andy rubin

The Techland Fortune/CNN Blog has an interview up with Android deity Andy Rubin (is ANDroid named that 'cause of him?) straight from the back-room dealings at CES. There are some great bits of info in there...

...On HTC producing the first Android phone:

Well I’m not sure if we said they would be first, but second half of 2008 is what we’re targeting for phones.

...On SDK bug-tracking:

In a couple of weeks we’ll have an online mechanism. We thought it was more important to get the SDK out there in developers hands first.

...On Android's lofty goals:

Software takes a lot of time to develop, and the software cost of a cell phone is about 20 percent. That is impacting consumers and making cell phones more expensive. The trickle-down effect is that it’s actually making data plans more expensive. By building a complete stack and having it be more open where there’s not a single vendor that’s selling it - we’re actually giving it away for free - we feel that it opens up the market in a way that benefits the consumers. It will make cell phones and data plans cheaper.

...On the issue of fragmentation:

If we’re worried about not fragmenting and not creating anything new then we’d still be using tubes in our radios and you’d have to warm up the TV.

It's a short interview, but action-packed.

Andy Rubin, head Android maker, sat down with ZDnet.co.uk for a well-padded interview.

Some highlights:

• The current UI is a placeholder, and will be replaced.
• "There is no direct-advertising component in the platform."
• Users will have the option of choosing their own browser.
• Android has been "contemplated" on different platforms including, as the buzz lately has been, set-top boxes.
• Andy uses an iPhone.

The most interesting thing to come out of the piece for me is the concentration on mash-ups. Andy says:

We've been building it as a mobile mashup platform. That is a new concept for [mobile] phones. So the developer can now stand on the system platform and take advantage of other developers' work for the first time. So, that just creates more flexibility for the developers, less work, faster turnaround, rapid prototyping, and all that stuff, and we're really, really excited about that concept.

As Lawrence Lessig would tell you, the concept of the mashup is central to the way the internet generation interacts with information. From the Grey Album to movie trailer recuts, the hallmark of open access to information and the tools necessary to manipulate it has been new creations from the building blocks of what came before. Yahoo Pipes and the Google Mashup Editor are officially-sanctioned examples of this paradigm. If Android can really embody the concept, rather than just paying it lip service, it could represent a revolution not just for the mobile space but for the entire OS space.

Wine-soaked misanthrope John C. Dvorak has offered his opinions on Android and the OHA, and they're predictably piquant.

He bashes Rubin ("a strikeout artist"). He bashes the Sidekick ("less a phone and more a gizmo"). He bashes the iPhone ("being used more as a photo album than a phone").

He does, however make a couple of good points. We haven't seen Android yet, let alone a phone running the OS; is it really prudent to be tossing around all this hype? And his comments about the nature of strategic alliances are an extension of some of my own fears - how often do these 'foundations' and 'alliances' actually pan out to be anything more than good intentions and PR grabbing?

John: if this whole thing does go down in flames, or even peters out with a whimper, then I'm buying the Chardonnay.

We're going live today. Site design is, so far nonexistent, but we wanted to start getting content up right away with the hopes that everything else will follow.

I'll get started with a couple of quick links.

Open Handset alliance site:
http://www.openhandsetalliance.com

Andy Rubin's Google blog post:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/wheres-my-gphone.html