Droid X launch bits pt2: Motoblur (as we knew it), is dead. Beginning of the end for custom UIs?
During Wednesday’s Verizon Motorola Droid X launch, I noticed a couple of interesting things.
The first one was the news that Google is now activating 160K Android devices a day. It seems like an official confirmation, that Android has now entered hockey stick hypergrowth mode. They already leaped ahead of iPhone, and, if things continue as they are, Android may displace Symbian as #1 smartphone OS next year. I wrote about it in Part 1 of Droid X launch bits.
Another interesting takeway from Droid X launch, was the total absence of Motorola Blur custom user interface from the event. When asked about it, Sanjay Jha, Motorola CEO, confirmed that MotoBlur is running on Droid X, but it has been hidden from the user.
Hidden from the user?! WTF?!
If you remember the launch of the first Motorola Android phone – Motorola CLIQ – last September, the MotoBlur interface was the key to Motorola Android smartphone strategy, the thing that “differentiates the Android experience,… and delivers a solution that’s instinctive, social and smart”. 10 months later, it’s hidden away somewhere in the bowels of Android 2.1, and even Motorola doesn’t seem to care much about Blur anymore.
What happened?
Google, and amazingly fast evolution of Android happened. When Android was young, at 1.5/1.6 stage, it’s user interface was pretty basic and lacked a lot of things. There was a lot of room for improvement, so custom UIs like HTC Sense, MotoBlur, Samsung TouchWiz, or Sony UXP, well, they made sense. Some of them were better, some were worse, but they improved overall user experience a lot.
But Google does not care much about what third party vendors are doing on top of Android. They’ve set out to build the best mobile operating system by themselves, and they are doing it at their customary Internet speed.
Smartphone vendors, used to a more leisurely mobile industry development pace, are falling behind. They are stuck with the old versions of Android, with customized user interfaces, that look ancient after a few months, with the launch of the next iteration of Android. They scramble to adapt their UI shells to the new version ASAP. But by the time they are ready, the next iteration of Android is out, and smartphone vendors look like fools, again.
This happens even to the best of them, like HTC, who had years of experience in developing custom user interfaces for smartphone OSes, starting with Windows Mobile Touch Flo in 2007. Those with less software development prowess, get totally screwed.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is a case in point. Announced in November last year, it could have launched with Android 1.6 before Christmas, then upgraded to Android 2.1 in February/March, and then to Froyo by July. And, with the specs Xperia X10 has, it would have reigned supreme, without any serious competition for 5 months, which is eternity in mobile biz.
Instead, Sony Ericsson wasted those 5 months getting their Timescape and Mediascape UI apps to run with acceptable speed on a 1GHZ CPU (?!), then launched in April, with overall user experience inferior to that of stock Android 2.1. Giving an opportunity for HTC to launch Desire, and eat X10′s lunch. Now, Sony Ericsson is promising Xperia X10 upgrade to Android 2.1… sometime in Q3 or Q4. With Android Froyo already here, and Gingerbread just around the corner…
Sony Ericsson might be an extreme case, but similar problems are facing everyone. And now, Google has hinted, that the main focus of the next few Android releases will be the user interface. How do you think the UI improvements in Android Gingerbread, and then the next Android iteration, will compare to Sony UXP, Samsung Touch Wiz, or HTC Sense? Looking at how things progressed with Android so far, I think it’s no contest at all. And third party vendors loose.
Motorola must be the first to see the writing on the wall, and let Google take over the overall user experience. Motoblur is now just another Android app, that comes pre-installed on the handset. It does what it does pretty well, some Droid X users may love it. And, if they keep investing and developing it, Blur service can be a good point of differentiation for Motorola. But, by relegating the Blur to an Android app status, Motorola can move much faster both with OS, and Blur app upgrades.
I wonder if we are now witnessing the beginning of the end of custom user interface shells in the smartphones. Microsoft has already stated that they won’t allow the UI replacements on their Windows Phone 7 OS. Google, while not so explicit about that, is just moving too fast for smartphone vendors to catch up.
HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others, might be very reluctant to give up the UI control to OS vendors, but their choices now are pretty limited. They either keep their own custom UIs, and have products that are already behind the state of the art at launch, or reduce the ambitions, and follow in Motorola footsteps, with a selection of their own custom apps/services.
http://www.unwiredview.com/2010/06/25/droid-x-launch-bits-pt2-motoblur-as-we-knew-it-is-dead-beginning-of-the-for-custom-uis/
不過是只給moto 機子還是開放給其他android 機呢？ 小弟相信前者居多。
不過也可以，moto機子免費的，其他android 機要話$$買的
HTC 其實也可以考慮將sense ui 進一步標準化成一個ui app,
不受各機子影響，只需安裝就用得，就像3rd party 的ui 如launcherpro
stevenyeh00 wrote:
htc evo 4g已經把哀鳳吃的死死的啦
去叫apple出一支真正的4g手機吧 .........(恕刪)
好好笑喔 !! 這是啥樣子的自我感覺良好 ... ???
人家 iPhone 的銷售量是如何 ? HTC 的銷售量又是如何 ?
人家美國人的懶X 都比你的雞腿 來的大 ...!!
HTC 的硬體是不錯，也緊追著 iPhone 4 的規格。
但是.... 要跟蘋果學的事情還有很多的呢. 蘋果的硬體部份，其實絕大部份，目前的手機製造商都可以做的到，可是一個優良的系統、整體的行銷，這些都值的讓其它的廠家來學習的。
人家蘋果可不只是賣 手機、iPad、或 iPod .... 在這些硬體的背後，還掛上了 iTunes 來賣音樂、租影片、賣APP、賣遊戲、現在還在開書店要賣書。
我個人覺的... HTC目前的策略當然是以硬體、機海戰術來爭取銷售量，作業系統當然還是要靠 Google 及 Microsoft 的支撐，而這2個手機系統，來是由一堆手機廠家的機海戰術的 相互競爭。 HTC 可以做到的，人家三星、LG、魔多、索尼......那一家做不到 ？
走在比較前面的 Nokia 主打他自家的 Symbian，這才是讓我們看到他的企圖跟野心，而不是一味的追隨。
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