefore enter the low-end Android mobile phone market, embedding more of their own services.

Aim at emerging markets

Google Android department manager at the Google Developers Conference on the scene demonstrated the Android One smart phone and announced the "Android One" program.

It is understood that Android One for Google's significance is to promote the popularity of Android, manufacturers can save development costs, the product can quickly enter the market. In addition, it also meets Google's goal: to bring more revenue to users through the Android platform.

In the medium to long term, Android One can reduce Google's cost of acquiring users in new markets and create more value for Google. Most importantly, Google will be able to dominate the next Android handheld hardware specifications. Earlier, Google introduced the Android operating system has been to reduce the threshold for the manufacture of smart phones a way, but because of its "open source" feature, the current domestic smart phone manufacturers are mostly using their own customized Android version.

In order to better achieve this goal, Google chose MediaTek and other vendors as their partners.

It is reported that in the past 6 months, Google has been with other vendors such as MediaTek negotiations, and promised to MediaTek to provide the latest version of the software and Android platform firmware, in order to be used for specific development work. At the conference, in addition to announcing the Android One project, Google also demonstrated an Android One smartphone built by Indian handset maker Micromax. The Android One smartphone features a 4.5-inch display, a dual SIM card, and dual-core MT6575 processor from MediaTek.

MediaTek's "turnkey program" has made many cottage handset makers successful in emerging markets. Prior to July 2010, MediaTek officially joined by Google to promote the Android operating system launched by the "Open Handset Alliance" was MediaTek to join the industry that the Android system is expected to reduce the cost of smart phones 2/3.

Close to MediaTek people told reporters that MediaTek in emerging markets have a large number of mobile phone customers, and in the low-end market also has a greater voice. Once handset manufacturers select Google's reference design, the former will be greatly reduced the time to launch new products, including manufacturing time and testing and network certification time.

But there are also people in the industry showed their concern. Chen Feng told reporters that this cooperation, the cooperation between Google and MediaTek version is very old program, and now many new chip solutions have come out, the attraction for handset makers may therefore decline.

As for whether it will set off a new "cottage boom", Chen Feng believes that the current cottage phone has touched the price of 200 yuan, much lower than Google 600 yuan smart phone program, but for some emerging markets in the strength of mobile phone manufacturers , Still have a certain chance.

Android's fragmentation risk

"From the whole machine to the program provider, Google this attempt is in fact against the fragmentation of Android." Chen Feng told reporters that at present, Google has deeply aware of the risk of fragmentation to Android.

With the surge in Android camp, more and more Android versions have appeared on the market. According to ABI Research, a research firm, in the first quarter of 2014, 22% of smartphones worldwide were branded with Android, representing a 3% market share increase from the first quarter of 2013. Earlier data released by application developer OpenSignal also showed that there were a total of 11,868 different Android devices in the market in 2013. This problem not only made developers feel exceptionally distressed, but also made consumers feel confused when making their choice.

In addition, some handset manufacturers hope their equipment can be different, at the expense of safety as a gimmick to "modify." Developers Guhui Feng told reporters that after trying out the platform application development of Apple and Google, he even dare not install Android Alipay on the phone, "the potential risk is too large, open-minded loopholes may occur at any time."

Gu Hui-feng told reporters that the price of Android devices from 50 dollars to 600 US dollars, hardware differences and price differences are closely related, if a system hopes to accommodate thousands of manufacturers, including a wide range of options and price range, that Naturally, different devices in various configurations will appear on the market.

As a competitor, Apple CEO Cook also said: "Android fragmentation is an increasingly serious problem, but also exponential growth of complex issues, many people buy a mobile phone with the old operating system, to the expiry of mobile phones out This system may have been around for three or four years now, just as the phone in my pocket still runs iOS 3, which makes me unthinkable. "

Google also made some changes.

On the one hand, Google hopes through the introduction of Nexus series products, equipped with the latest version of the operating system and a unified upgrade policy, try to ease the fragmentation of Android, on the other hand, Google hopes to release some independent system applications to improve the system, so Google does not need to update the system frequently as before.

But as Apple's Lockheed Martin said, with Apple, the vast majority of iPhone and iPad users are able to quickly upgrade after the new operating system is introduced. However, Google has never done that. "The pie charts for" which operating system version of which user are we use "are always different from those of Apple because our ecosystem is essentially different from Apple."

In the anti-fragmentation efforts, Google needs to do more.