Prior to the existence of the Android operating system, there used to be two giants in smart-phone industry, Apple and Blackberry. While blackberry was more concerned in serving the business-class people, Apple was more compelling for the common masses. Blackberry was not much appealing at that time because of its corporate layout, while Apple on the other hand, was approaching the people with its eye pleasing visuals and engaging applications.

After open handset alliance was introduced in 2007, along with the Android OS, users all over the world were given the liberty to choose the handset of their own choice while keeping their OS fixed on Android.

Android was announced in 86 hardware, software and telecommunication companies’ consortium. The idea was to provide the same eye pleasing visuals and high efficiency, which iPhone and Blackberry does, but with the option to choose the handset. Within the span of less than a decade, 400 million mobile handsets are now operating on Android, which makes it one of the most successful mobile OS. However, not completely deployed in most parts of the world, Android still holds a bright future in terms of usage, business, revenue, development scope and application development.

1. Cost effective: Since Android is an open source project registered as Android Open Source project (AOSP), it makes the development cost of the Android quite a cost-effective feature. Anyone can take a part in Android application development or OS development, so it virtually removes the cost of development. And, no licensing fees and development fees means economic and upgraded handsets for users.
2. Unlimited Variety: As we discussed earlier, Android is an open source project which concerns on the development of the Android as OS. This means, either a software development company or an individual can try their hands in the development process of Android with their own creativity and ideas. This will provide large amount of variety of functionalities on an existing, open-to-all OS.
3. Customizable: Android devices can be customized according to the needs and requirements of the user. So it is likely to happen that users, in the near future, will tend to buy an Android device over any other device because of the ease of customization of the device according to the habits of user instead limiting the user’s utility according to the functionality of device.
4. Compatibility and device inter-operability: Since Android is open to all handsets, the brand of the manufacturer becomes immaterial, making the handsets more popular smart device over the protected device like iPhone which can run only iOS applications. Applications inter-operability with the kernel is smooth and easy without any prior configuration, which allows a user to download, install and run the application directly.

Software development services from professional organizations are even able to merge the concept of mobility in enterprise applications. For eg. Mobile marketing strategies can be well drafted since most of the development is undertaken by Google; it creates numerous entry points to applications for marketing purposes using Google apps, Gmail, Gtalk etc.

Tags: android, android application development, operating system, OS, telecom companies

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2012 at 4:57 PM and is filed under Android Platform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.