Linked by David Adams on Sat 30th Aug 2008 16:32 UTC
The day after Google announced its answer to Apple's iPhone App store, it has announced the winners of a contest wherein developers win $275,000 or $100,000 for developing a top app for Google's upcoming Android mobile phone OS. To get an idea of where the trend in mobile computing is heading, all of the top ten use location-based data via GPS. Check out the winners.
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Member since:
2005-06-29
[cliche alert]
Those who do not understand history, are bound to repeat it.
The last time a closed and controlled computer platform took on an open and uncontrolled platform, the former lost. The open and uncontrolled platform wasn't better, but it was good enough, and it was a platform that allowed competition on price AND quality, not just quality.
I'm of course referring to Apple vs. the IBM PC.
History is repeating itself. Google is offering the IBM PC in the form of Android, and Apple is still offering basically the same thing as 25 years ago.
The similarities are so striking, it's almost sad that no one is really seeing it coming. We had a diverse phone platform market. It started with limited devices - devices that slowly gained features, becoming evermore advanced. There are a lot of players in the phone market, but no one has gained a dominance yet [just like in the early home computing days]. Apple is repeating its past mistake of thinking that people will pay for quality - whereas Google took a long hard look at IBM/Intel/Microsoft, and quickly realised that people are willing to settle for "good enough" as long as it's cheaper.
Mark my words.
Edited 2008-08-30 18:09 UTC