Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha laid some hate on the Android Market in a conference webcast yesterday, claiming 70% of their smartphone returns are due to third-party apps negatively affecting performance. Apparently Motorola’s custom Android app suite, Motoblur, has been collecting data about app usage, which has brought them to this conclusion. By the same token, they’re hoping to eventually be able to issue warnings through Motorblur when a user is about to download an app that is particularly rough on battery life.
Since Google doesn’t curate app submissions for battery and processor usage (like Apple does with iPhone applications), Motorola’s complaints seem valid enough. Though the general consensus among consumers is that more is better, and as such open app market is better than a closed one, that gut reaction tends to lack the foresight that some apps aren’t as well-written as they should be. The same sentiment is extended to Flash support in the browser; although it’s great that mobile devices can read Flash as any desktop browser would, the format has become so commonplace that there’s a lot of poorly-made Flash on the web.
With all of that said, what would you rather have – openness and flexibility in app selection at the cost of stability, or hang on to that stability but have a smaller range of apps available to you?
[via PCWorld]