Android: The Platform of the Future.

As you may know last year T Mobile released its G1 phone powered by Android. It is a device in the league of iPhone. While G1 is pretty exciting, still every one said iPhone is still to be beaten. However this year there is emerging consensus that the platform to be beaten in coming days would be Android.

So what is Android? Android is a Mobile Internet Devices platform developed by Open Handset Alliance, which is primarily promoted by Google. Why there is so much buzz on Android

1) Unlike iPhone platform, Android is going to be open source and less restrictive. Any can develop applications based on Android and sell it in the market, while for iPhone apps, Apple needs to approve it before it can be posted in iPhone Apps market.

2) Android has received support from multiple handset makers including that of Motorola and Sony Ericsson besides a lot of small handset makers. In this year at three devices (One Chinese - Qiji, One Australian and another one Neo Free Runner from OpenMoko).This will result in a market that is flooded with devices powered by Android and hence a reason for developers to reckon with it.

3) Google targets Android not just for Mobile Phones. In deed Google mentions of "Mobile Internet Devices" rather than "Mobile Phones". So people are expecting devices from set-top-boxes to notebook to be powered by Android. Currently there are few cases where people were successful in running their laptops and other non-Android mobile phones with Android.

4) Google has released Android SDK for developing applications. This will follow java syntax, which would help developers who know Java(who are in plenty) to easily become developers in Andrioid platform.

5) To consider the local context and market in India, it is very clear that mobile phones are way ahead of PCs in people adaption. Hence, any strategy to address digital divide should consider Android type smart phones. Soon, there would be a lot of ultra cheap smart phones running android with intuitive user interfaces in vernacular languages with content of interest for local audiences. This would probably lead India to real digital and information revolution.