When you bought that fancy Motorola Droid back in November 2009, how did you feel? It was pretty cutting-edge, right? According to its huge advertising campaign, there was finally a phone on the market that could reliably compete against the iPhone. Verizon customers had the latest and greatest Android device in their hands. But two very short months later, an even better Android handset was announced by Google – the Nexus One.
2010 saw a flood of excellent Android devices, each one slightly better than the last and being released at a head-spinning rate. After the Nexus One, we saw the HTC Droid Incredible, HTC EVO 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S series of devices and, to finish off the year, the Google Nexus S. But the rate at which Android handsets are being pumped out is making consumers feel like their once-fresh smartphones are quickly becoming dinosaurs.
Of course, consumers may be partially to blame since we’re constantly hyping and pushing better specs and hardware. Naturally, manufacturers like HTC and Motorola want to keep up with that demand, so we’re seeing bigger screens with higher resolution and more powerful processors.
CNN says:
The way it was: Just a few years ago, mobile phone makers had to design their devices through and through: The hardware, operating system, chipset and design were all made by LG, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and their rivals.
All that time and effort meant phones took a long time to get to market, and they needed to stay there for years to make back all the investment that went into designing the device.
The way it is now: But then along came Android, an open source, free-to-license OS. The availability of Android means device manufacturers can just load the ready-made software onto their phones instead of paying a team of engineers to develop a proprietary OS. And they can customize it as much as they like.
The components that once took a great deal of time to build seem to available made-to-order now, making it that much easier for manufacturers to get amazing new handsets out to market in blazing fast time. But is it going to be sustainable or good for consumers in the long run? Will it continue to fragment the Android OS market, too?
It’s definitely letting smaller manufacturers to jump into markets where they were previously unable because they lacked resources. CNN continues:
Android’s law has allowed new, previously unknown competitors like ZTE to double its market share and become the fourth-largest mobile phone vendor in the world. It has led to the quadrupling of phone processor speeds over the past year. And it’s helped Google’s mobile operating system go from zero to 300,000 activations a day on more than 100 phones in just 26 months.
Many Android owners have already come to grips with the fact that buying the hottest handset on the market now might result in some regret later – evidently not much later – when newer and hotter devices are announced and released.
[Via: CNN]