This is why Android is so incredibly important. The Chinese can build good hardware at ridiculously low cost, but they just can't do software, as anyone who has ever used an iPhone knock-off can testify. Android massively cuts R&D costs, putting the agile and efficient Chinese manufacturers at a distinct advantage.
Android will take the whole of the Chinese and Indian smartphone market by default, unless something else comes along which is more open, versatile and easy to implement. The markets are sufficiently price sensitive that $7 extra for a WinMob license is a dealbreaker, let alone the vast premium the likes of Jobs or Kallasvuo charge. They have peculiar demands that western manufacturers just aren't attuned to - when have you ever seen a Nokia or a Motorola with dual sim card slots?
Western hardware companies should be sweating about their local markets too, but not because of the threat of generic clones - there's a much bigger scare on the horizon and it looks suspiciously like HTC. They have gone from generic manufacturer to big brand in a few short years off the back of WinMob and Android; There is a tide of companies seeking to do exactly the same thing.
Mohandas Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.". I hope we all get our enjoyment while the joke is still funny.
I am sick to death of hearing "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" used as justification for anyone's pet technology subject always winning.
Just because Eric Raymond cast himself as the Gandhi of the OSS movement and used that quote doesn't mean we should copy him.
Well it only really applies if you are ignored, then laughed at, before it becomes an actual fight.
Despite his appearance in their ad campaign I don't see many Apple fans considering themselves ignored or laughed at, nor using that as justification for their assured future
victory if they are. On the other hand it seems to fit the Christensen disruptive model very well: "The reason big new things sneak by incumbents is that the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.”
I really dislike that quote too, it's a tautology along the lines of "You keep losing until you win". If you haven't won yet it's because it's just around the corner -- just put up with the ignoring, laughing, fighting a bit longer. Never mind the fact that innumerable technologies were ignored, laughed at, and fought and never won.
The quote could be interpreted as a praise of perseverance. And it is not a tautology due to you can prove that perseverance increases/decreases your chances for success.
For example, in a casino perseverance is not a good quality unless you cheat (the more you play the more you loose). On the other hand a startup founder might benefit from having this property ("You have to be willing to keep trying new things and refuse to die." http://startup2startup.com/2008/11/25/paulgraham-ycombinator... ).
Actually the first application of that phrase to Linux came well before Eric appeared on the scene. I'd say that I first saw it on a t-shirt for Linux Expo in North Carolina in 97 or 98, and it was being used colloquially well before that.
If I were to credit anyone, I'd maybe credit Jon Hall, who used it in his speeches when he was promoting Linux at DEC.
If the history of PC OEMs are any indication there will probably be a lot of diversity in the Android phone/tablet market at first but over time some major players will be established and there won't be much room left for anyone else. Chinese manufacturers are still at a big disadvantage when it comes to supporting their products and getting them into the retail chain around the world. I think it's likely they will take the familiar role of manufacturing the devices for companies who can handle the nuts & bolts of advertising, selling and supporting it.
Android is cool, no doubt, but the few times I've used those phones, the UI is just not there. It's even more important on a touch-screen device that attention to detail in every tiny measure of interaction be made, but Android doesn't have it (unless the new versions are vastly better in the last few months).
>The only weakness compared to the iPhone is the quality of apps, but that is quickly changing.
One of my disappointments when first getting an Android phone was that the apps trended toward being uglier and more buggy than on iPhone, but even in the last three months that's changed big-time. 3.3.1 strikes again?
They had a nice session at I/O where they decomposed the UI design elements behind the new official Twitter app (although if you have an Evo right now you may well have been in that same room with me). I don't use Twitter much at all, but I still found myself spending 20 minutes playing with the app in awe at how well put together it is.
I hope that apps like that provide some sold examples to get developers to think a bit more about design and user experience. The new features in 2.2 hopefully should help as well.
I wanted to see that session too but got sidetracked somewhere else at IO. That's the biggest problem with IO - at any given time there were two or three places I wanted to be. They've said they'll be posting all of the session videos on YouTube but they haven't shown up yet. Here's the account where they're supposed to be listed: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers#g/u
The only thing I hate about Android is the delay these devices hit Europe. Back when the Droid was the hottest thing ever, by the time it was available here Google released the NexusOne. So ok .. I guess I wait for the NexusOne then. Now it happend again, couple weeks ago the NexusOne shipped and we're teased by the Evo 4G. For people like me, who always want the latest greatest thing, this is becoming a real problem :P At least the iPhone is available worldwide in June.
The Evo 4G seems to be fundamentally similar to the HTC HD2 Windows phone released last November in Europe and 5 months later in the US. It seems not so much better than, as different from, the Nexus One and HTC Desire (which was released in Europe first too).
