Skip to main content

Switched On: Honeycomb or the highway

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

During the holiday season of 2009 when netbooks were the hot commodity, Apple lost share in the PC market. It had nothing to compete with the sunken prices and shrunken sizes of those miniature laptops. PC vendors such as ASUS and Acer, on the other hand, did well in the netbook segment, as they could call on their expertise in building inexpensive Windows notebooks.

After the iPad's introduction, though, the tablets were turned. While many PC vendors loathed the low profitability of netbooks, they were now faced with competing with their own products. With the exception of HP, which shelled out billions of dollars for webOS, the iPad set PC vendors scrambling to choose which operating system might best compete. Is it Windows, the devil they know, or Android, where they have far less experience than competitors from the smartphone market?

Switched On has already taken on the role that Windows might play in future tablets, but what about Honeycomb? In contrast to the original version of Android, which was in the works prior to the introduction of the iPhone, Honeycomb arrived a year after the iPad. Android licensees, particularly smartphone vendors, surely beseeched Google for a tablet-optimized version of their preferred mobile OS. But Google may also be a victim of the iPad's jujitsu.

For while entering the tablet market helps the viability of Android and keeps competitive pressure on Apple, Google itself has relatively little to gain from a strong presence in the tablet market even if it can gain such a foothold. It's becoming clear that much of tablet usage is in the home and growth is coming at the expense of notebooks, where Google already has dominant market share in search. Unlike in smartphones, where Android was able to ride the wave of carrier preference to become a force to be reckoned with in the U.S., there's a far more tenuous tie between the tablet and cellular service. And while we are starting to see more big names such as Acer, Sony and Samsung follow Motorola down the Honeycomb path, we're also seeing companies opt out in order to hit price points that are farther afield from where Apple is playing.

Of course, there is the argument that Android tablets also cause competitive pain for Google's search competitor Microsoft. But Microsoft is well on its way to an expanded presence in another computing setting that represents a better opportunity for Android: the automobile. More than a decade after the disappointing debut of the AutoPC, Microsoft has created a winning partnership with Ford onSync. And at the IFA Press Conference in Alicante, Ford announced that it is expanding Sync to Europe. Clearly that opens a driver's side door for Android to power competitive systems. And if Android won't step in, car companies have another option in MeeGo, which is being developed in a dashboard-centric version.

Car companies are notoriously slow in integrating new technologies, but the vehicle is a platform where Apple has chosen to go with behind the curve with third-party connections rather than address the opportunity head-on, so Google can play to the kind of distribution that made Android a smartphone powerhouse. More importantly, cars are probably the second-most powerful devices behind the smartphone for connecting sellers to buyers in the physical world.

And that is simply core to Google's revenue stream. The company has demonstrated that it realizes this with its work on driving directions in its navigation app and has tried to seed the market with car docks for products like Nexus One and Droid smartphones. Like Microsoft, Google is doing some great work in voice recognition that is showing up on Android handsets. Sync has shown, though, how intelligent in-vehicle multimedia control can nicely complement smartphones. For Google, an integrated offering for the imminently connected car is a more important long-term priority than the relative homebody that is the slate.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Google announces new ways to discover apps on Android Market, more tools for developers

Android Market may have a lot going for it, but most would surely agree that it could use some improvement when it comes to discovering apps that you aren't specifically looking for. Thankfully, it seems Google has indeed been aware of those concerns, and it's now announced five new features that should go so some way towards improving things. Those include some newly revamped top app charts that promise to be "fresher" and country specific, a brand new Editors' Choice section that highlights apps chosen by Google, a new Top Developers feature that places a special icon next to the name of developers that make the grade (currently more than 150), improved related apps on individual app pages and, last but not least, a new trending apps section that shows the apps growing fastest in terms of daily installs. What's more, while all of those features are currently exclusive to the web-based version, Google says they're also "coming soon" to the Andr...

Scientist cooks up adjustable strength metals

As you may know, crafting a katana is a delicate process that involves carefully constructing a razor-sharp high-carbon edge around a soft shock-absorbent core. One day though, smiths and forging fires could be replaced by electrode-wielding mad-scientists, with the technology to selectively harden and soften metal at will. At least that's what we envisioned when we read about Jörg Weißmüller's breakthrough research in the field of nanomaterials. The German scientist discovered that by placing precious metals in acid he could create tiny ducts through corrosion. Once those channels are flooded with a conductive liquid, electrical currents can be used to harden the material and, if you change your mind about the brittle results, the effect can easily be reversed to make it soft again. The tech could eventually lead to self-healing vehicle armor or scratch-resistant cellphones -- but, really, we just want to zap our way to a high-quality samurai sword. Physorg

LG adds 'Tweet-TV' enabled Android phone to its list of Mobile DTV prototypes

Whenever mobile digital television broadcasts finally take off LG will be ready and its latest concept design -- following the autostereoscopic 3D screen shown at CES -- is the Tweet-TV pictured above. At the National Association of Broadcasters show this week it's demonstrating the prototype Android phone with a Harris MDTV antenna that also pulls in relevant tweets and displays them over the broadcast being watched. Whether or not a dose of social networking will help MDTV succeed where others have failed remains to be seen but first we'll see if it manages to reach 40% of the US population later this year. The press release and a bigger picture follow after the break.       LG ELECTRONICS SHOWS EXPANSIVE CAPABILITIES OF MOBILE DIGITAL TV, DEMONSTRATING 'TWEET-TV' SOCIAL NETWORKING, ELECTRONIC COUPONS, 'GLASSES FREE' 3D Prototype displays, Smartphones highlight flexibility of mobile DTV standard LAS VEGAS -- Apr 08, 2011 / (http://www.myprgenie....