Android founder makes the case for Google’s mobile strategy

BOSTON – A day after the release of the first cellphone powered by Google Inc.’s Android software, the founder of the startup that initially developed the software took the Mobile Internet World keynote stage to explain the reasons behind the search giant’s much-hyped effort.
“It’s been quite a busy week for us,” said Rich Miner, general manager of Google’s Mobile Platforms business and the founder of Android, the startup that Google acquired three years ago to form the base of its cellphone-software strategy.
Miner, a 15-year veteran of the wireless industry, said Android rose from the ashes of his tenure at European operator Orange, which was the first carrier in the world to launch a cellphone running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile software. Although the launch propelled Orange onto the international scene as a maverick in the mobile space, Miner said the lessons he learned from the event pushed him to found Android.
“It became clear to me that there were fundamental things that needed fixing in the mobile industry,” he said.
Orange launched its Windows Mobile powered smartphone, the Orange SPV (for sound, pictures and video), in 2002. Miner helped oversee the launch, and said it didn’t necessarily go as expected.
Despite being Microsoft’s only Windows Mobile customer, “we were still dictated terms as to what we could and couldn’t do” with the software. Miner indicated that Microsoft made it clear that Windows Mobile was a Microsoft product and not an Orange product.
Further, after the launch, Miner said Orange wanted to add push-to-talk capabilities to the phone, but discovered a glitch in Microsoft’s platform that wouldn’t allow the carrier to add the service. Microsoft agreed to rectify the issue, Miner said, but advised it would take 18 months to do so. And since the platform was not open to others, neither Orange nor the manufacturer (HTC Corp.) could modify it.
Miner said Google’s Android promises a different approach. Google helped develop the platform using “best-in-class solutions,” and, as of yesterday, made it free and open to anyone. This, Miner said, will allows anyone – individuals, businesses, handset makers and carriers – to develop Android services and applications via full access to the platform, from the bottom on up.
“No one party completely controls that platform and that software stack,” Miner said. “Each component can be mashed up with other components.”
Indeed, Kyocera Wireless Corp. has promised to join HTC in building Android phones, and Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sprint Nextel Corp. and others are members of Android’s Open Handset Alliance development organization.
Interestingly, Miner set forth the case that Android is an attempt by Google to harmonize the fractured mobile landscape. He said the range of software platforms in the wireless industry – from Java to BREW to Symbian – makes it difficult for developers to cover the entire industry.
“Google faced this very same problem,” Miner said, explaining that the company had to tweak its Java-based Maps service for every handset running the application in order to ensure it worked properly on different phones running different versions of the Java virtual machine.
“It was hard for Google to realize how hard it was to develop for the mobile space,” he said.
Despite such comments, Miner continued to press the case for Android, which is essentially another platform for developers to target, on top of Apple Inc.’s iPhone OS, Symbian, the OS for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile, Linux and others.
Miner explained that it was “fundamentally important” for Google – an Internet company – to develop a “suitable mobile experience” based on the number of mobile-phone users (more than 3 billion) versus the number of desktop Internet users (around 1 billion).
Miner said that Android, along with the iPhone, stands as an example of “software being developed by people who know software,” rather than companies set on selling wireless service or building wireless hardware.