I can see waiting if there's some particular feature you like (additional front camera maybe?) but otherwise you seem to be getting the same core hardware, so why wait? There will be a new "generation" of Android hardware soon enough and you want to enjoy your phone before it gets totally outdated.
I've read that shanzai phone makers are willing to pirate WinMo, so Android is not necessarily cheaper. I suppose larger vendors have to be legitimate, though.
It's really weird to me that so many people at Kotaku seem so excited about this. How many times has there been some radically cheaper Chinese knockoff with a similar name that turns out to be a piece of absolute shit? Were these people excited about the Vii? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vii
Apple is successful in large part because of attention to detail; this thing can't even seem to decide whether it's an iPed or an APad. And it's not really a clone in any sense: it's only a 7" screen, yet apparently still heavier than the (arguably already too heavy) iPad. Really, what are the chances it's great at $100 when most people were surprised Apple was able to get the iPad (perhaps manufactured at the same factory) down to $500?
Be excited about the future potential of Android tablets using cheap commodity hardware, sure, but I don't see anything exciting about this particular device from what little info is here. What an example of not getting why the iPad is successful.
I don't think this product could be legally brought to market in the United States. The Chinese government's trade policies enabled the creation of a $100 Android-running iPad lookalike.
So what? U.S. government free speech policies allow citizens to say most whatever they like, including things that cannot legally be said in Islamic theocracies. When a U.S. resident inevitably exercises his freedom of speech in a way that offends Muslims, would someone in Saudi Arabia therefore be justified in claiming that "the U.S. insults Islam"?
I was going to comment that it's going to be revolutionary when these guys combine forces with Android, but it says in the story that this is built on Android. Interesting times.
It also says it's running on an Intel CPU, which has got to be wrong. Android doesn't run on the x86 architecture as far as I know. Take the info with a grain of salt.
[Edit] Well, it seems like there may be some unsupported (by Google) Android-x86 work going on, so maybe it's possible:
Chinese doesn't have culture for innovation, they have always had culture of replication. Even from within innovation has been something that as suppressed for many centuries.
China is a world's factory. With disregard for copyright and intellectual property its hard to see when their own people will get motivation to invent and develop technologies.
You could say the exact same things about the United States in the 1800s. Part of the US expansion and industrialization came about through stealing British inventions and running with the ideas.
The seeds of innovation were there earlier, though. The rifle industry comes to mind - I remember reading that innovative rifles with better range played some part in colonial militias' success in the US revolutionary war. One could argue that was more craftsmanship than innovation, but there's a strong connection between making things well and making better things, and China isn't famous for quality goods either.
"One could argue that was more craftsmanship than innovation, but there's a strong connection between making things well and making better things, and China isn't famous for quality goods either."
That's because they weren't taught in our textbooks.
You are right. I think most people should know this. Rip off happens everywhere. Just that china has more people and the probability of it happening there is higher than other places.
Not in the way it is organized and encouraged in China. There are factories there that specialize in rip offs, companies that specialize in finding something invented/created elsewhere and reverse engineering.
Not to say that the US didn't do it, or that Japan was also well known in the 70's for much the same thing, but to say that it is only because China has "more people" and more "probability" is misleading. The practice is widespread and encouraged, not just by their culture, but also indirectly by their government.
Camera manufacture started as either junk, or as cheaper copies of German (Leica) bodies and lenses.
Car manufacture was in one case initially intertwined with licensed designs from the UK.
In both these cases, Japan grew to become the leader in cameras and amongst the leaders in automobiles.
The interesting thing is whether China can do the same thing with computers, but as software has such a cultural dependence, I highly doubt it. Aside from Matz, has Japan even produced any really notable software or operating systems?
Nintendo's doing pretty well, and the DS and Wii can be considered innovative. I don't think their games aren't software in the way that you mean, but they've broken new ground there many times, too.
> Aside from Matz, has Japan even produced any really notable software or operating systems?
The NES, the MSX, The FM-Towns, Sega Master System, Megadrive, Dreamcast, the SNES, Mario, Contra, Starfox, Golden Axe, Thunderblade, Outrun, The PSP, The Playstation, PS2, PS3.
That's just in one industry (gaming). Of all of those the only ones that weren't significant out of Japan were the FM-Towns and MSX. The MSX was the biggest single threat to 8-bit computers in the early to mid 80s not because of it's power, but because it was a licenced standard (with OS software admittedly written by Microsoft, thank goodness they never got a hold on the OS market!)
Combine this with some interface and packaging cleanup (something one really talented designer could do), and some decent marketing, and they could make a fortune off this thing. I would still keep my iPad, but I'd probably buy a few of these for guests to use, and as additional interfaces around the house!
