About Android – What was once known as the poor man’s smartphone has now acquired centre stage in reality. It was developed because Google could not compete with Microsoft in the operating system space. Almost 200 countries of the world were using Microsoft supported software and its domination was near complete. Microsoft had partnered with IBMfor marketing its software on IBM supported machines. Since IBM was already there in business for hundred years, it found Microsoft Windows an unmatched proposition and decided to sell it globally. Windows was already doing well since 1975 but it had not acquired the size and scale required to become a global player.
How Google went about doing Android :
Since Google guys already had the monopoly in the search business but that was not enough. They wanted to grow the business globally as investors wanted exponential returns. So they invested more in the Firefox browser. In those days, people purchased the desktop to access the internet. So more investments in Firefox meant higher chances of neutralising internet explorer and windows based PC purchases. Either they could push Linux or create their own operating system and sell phones powered by that OS.
When Google was recruiting operating system design engineers for writing the source code of Android, the recruitment ads caught the eye of Bill gates. They upped the ante by launching Bing that was widely respected and released windows vista, which was a flop but windows 8 and 8.1 became hits. Windows 10 has had limited success. Meanwhile, Google juggernaut continued with Android releasing its API’s to developers. It opened up a whole new world of mobile apps that were restricted to windows and apple stores.
Pricing did the trick :
Android phones were priced lower as compared to others in the market to access the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Almost all handset manufacturing companies made Android the default OS and android applications were being written at the speed of thousands per day. Play store was where these could be peddled but there were strong checks and balances to ensure that these apps conformed to certain criteria in terms of decency and authenticity of content and did not infringe on intellectual property through video downloading or audio downloading. No child pornography, religious hatred should be disseminated through any of the apps and they should not have any bugs or fixes at the time of testing.
Current scenario in the technology industry :
Google is competing aggressively with Facebook in the digital space and with Apple on the telecom front and Microsoft in search and software. No wonder Alphabet has reached at number 27 in the list of fortune 500 companies. in terms of planning and intent you will discover in the following points that Google has much bigger plans than Facebook in digital but Facebook plans in the life sciences space could be nipped in the bud if Google plus slows down the growth. Slide-share has some awesome presentations that highlight the following growth issues these companies have to address in order to become big.
Google tackles a need while Facebook addresses an audience but need to tweak their advertising infrastructure for brands that want to include both.
Google allows you to categorise your friends and audiences through circles in Google plus. Facebook focuses more on the professional identity of each targeted member and how useful he can be to the brand based on designation.’
Google wants to stay in the technology space through android –operating system, pixel-smartphones, search-google.com,advertising across Google properties through Google plus.
Facebook wants to concentrate on messaging and social media by acquiring what Sapp, and Instagram. It wants to take on snap chat aggressively and release its own video chatting platform. Both Google and Facebook are not yet threatened by vines as Google has YouTube and even Facebook videos are doing well. While Google counts three seconds spent by a user on its video as a “view”; Facebook keeps it at 3o seconds before it counts as a “view”. Facebook introduced 360-degree view in ads and auto-play feature that can be turned off to help viewers do more in less time. Google has not yet picked up on this front.
Microsoft is focussing on all by acquiring LinkedIn-social, Skype-messaging, windows operating system, Bing-search,
Quickbooks help, windows phones-telecom, but its real cash cow is the .NET application development platform and windows for mission critical operations. Both Google and Facebook depend on advertising revenue to grow but Microsoft uses both licensing, advertising and store sales of its pcs and phones and gaming devices.
The battle for market share in this space will get murkier and even more interesting in the times to come. Expect Android vs. Apple battle to intensify in the times to come. And that’s when it gets really interesting.
