Soon the Mobile World Congress will start in Barcelone (Feb-16 to Feb-19). A lot of new devices running with Android platform should be announced: LG, Samsung, Motorola for phone devices but others devices too (GPS, Portable Media Player…). What can we wait from Apple and his platform?

The Android platform is a new opportunity for business. But there will be business if people are attracted by this new platform.

Some blogs give information about HTC G1 sales and these information are complete different from a website to another. For example, in December 2008 we could see that HTC Dream G1 (the first mobile running with the android platform) was sold out in Novembre (3 weeks after these launch). At the beginning of the year – Feb 2009 – some websites indicate that HTC didn’t sale enough of his G1, under his prediction.

Recently, HTC G1 was available in Germany, Poland and Netherlands. We don’t have information about sales yet. In these countries only T-Mobile provider sales this new phone. Soon, before of Q1, first Android phone should be available in others European countries and in Asian. To summarize, the Android phone (of HTC or another manufacturer) should be present everywhere around the world, even if we don’t know exactly when.

Some people try to compare Android phones and iPhone? Why? Seriously, even if iPhone and Android platform are really new with their functionalities, could we compare both?

iPhone has been launched by Apple with a real huge marketing communication. Android has been launched for Google addicts and I don’t watch HTC G1 ads at TV (There was one in US it’s true).

It’s easy to say that G1 won’t know the same sales as the iPhone. But could we say that Apple phone – using Objective C – will know more sales than Android phones? Nobody knows, but for developers and manufacturers things are different:

• to develop Android application, they don’t need to learn a new specific language (because it uses Java technology)
• to develop Android application, they can do it on different platform and they don’t need to have a Mac chain (Mac OS desktop/laptop and iPhone). Google provides a really good kit to develop, test and debug application.
• Anybody can create his own Android phone without pay taxes or fees
• Developers pay only 25$ to sale all their application

So one thing to do: wait the end of this year to have a first good vision.

Tweet This Post