Android should succeed.. why?

Odds are very high in favor of Open Handset Alliance (OHA) Android to succeed. To explain & understand it, first we need to understand the wireless telecom industry business environment. Take a not of the picture below….

 

4 important parts of the environment are  – Handset Industry, Operators & Media, Enterprises & CONSUMERS. The first 3 sections are in the business because of the last. This diagram also depicts the telecom industry value chain also. Android supported by OHA( led by Google) is due for commercial launch in mid 2008 and one noteworthy fact about OHA is that its member companies leader in their own businesses put together complete the entire mobile business value chain.

The 34 founding members of the Open Handset Alliance are:

Mobile operators	Software companies	Commercialization companies	Semiconductor companies	Handset manufacturers
China Mobile KDDI Corporation NTT DoCoMo Sprint Nextel T-Mobile Telecom Italia Telefónica	Ascender Corporation eBay Esmertec Google LivingImage NMS Communications Nuance Communications PacketVideo SkyPop SONiVOX	Aplix Noser Engineering The Astonishing Tribe Wind River Systems	Audience Broadcom Corporation Intel Corporation Marvell Technology Group Nvidia Corporation Qualcomm SiRF Technology Holdings Synaptics Texas Instruments	HTC LG Motorola Samsung Electronics

Now reasons Android can end Symbian’s dominance -

1.  First & foremost of all it is brainchild of Google.

2. Supported by the entire mobile value chain – OHA has semiconductor companies, commercial software vendors, mobile handset manufacturers & last but not the least closest to the consumers ‘telecom operators’. Unlike mid nineties the telecom opetators have become more powerful now affecting handset manufactuer’s decision about what kind of handsets to develop. Operators want handset packed with applications & features which can maximize their revenues. Android with its open architecture & same API support even to application developers makes it easy to integrate & develop third party applications. Operators are at liberty to have ARPU maximizing features in the handsets, so they are going to push Android phones quite aggressively.

3. Cheaper high performance handsets packed with innovative features using Android- As one TI reports says the next 1 billion mobile users are going to come from emerging countries. The consumers in these countries demand handset packed with high multimedia features at rock bottom prices & are highly price sensitive. Android being free could help handset manufactuers to reduce handset prices further.

4. Value for all the stakeholders – I feel Android would add value to all the stakeholders involved, cheaper & feature packed handsets for consumers, higher ARPUs for operators & flexibility & ease for application developers.

Please comment, what do you think about Android. I am still not sure how Android would help chipmakers.