Android Auto/TV/Wear and why their policies are messed up

When someone says the word "open source" in the tech arena, Android is probably the first name to come to our minds and subsequently Linux and other open software. Android for a long time has used its open nature as a big advantage against iOS. Any Android vs iOS comparison will definitely bring up the topics of customization and choice. Android because of its open nature has been more flexible (more choice and more customization) than iOS.

The same open nature of Android started becoming a problem for Google. I will list down the problems -

1. Rival Services inhibiting growth of Google services -

A perfect example of this would be Google Wallet, i.e Google's own mobile payment solution, despite launching long back in May 2011, has yet to catch up in a significant manner. A main reason for this has been ISIS (Soft Card) . Soft Card was the wallet service formed by and representing a consortium of American mobile operators namely T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T. Given the open nature of Android, manufacturers and carriers could pre-install any apps they would want along side a standard set of Google apps. Soft Card was the reason why Google Wallet wasn't able to perform tap to pay function for a long time as carriers wanted to promote Soft Card and thereby blocked Google wallet. As of today, Google had to purchase Soft Card and convince operators to allow Tap to Pay functionality for Google Wallet. Apple on the other hand doesn't face this problem at all. The company's iPhone comes pre-installed only with apps which Apple deems fit.

2. Manufacturers inhibiting growth of Google services -

Although squarely pointing at Samsung would be wrong in this case but still Samsung's Galaxy range of devices have the most competing apps compared to other Android devices and Samsung is still the most dominant manufacturer of Android smartphones despite market share being eroded by Chinese rivals and Apple. Samsung has for the most part always tried to compete with Google when it came to services on their Galaxy range of devices. With the Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung had agreed to pre-install apps from Microsoft. Samsung also struck a deal with Nokia to pre-install Nokia's HERE maps. Aside from this Samsung has also had its own App Store and other competing services. It is important to note here that other manufacturers also compete with Google in terms of services but no one competes as fiercely as Samsung does. Once again the only reason manufacturers are able to pre-install their own apps is because Google allows them to do so.

3. Rival software companies -

The best example of this would be Cyanogen and I have written extensively about it in this article.

4. Fragmentation -

The open nature of Android meant that manufacturers could customize Android as much as they wanted to. This led to a scenario where most manufacturers would customize Android's UI to such an extent that it would often take weeks and sometimes months for the latest version of Android to hit the devices of respective manufacturers. Add to this,  the customization carriers do before rolling out updates and often times receiving Android updates within time would be a distant dream for most Android users. Apart from this many mid-range and low-end Android handsets never receive Android updates beyond the version the devices were shipped with. All this leads to a scenario where various versions of Android held significant market share as shown below.

5. Low app quality and inconsistent user experience

5.a Low app quality -

This is actually a direct consequence of fragmentation. As I noted above the open nature of Android meant various Android versions ended up having significant market share. This in turn led to a situation where developers weren't able to make full use of the APIs of the newest version of Android and rather had to make use of a common set of APIs which would work across all versions of Android. This of course reduced the functionality of apps. The open nature of Android also meant that a varying number of devices were made from screen sizes as small as 3 inches to 7 inches. Most app wouldn't scale appropriately across all devices. Often times apps scale very badly on devices 7 inches and above (tablets).

5.b Inconsistent user experience -

The best example of this would be to assume someone who is upgrading from a device running Android Gingerbread to a device running Lollipop such as Samsung Galaxy S6. The change in UI would be dramatic and it would definitely take some time for the user to get used to it. On the other hand imagine an iPhone 4S user upgrading to iPhone 6 and the change in UI wouldn't be as dramatic.

It must be noted that only points 1, 2, 3 i.e.

1. Rival Services inhibiting growth of Google services
2. Manufacturers inhibiting growth of Google services
3. Rival software companies

lead to a direct loss for Google in terms of monetization from Android and the loss from points 1 and 2 happen only because Google allows installation of third party services. Point 3 is a special case where the company plans on using AOSP.

 Points 4 and 5 i.e.

4. Fragmentation
5. Low app quality and inconsistent user experience

do not exactly lead to a direct loss for Google in terms of monetization from Android.

