Android catching up fast!

Posted by Serge Jespers on Feb 18, 2010 in mobile | 6 comments

Google is selling 60.000 Android devices every day. According to MobileCrunch, that works out to about 5.4 million handsets per quarter, or 21.9 million per year. And the rate is growing rapidly, according to Eric Schmidt who kicked off the Mobile World Live Keynote initiative yesterday.

Android is also not just about handsets anymore. I’ve seen a bunch of tablets running Android as well. The Android OS is free and open source and most of all… you’re in complete control of what you install on it and how you use the web on the device. Very soon you’ll be able to grab Flash Player 10.1 and AIR from the Android Market and install it on your Android device to not only get a full web experience in the device’s browser but also get the power of AIR for standalone applications.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt talked about why this is important in his Mobile World Live Keynote while Eric Tseng (Senior Product Manager for Android) demoed Flash Player 10.1 on a Nexus One. He actually summed it up very nicely by saying: “The line is blurring between mobile phones and desktop computing… One of our main goals when we embarked on smartphones at Google was to really mirror the desktop web browsing experience – but for many of you and you know who you are – there’s been a critical component missing – Flash!“. But you don’t have to take my word for it… You can watch it here yourself!

I was telling a few colleagues earlier that I wish I could take a few weeks off and just build Flash/AIR apps for Android. Because now I can use the skills that I already know to create apps for these devices… Android really is the first mobile OS that can really compete with Apple’s mobile OS and the fact that it is going to have Flash Player and AIR very soon is just the cherry on top! Flash on!