After the announcement of Google’s chrome OS last week there has been lot’s of apprehensions of the future of Android and although Google has made clear that Android and Chrome have separate paths there’s some logic in the apprehensions too.
Let’s have a quick look at them –
- Google is basically a web app. company and it makes lot of sense if Google concentrates all of it’s resources on an effort building a browser based operating system.
- It is contemplated that Android may not have been ramping up quickly enough for Google, while T-mobile has sold 1 million Android devices in US, with 1 billion cell phones sold annually it is just .1% of the market share.
- Future of mobile computing is convergence and Netbooks, Smartphones and MID’s will eventually be hard to differentiate. Though Chrome OS is meant for Notebooks and Android for smartphones they might eventually endup competing with each other even if not intended in the first place.
- Strategy Analytics predict, even with Google’s strong support to Android. In 2011, Chrome may capture 13% of the netbook operating-system market, while Android will end up with 7%.
If Chrome OS is successful, both will co-exist for sure, why?
Both in different niche
Android is especially designed for touch screen devices and it is capable of handling complicated Call handing off process which helps maintaing the internet connection switching between cell towers while the user is on the go which is tough for a browser based OS.
Chrome OS aimed at thin clients as Netbooks and low cost Desktop PC’s for the users to whom web apps can replace all of their native installed applications.
Android is growing beyond smartphones
Though basically built for smartphones Android has outstretched itself into various kind’s of devices including industrial devices and Set-top boxes,one recent development in this front was Embedded Valley porting Android on to MIPS-based RMI Au1250 processor and increasingly more number of Linux ODM’s are porting Android onto their devices which proves that decreased support from Google will not dampen the proliferation of Android.
Bottom line for Google
The main intention of Google behind both these effort’s being tracking the user behavior,it is obvious that Google will support both the Operating Systems.Android with Google Map and Latitude will help the company provide relevant ad’s to the user and Chrome OS not only help track the user behavior but will help proliferate all of it’s web services.
Thus despite clash and possible competition between the operating systems in some market’s both the operating system’s will co-exist and possibly Google will continue to make more money.
