Why manufacturers should just leave Android alone

Android has to let other companies play around with it’s software though if it is likely to suceed and beat Apple.

Look at all the other things in the past that have been very restrictive and look where they went –

Sony Betamax vs VHS, the developers of VHS allowed everyone to produce VHS tapes and change the format in various ways including adding copy protection to films, etc, they also allowed numerous manufacturers to produce there own versions of VHS tape players,  VHS took off where as Betamax died a death.

Sony Minidisc vs CD – Again Sony very restrictive on who used their product and made sure that it was only in Sony products, didn’t allow many other manufacturers to play around or produce their own units, CD was a format developed by Sony and Philips and was leased to numerous manufacturers all allowing them to do various things with the CD format, including adding copy protection, using the discs for both data and music.  The CD ruled.

PC vs Archimedes/Amiga/ST/Mac – The PC yet again allowed numerous manufacturers to produce and change their technology and alter the format – Archimedes was mady by Acorn (ARM), Amiga was made only by Commodore, ST was only made by Atari and Mac only by Apple.  All those other 4 formats were very restrictive on who could build the units and what was in them.  Whilst they did end up with a top quality product, to this date the only one of the three that still survives is the Mac and that was only by pure luck more than anything (the Amiga is always trying to make a comeback).  Where as now because so many people can build PC’s and use various parts to make the PC do what they want it to, there are more PC’s than any other type of computer out there.

There have been a few exceptions to this – for example the MSX and the 3DO which both were done as computers and games consoles that numerous companies could produce and modify, but neither of these took off.

Of course the reason behind this is that by allowing numerous companies to use your invention and not restricting it to just your own products you widen the amount of people that are using your invention and giving it far more option of expanding.

I would never buy an iPhone myself so I would never use iOS for the simple reason that I don’t like how restrictive the Apple phones are and also that when they first came out they were very much overpriced and lacked a lot of features that other rival manufacturers could easily put in the phone, and even now some of things on the new iPhones are very poor compared to rival brands (you only need to watch the joke video with the bears on Youtube to see this!).  I currently have a HTC HD2 which can boot into either WM6.5 or Android.  Now if Apple released iOS to other manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung, Sony, or Motorola then I might end up with a phone running iOS and this would increase Apples share in the number of people using iOS rather than just restricting it to their own phones.  Apple should be more worried than Google now, especially with Steve Jobs gone, without branching out and allowing other manufacturers to use their technology they could be going down the same dead end street that things like Betamax, Minidisc, and ST went.

This post made my Hungry….Ice-cream Sandwich! mmmmmm

This has been said 1,000,000 times. I think the manufacturers are pissing off customers AND wasting their own money by having developers develop/support/upgrade all these overlays.

I think one problem is that most customers don’t actually know or care that they have overlays. Then they’ll say “my phone sucks” or “my phone is too slow” and eventually move to iOS. I’ve seen this happen a few times. I own a Nexus so I always tell them to try a Nexus phone, but they are confused what “vanilla android” means. The OEMs are killing themselves AND the platform with all this crapware.

Best article ever. Spot on. As a current HTC Incredible owner I will never buy another HTC device until it has a “stock” android option. The nexus will be my next phone. All these manufacturers are spending big money just to shoot themselves in the foot.

I’m sure this is why Google is interested in buying Motorola. The device cos are making the phones crap on purpose so we’ll buy new ones each upgrade cycle. It’s planned obsolescence–a very old game.