Open Handset Alliance Pre-SDK Buzz : OHAdev.com


Nov

11

Open Handset Alliance Pre-SDK Buzz

Posted by Will at 18:27 | Filed In games

Time for a roundup of the buzz surrounding the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance (wp) and its impressive Alliance member list, as well as the upcoming Android platform (wp) by Google and friends last week. Here is a no-frills list of public comments made by various industry spokespeople and corporate types that have filtered through the media:

Symbian VP John Forsyth:

“About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It’s a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business. We don’t participate in these full stop. We make our own platform and we are focused on driving that into the mobile phone market at large ever more aggressively.

“Search and a mobile phone platform are completely different things. It’s costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones. That’s something there’s very little experience of in Google’s environment. If you are a serious phone maker and you are asked to bet your handsets on somebody, you would want to bet on someone with a track record of delivery and support.

“It’s very clear what developers want - volume and a stable platform that doesn’t keep breaking. You have to have a lot of zeroes in your sales figures before a developer gets out of bed. They are talking about having a phone by the end of next year. It’s not one that is going to ignite developers.” (BBC News)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

“Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it’s hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile]. Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they’re welcome in our world.” (PC World)

Microsoft marketing manager Scott Horn:

“It really sounds that they are getting a whole bunch of people together to build a phone and that’s something we’ve been doing for five years. I don’t understand the impact that they are going to have.” (Engadget)

Nokia spokeswoman Kari Tuutti:

“[On the question of partnership] It’s not ruled out at all. If we would see this as beneficial we would think about taking part in it. We should never close any doors.” (Reuters)

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris:

“We have a great relationship with Google and this doesn’t change anything. They are certainly an important partner for iPhone.” (Engadget)

Now, of course the announcement this past week was mostly a buzz-building PR move on the part of Google, but we’re going to find out tomorrow (when Google has promised an early preview release of the Android SDK) how much of this is just talk and how much Google really plans to shake up the mobile phone industry. As a mobile game developer myself, my main concern is: How will Android’s promise of an open mobile platform impact the mobile game industry? Will existing mobile game developers need to become a little more quick on their feet and develop more creative games in order to keep hold of their consumer base, once being all buddy-buddy with carriers will no longer suffice? Will publishing independent games for mobile phones finally become possible? Even if possible, will it be at all technically feasible for your average code-savvy game designer to independently create games that will run on more than just a few select phones?

Answers (and, yes, possibly letdowns) to be revealed tomorrow.

Comments



1 Response to “Open Handset Alliance Pre-SDK Buzz”

Leave a Reply