Decoding Google’s Android N Strategy
Earlier this year, Google kick-started a neat little campaign on “Be Together. Not The Same” starting the with following rather cryptic tweet.
It went viral, and caught the world’s attention!
Google, being Google, followed it up with a rather neat video. It builds a sweet premise — When different members of a family, come together, they re-create amazing harmony, even if they are not individually similar.
The Far and Flung Out Android Family
If you were to consider the major software innovations of the digital age, Android ranks right up there.
When was the last time millions of people have worked on a project that powers more than a billion electronic devices, building magical experiences, we did not believe was possible only decades ago?
The magic behind all this is its open source nature, allowing programmers to pick up pieces from anywhere in the Android stack and start building. The “build what you want” philosophy!
Of course, the freedom and the agility of the platform meant that there were so many variants of Android out there. It’s a family that kept on expanding and very soon, the split of devices running various versions looked infamously like this.
The problems with fragmentation are simple — it retards the development of cutting edge features on Android, and with so many variants, not all the devices get the updates they require at the right time to be completely secure and smooth.
Do we get the dessert after dinner ?
The Android is literally the brain of over a billion smartphone devices out there, devices which form a personal part of a billion odd lives in the world. And, yet amazingly, close to 80% of those Androids are outdated, and that’s not funny at all. Especially in the context of its competing operating system, the iOS by Apple boasts of 95% devices updated to the latest version.
This is the root cause which leads to fragmentation described above and its mostly because pushing an Android update is a complicated business. The OEM (the brand/phone manufacturer) has to modify Android to make sure it runs well on its different phones, each of whom have their own capabilities and hardware. Add to that, if a brand wanted to introduce its own features, it leads to further delay in development, testing and deployment.
Nurturing a Democracy
Managing the huge Android Ecosystem is like managing a huge democracy with each state in its own sphere of demands and limitations. But, then it’s a cool $31Bn dollar democracy, so Google must nurture it.
Is Android Nutella finally the answer the all of its fragmented kids ?
Well, we do not know for sure, and also will not, when it finally releases later in the year, but there are telling indications that Google has finally rolled up its sleeves to start tackling the issue. For example, we can clearly see that with N, Android is attempting to separate the the front end and the back end of the OS. Retaining the deep Android level libraries in a different partition and keeping all things OEM in another partition. It helps tremendously since all smartphone brands are ridiculously obsessed at packing in a layer of customization on top of the Stock Android layer (and calling it an OS), even if it meant that it delayed updates, without even introducing deep Android level OS features.
So basically with Android N, Google is literally saying, “Go ahead, now customize all you want, we’ve put you in a separate room, it should not delay my critical updates to your flagships, and help me put my shiny new OS on your phones”
Fragmentation is dead, then?
It’ll take time. It’s a billion-device challenge. But we’re getting there, one small under-the-hood change at a time. At a time when Apple is introducing low cost devices which might begin the path to iOS fragmentation. At the same time, developers are growing up, using common Google Play Services resources to build Apps stretching across Android versions. And significantly, Android has fully penetrated the $150 smartphone market without the help of the circus that is Android One. The force is with the software now.
Going back to its campaign I described at the beginning of the post, Google seems to be encouraging more customized versions of its OS, while making it easier for individual brands to release updates faster. You can literally have the cake and eat it too!
Be Together, Not the same!
It’s a fascinating time to be a smartphone marketeer.
(Not too active on Medium, you can start conversations here)
