Told You So

Back in 2007, BRT talked about a new Google mobile OS called Android. Seems the prediction regarding the mantra that Open Source rules, appears, in this case, to be spot on.

RIM and Apple seem relatively powerless to stop Google.  RIM has managed to only come up with one significant new smart phone model (the Blackberry Torch), while Apple's only hope seems to lie with its yearly refreshes and waiting for AT&T exclusivity to finally end.  At the end of the day both competitors seem extremely unlikely to be able to muster the kind of challenge needed to reverse Google's course.

When it comes down to it, Microsoft's plodding path to victory on the desktop and Google's steady path to victory on the smart phone are highly analogous.  Both firms ditched the popular closed proprietary hardware environments that dominated the market at their time of entry and both companies put aside a focus on fine-tuning every minutia to try to make a "magical" OS.  In both cases, the OS makers instead focused on putting their product in the hands of lots of hardware partners and offering consumers a broader selection of choices.  And consumers, as it turns out, seem to like choice.

Arnold with Android