Last Friday Boston College students were able to witness firsthand the beginning of what Google hopes will be a revolution in the mobile phone industry. Just three days after the official release of Google Android, Rich Miner, group manager of Mobile Platforms and co-founder of Android, spoke twice to students about Google's latest product.
"This is the first time I can give this presentation and actually show a picture of the real phone," Miner said.
The T-Mobile G1 was unveiled on Tuesday as the first cell phone to use Google's highly anticipated Android open-source mobile operating system. Google is offering Android free to carriers, opting to make money through advertisements like it does on its search engine. By making Android open-source and free, Miner and Google hope to deliver a better mobile user experience and to make those features more readily available to everyone.
The mobile market size is tremendous. Today, there are over three billion cell phone users worldwide. In 2007 alone, over a billion new phones were sold. By comparison, there are only a total of 850 million PC users and 1.1 billion Internet users worldwide. Miner pointed out that most developing countries are one-screen economies, meaning that people only own a cell phone, whereas most Americans have two screens, a cell phone, and a computer. Yet while the cost of producing handsets has gone down over time, the cost of software has increased.
Miner is an entrepreneur who has been in the mobile phone industry for over 15 years. "I saw a need out there that wasn't being fulfilled in terms of the platforms that are out there to build on top of," Miner said. As a result, he started the company Android with Andy Rubin and Nick Sears. Android was later acquired by Google, and the operating system has been in the works for four years now.
Miner said that up until recently the mobile phone industry had not been very friendly to developers and consumers. Developers were limited by the capabilities of devices, and development tools were difficult to use. Once created, applications were hard to get out to users because they had to be approved by carriers like Verizon and handset manufacturers. Even then, consumer enjoyment was hampered by poor browser experiences.
These problems, along with the belief that "no one party should control the platform," led Google to form an open handset alliance of over 30 mobile and technology leaders to develop Android to make the mobile industry more open and competitive.
Miner said the world is at a tipping point for mobile Web technology. Devices have become more powerful, and all the major carriers now have 3G networks. "This phone has basically all the computation power a desktop had in 2002," Miner said of the G1. In addition, phones now have better software design created by software companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google instead of phone companies like Motorola.
To help create Android applications, Google has offered a software development kit (SDK) that anyone can download. So far, it already has one million downloads. Google offered a $10 million challenge to developers who could come up with the best applications. Among the winners was a group from MIT that won $300,000 for an application they made for class. All developers will be able to post their applications online for users to download. The application store is still in its beta stage, so all the applications will initially be free. "We'll make money later somehow, don't worry," Miner said.
"Since we're open sourcing this, nobody controls this platform. If Yahoo wants to take Android and go off and work with some other partner and build a Yahoo phone, great. All power to them … Our view is if Yahoo does that and they get more deals, or they do it better than we do, that it's sort of 'shame on us,'" Miner said. Google will compete "based on our strengths and based on our skills," he said. "We're not going to do that by trying to control or manipulate a technology that we own."
T-Mobile is currently taking pre-orders for the G1 and will start selling it in stores on Oct. 22. As far as Miner knows, T-Mobile has already run out of its pre-allotment of phones. Miner hopes to release Android on other phones and carriers in the future.
Victoria Marchlik, CSOM '12, attended the presentation for her Computers in Management class. Marchlik did some background reading and found it "interesting," but said she probably will not buy an Android phone any time soon. "Maybe once I'm out of college. I just don't feel the need to pay all that money," she said.
"I thought it was really comprehensive. I thought he might focus a little more on the technical aspects that he kind of just glazed over, but there are really only 20 of us comp-sci majors at the school so, I can understand why he blew over it," said Ryan Gadsby, A&S '10. Gadsby has already downloaded the SDK and played around with it and called it a "very capable platform." He wants to be a software engineer and create his own application for the Android at some point. Right now though, he just wants his own G1. "Hopefully I'll get one on October 22," he said.
"I think the presentation was informative and very good because we got to see technology that students don't get to see early on," said Kevin Chang, CSOM '10, who sported a Google T-shirt to the event. He would love to work for Google, but said, "It's the getting hired that's the problem."
John Gallaugher, a professor in the information systems department, said it is harder to get hired by Google than to get into any university.
There is hope for students like Chang though. Theresa Harrigan, director of the BC Career Center, said Google is recruiting on campus this fall, and it is not only looking for engineering students. There are also 13 BC alumni who currently work for Google.
"It was really cool, it just gets your mind going, seeing the possibilities, where it can go," said Chris Guzman, CSOM '12.
"The trajectory is going to happen, and we're going to see the news alerts, and there is going to be the millionth Android platform and the 10 millionth and 100 millionth and when we look back and see the billionth platform device has been deployed, you can say that I was at the very first presentation where Rich Miner showed the phone," Gallaugher said.
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