Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
Android in China -- oPhone
Thought this was particularly interesting. Although Android is becoming the dominant mobile platform in China that might not be a good thing because China has produced it's own variant on a fork of Android called oPhone.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/androids-ascent-in-chin..."Although this may seem like an unambiguous victory for Google on the surface, the implications are actually not that clear. It's important to understand that the Chinese mobile ecosystem is producing its own variant of Android, called OPhone. It's a fork of the platform that largely cuts out Google as the middleman. The fork offers Chinese handset makers and mobile carriers considerable autonomy, because it allows them to circumvent the licensing policies and technical mechanisms that Google has traditionally used to exercise control over the platform."
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on
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That is very interesting. It sounds like what they have done is perfectly legal, but unless a Chinese company or organization creates equivalents of the valuable services Google provides - the market, search services, compatibility tests, etc., they may find that cutting out Google wasn't as beneficial as it first appeared. Also, as the fork diverges, it will become increasingly difficult to incorporate updates to the platform by Google and its partners.
I'm sure companies like Baidu are interested in filling Google's mobile shoes in China, but although they provide a good search engine, they lack Google's deep experience with defining, implementing and managing software standards, libraries and systems. -
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