Journal Zarf's Journal: Cellphones... just do it. 8
I'm looking to start working with Android. I found this tutorial. Basically my thought is this: cellphones are going to go boom. The last time I saw this kind of hype storm and positioning it was around this silly thing called "the internet" and if my pattern matching software is working right we're getting ready for a new boom in the next decade or so... this time fueled by whatever the cellphone is about to become.
I like the German term "Handi"
Cell phones are the new Microcomputer (Score:1)
Progression: Mainframe --> Mini --> Micro --> Laptop --> Cell Phones.
Laptop sales have surpasses desktop sales for some time. The next obvious step is cell phones.
Yes there will be a glut of software. There was a glut of Microcomputer software companies in the 80s and 90s as well. The Internet may be helping to create an artificial bubble, but it can't get too big this time around. There is an actual product (applications and games) with actual buyers (customers). If a company releases an
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The last bubble was made by buying hardware on leverage. 10% down bought you 100% use of the hardware and the telcos were left holding the bag sans 90% of their money when you went under. Then when the bank called... poof!
Not likely to happen with cellphones... unless cellphone companies start buying network infrastructure on leverage. Which actually *could* happen but probably won't since the memory of the last bust is so fresh.
But I'm talking about a boom... not a bubble. And anyone who can program right
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Check the front page more often, there already has been a boom in cell phone software, and an accompanying crash and developers realize that 99 cents per sale is not enough to sustain a company on, especially given that any software with 99 cents of complexity can quickly be copied by others, flooding the market with similar knock off software.
As for the HW industry, it is actually pretty well developed in terms of # of companies in it, but some standardization *really* needs to occure. If you explore the
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Isn't that what I just said?
If we're in 1980 then what happened in 1990?
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Consolidation of the industry around a single standard, x86 and the IBM PC, standardization of buses, ISA then PCI, standardization of ways to plug peripherals into devices, first a variety of ports and then eventually USB (which has thankfully already been adopted by many cell manufacturers, but everyone's USB stack is lacking).
Even more basic things. A standardized way of having bootloaders, hell, just having a standard way to install an OS would be miraculous
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and you wonder... what then is Android if not a play toward standardization.
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From what I can tell, Android little more standard than any other mobile OS out there, and unless Google works really hard, the handset manufacturers are going to fragment the hell out of the platform in order to "add value" to it and differenciate their offerings, e.g. Motorola's Droid.
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This will be a unique play to standardization that's fer sure. The last go around it was done by some upstarts reverse engineering the defacto standard and pushing clones on us. This time Google's trying for a deliberate standard from the get-go. Tougher hill to climb.