iPhone vs. Android: History Repeating Itself?

by Eric March on June 25, 2008 at 11:29 am

Wow. 5 days since an update — I do apologize folks. As I have said — and apologized for — before, life sometimes has a way of getting in the way of your best laid plans, and that’s been the case for us lately. It’s unfortunately but also unavoidable. We are trying to provide stories and updates wherever and whenever possible, but sometimes this proves less than possible. Perhaps when we finally get our iPhone 3Gs, we can finally blog on the go.

In the mean time, I came across an interesting article on Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog on the trials and tribulations of the iPhone vs. Android debate. It pointed out some significant hurdles Android has to overcome if they are going to truly become a worthy competitor to the iPhone, and it made some very interesting points that run parallel to other, similar situations I have followed in the past.

Its two most interesting talking points when it came to Google’s hurdles were: 1) Developers have complained that Android can be difficult to program, especially when Google is constantly updating the SDK to add new features and such, and their development tools aren’t as robust and feature-rich as Apple’s. (Apple has had the same problem too, but their development environment makes it a lot easier to retrofit new code into existing projects.) 2) Apple controls the entire iPhone platform from top to bottom, hardware to software. Google’s Android is simply a platform and they have no way of accurately tracking what hardware it’s going to be used on, the screen dimensions, the chipsets, etc.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that we’ve kinda been here before. There are some familiar parallels being drawn all the way back to early to mid-90s and the 5th generation video game console wars. Let me tell you a little story.

It started in 1991. Trip Hawkins, former CEO of Electronic Arts, started his own video game company which he was to call The 3DO Company. His idea was to create a video game hardware platform that would be licensed to third party manufacturers. It was called the 3DO Multiplayer, and the idea was to create an ecosystem of compatible video game systems that multiple companies could profit from due to the shared software base. Released in 1993, only Panasonic took significant interest in releasing a console, and release they did with the Panasonic 3DO Multiplayer FZ-1. 3DO had managed to wrangle a number of decent software houses to develop games, in addition to their own in-house development team, so there was a respectable base of games available upon its release. In 1994, Goldstar released their own version, and in ‘95, Creative Labs released an internal ISA card for PC compatibles called the 3DO Blaster, which could play 3DO games right on your PC.

The problem was that it ended up not doing so well. While Panasonic made some pretty nice hardware, Goldstar’s version was a bit cheap, prone to breakdowns, and suffered some compatibility issues due to difference in some of its support chips. Creative’s 3DO Blaster didn’t do very well at all. No one else seemed interested in the platform, and the mishmash of hardware developers that did jump on board, plus some of the issues they suffered confused and frustrated people, and the 3DO platform as a whole suffered for it, especially when the big boys came out to play.

Then there was Atari. In 1991, Atari started working on a new video game platform called Panther, a 32-bit system. They were partway through R&D when a British company called Flare II came along and asked Atari if they’d do something with this 64-bit video game hardware they’d developed. Atari liked it. A lot. Thus, they developed it into a new platform and, in the late fall of 1994, rolled out their console, called Jaguar, in two limited markets for Christmas, and in a larger roll out in early 1995. On paper, the Jaguar’s hardware blew everyone out of the water. It was viciously powerful for the time and theoretically could have pumped out some awesome games. Unfortunately, it was notoriously difficult to program for, with a massive learning curve made even more frustrating by weak development tools. Although the Jaguar turned out a few “killer apps” it, like 3DO and even Sega, was ultimately eclipsed by Nintendo and then-newcomer Sony.

Multiple hardware vendors. Difficulty finding more than a handful of vendors. Occasionally dodgy hardware. Lack of control over final products. Difficult programming environment. Collectively, much of this is now being mirrored in Android, which could be worrisome. There’s an important difference here, though. In the 90s, 3DO was a relatively small startup by a former software house CEO. Atari, though legendary in stature, was nevertheless on its last legs; the Jaguar was its last hurrah — one which they couldn’t even afford to properly advertise, sinking a mere $25M into its US campaign — and its failure would drag Atari down into a reverse merger with JTS Corp., which itself would go Chapter 11 soon afterwards.

Google on the other hand is at the top of its game, with billions in liquid assets, and they can afford to drop however much is necessary to make Android a success. There do seem to be some stumbling blocks they’re going to have to negotiate, certainly, and Apple is a formidable opponent right now, but Google is in a very good position to deal with the problems they face.

But can they beat Apple? I still say no. The home court advantage Apple has in designing everything from top to bottom allows them to create a seamless product where everything works and works very well. They don’t need to worry about device chipsets and capabilities, screen sizes or anything of that sort. They know every nook and cranny of the hardware their OS will run on, because they designed both. Android must be written for a much broader base of hardware, capable of handling multiple screen sizes and resolutions, ordinary and touch screens, hardware chipsets, video chipsets (where present), the presence or lack of GPS devices, and the carrier-specified software and features that will ultimately be bundled on each phone. There are a lot of variables, and there’s no guarantee that very phone manufacturer is going to get it right, which could ultimately hamper Android’s adoption to a degree.

Even worse, the first Android phone isn’t likely to see the light of day until the latter part of Q408 at the earliest, and more likely Q109. By that time, if analyst estimates are right, Apple will have already sold some 20M iPhones worldwide, which is just that much less market share Android-based phones will have immediate access to at launch.

Android has a steep hill to climb. I don’t doubt that Google have the energy and resources to climb it, but the real question remains, will Apple still get to the top first?

(via Fortune’s Apple 2.0 Blog)

Posted in Hardware Related, Op/Ed, iPhone 3G, iPhone Related