Battery life might be the deal breaker on this device. But yeah, if that isn't terrible, why have a $500 picture frame, home theater controller, and toy for the kids when you can have a $100 one that fills those roles just as well?
How soon till a proper reviewer can get their hands on this and put it through some paces? Engadget, how about putting that checkbook journalism to some good use?
I never understood it. How can they churn out cheap knock offs so fast. Either they are really smarter than the whole R&D department of Apple combined or they have a very vast and well developed espionage market.
It's also not that hard to build a slightly nodded copy after someone else has already spent millions on R&D figuring out all the difficult bits.
And of course this appears much more of a physical/appearance clone than anything. I'd like to see some 3rd party reviews of durability and battery life and so on.
In the end, it is no different than cars and other consumer goods. Some people appreciate a product with real design and innovation, and some just want the cheapest thing possible in a given form factor. I think there are markets for both.
It's called schematics. There is a huge underground market for system board / chip / electrical level schematics for every single type of consumer electronics in China.
Since schematics printed on paper, in a binder, etc are relatively easy to smuggle out of the factory (or make a duplicate for), it's most likely that the knockoffs use the manufacturing schematics at some point in their production.
Bunny has a great post of the types of schematics available in shen zhen.
That's like saying "This Chinese Louis Vuitton knockoff looks just like the real one! Their designers must be much better than Louis Vuitton's." That device's hardware looks like the iPad. That in no way signifies that the company's R&D dept. is anywhere near as good as Apple's.
Or a R&D department at all, seems like it could be as simple as taking the same ipad design replacing some of the components with cheaper off the shelf components alternatives.
They probably know more about how the ipad is made than most people at apple if they have the insider connections where it is being built.
No, by "ghetto" I meant "ecosystem of knockoff products fraught with quality issues". Android desperately wants to be the low-cost alternative to iPhone OS, yet low-cost also means compromises in usability, responsiveness, etc.
I have an Android phone, and though I like the Sprint service better than AT&T's, compared to an iPhone using the phone itself is an exercise in clunkiness and awkwardness.
I just flashed it to 2.1 (itself an exercise in unnecessary foldirol) and it feels somewhat smoother, but not Apple-smooth.
Compromises. That's the keyword. 90% usability for 20% price - it's a good deal for 90% of the people. The other (upper) 10% get the iPad, they can afford it.
90% usability may be a good deal, but only for the 20% of people who put the effort in to find benefit from the technology. Everyone else would have spent less, but gained less as well -- as they ignore large swaths of features, spending only enough cognitive time to use one or two core applications.
E.g. Note the incredible flexibility and power of desktop PCs and how that's been almost completely ignored by 90% of users, who barely know enough to do email and the web.
And that's a particular issue in the case of a mobile, secondary-computing device such as tablets, where having the functionality isn't anywhere near as important as actually improving the experience of using those functions.
i.e. They have passable email on their desktop and/or phone, so you need more than passable email to sell a tablet. If 'almost' having good usability was good enough, we'd have been hip-deep in windows tablets for the last decade and Palm PDAs before that.
"Android desperately wants to be the low-cost alternative to iPhone OS..."
What do you mean "wants to be", isn't it that already? Heck, for every phone maker that isn't Apple or doing production for Apple, iPhone OS isn't even an option anyway. So really, it wants to be the low-cost alternative to the future Microsoft option and in-house OS's that phone manufacturers have. If you mean from the phone user's perspective, then Android phones and iPhones seem to be at price parity (and this competition has been fantastic no matter which phone you end up picking, btw), but feel free to run some numbers if you want (last I did it was a wash depending more on how you wrote the rules of the comparison than anything else).
How long have you had the Android phone? Switching OS's can grate on one's trained expectations even when the two are equivalent in usability. It can take a while before you can really compare them honestly (or for cognitive dissonance to do its work, as the case may be).
Android will take the whole of the Chinese and Indian smartphone market by default, unless something else comes along which is more open, versatile and easy to implement. The markets are sufficiently price sensitive that $7 extra for a WinMob license is a dealbreaker, let alone the vast premium the likes of Jobs or Kallasvuo charge. They have peculiar demands that western manufacturers just aren't attuned to - when have you ever seen a Nokia or a Motorola with dual sim card slots?
Western hardware companies should be sweating about their local markets too, but not because of the threat of generic clones - there's a much bigger scare on the horizon and it looks suspiciously like HTC. They have gone from generic manufacturer to big brand in a few short years off the back of WinMob and Android; There is a tide of companies seeking to do exactly the same thing.
Mohandas Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.". I hope we all get our enjoyment while the joke is still funny.