Today’s launch of the world’s first Google Android powered phone is certainly an exciting event. The team that has worked on Android has done incredible work, and, while no one knows for sure, the product will more than likely have some degree of success in terms of units sold and revenue generated.
At the core of the Android experience is obviously Google search. Like Chrome, Android is an attempt by Google to gain wrestle control of the mobile or browser user’s search experience from those that currently control the platforms that underpin that experience – carriers, mobile OS developers, browser developers, and other “intermediaries”, most notably Microsoft. Toolbar was a great success in maintaining Google presence in the hearts and minds of many users, and in preventing Microsoft from making it’s search experience the default for the majority. Chrome and Android can be viewed as smart attempts to work this same strategy.
Unfortunately for the Android team, the most common thing that people will say about the phone is that “it’s no iPhone”. It isn’t. The Android user experience is good but can’t be described as perfectly elegant at this point. But it will get better, and great applications will be developed for the phone … hopefully for Google there’ll be one or two killer apps that will make the platform and the phone a must-have at some point.
But I must say the marketing effort around Android has been abysmal. The iPhone has set the mobile user experience bar incredibly high, and disparaging comparisons between Android and iPhone are inevitable. Yet there was limited expectation setting from Google. Surely there could have been a more appropriate and explicit re-framing of the objectives of Android. The whole “it’s about the platform not the experience” line, as genuine as it is, doesn’t really resonate with people that have been spoiled by (or even just heard about) the iPhone experience.
Who knows what the business impact of this poor marketing effort will be, but I certainly feel for the hard working engineers, designers and others who, after all of their blood, sweat and sleepless nights, will suffer from the “good but not as good as …” complex. Let’s hope that this kind of feedback will inspire them to create something even greater.
Obviously this writer hasn’t really researched all the features of the G1 – it’s what iPhone should be (but isn’t).
Thanks for your comment CLDupont. If you reread my article, you’ll note that the point was that Google didn’t do such a great job setting expectations so that people wouldn’t make “not as good as the iPhone” comparisons. Being a Google employee, I’ve had the chance to play around with the phone. I love it, and I’m definitely going to buy one when they become publicly available.