In order to combat the above five problems arising from the open nature of Android, Google launched initiatives such as Android One. Android One for the most part has failed to catch up in India and its success in countries like Indonesia remains to be seen. Along with Android One, Google's also rumored to have Android Silver in the pipeline but it failed to materialize.

Also with the launch of Android Auto/Wear/TV, Google restricted manufacturers from making any meaningful changes to the UI whereas allowed them to load their own apps. The reason for restricting UI changes was because Google did not want to deal the same problem of fragmentation with Android Wear as it did with Android. By restricting UI changes, Google could push out software updates to Android Wear devices on its own and make sure every device is running the latest version of Android.

But in my opinion. Google should allow customization to UI and block pre-installation of third party apps as well as its apps.

Why allowing customization to UI is important:

I will give two solid examples for this -

1. Dual SIM smartphones

Indian smartphone vendors for a long time have been churning out Dual SIM smartphones. Given the deep understanding of the needs of local community. Indian vendors soon realized the importance of Dual SIM smartphones. I know Dual SIM smartphones don't make sense to a lot of people living in the West but it matters a lot to Indians. As I have emphasized in the past smartphones in India aren't sold on a contract basis,  rather users pay full price of a smartphone upfront and subscribe to carrier services separately.

Indians are very price conscious and the ability of having dual SIM slots on a smartphone helps them save money. India's telecom market is one of the most crowded in the world. Certain states have more than 8 operators (No not MVNOs, real Mobile operators). As expected competition is very high and operators keep launching special offers for people who purchase a new SIM card/connection. Having Dual SIM smartphone helps the user keep one SIM for day to day communication and uses the other SIM to avail the offers of various carriers.

Now this benefit of Dual SIM smartphone wouldn't have been realized by the team creating Android somewhere in Mountain View. Rather it is the local manufacturer which was able to understand the need and since Android's UI was free to customize, the vendor customized the UI to support Dual SIM slots. If the UI wasn't free to customize, the local manufacturer/vendor wouldn't have been able to customize Android to add the functionality of Dual SIM slots and would have to rather wait for the team at Mountain View to implement this change.

This was exactly the case with Windows Phone. Since Microsoft doesn't allow customization to the UI, Nokia wasn't able to add support for Dual SIM card in its best selling Windows Phone Nokia Lumia 520. I know so many people who skipped the Nokia Lumia 520 in favour of an Android device just because it did not have Dual SIM support and the only reason dual SIM support wasn't present was because Microsoft did not incorporate it. It was only with Windows Phone 8.1 that Microsoft incorporated Dual SIM support for Windows Phone devices. Had Windows Phone's UI been customizable Nokia would have definitely added support for Dual SIM slots and won customers from Android at a time when it had a chance.

2. Samsung Galaxy Note -

Samsung made a big bet with the Samsung Galaxy Note. The Korean giant was arguably one of the first few Android manufacturers to enter the phablet market. In order to make the Galaxy Note really exciting/different from the past 5 inch devices from companies like Dell, Samsung introduced the S-Pen, basically a stylus. But in order for Samsung to make the S-Pen truly useful a lot of changes had to be made to Android's UI to make full use of the S-Pen to enable features such as hover to show pics in albums, cut parts of the screen's content and save them, handwriting etc. All this was possible only because Android's UI was open to customization. The success of Galaxy Note and subsequent success of Galaxy Note 2 made phablets popular among consumers and soon large screen devices (5-6 inches) became highly popular all over the world. As far as I know the current version of Android and past version of Android had no special additions to make use of a stylus. It was Samsung's own additions that made it truly useful.

The above are just 2 examples where customization of Android had helped Google's Android succeed. There are several instance where customization to Android's UI has helped Android grow.

Similarly in my opinion manufacturers should be allowed to tweak the UI of Android Wear/Auto/TV so that they can create special offering that caters to the needs of the local community or be able to bring out revolutionary new products.

As for the problem of fragmentation, I agree its a serious issue but despite being so highly fragmented Android still commands around 80% of the smartphone market. Apart from this I have a small feeling in my heart that over time the fragmentation issue will sort out itself on its own. Just 2-3 years ago there used to be a time when buying a smartphone costing less than $300-400 meant receiving no future updates for the most part and probably the smartphone would come with GingerBread. That has changed now. I am typing this entire article on a $150 smartphone (Micromax Yu Yureka) which has already been updated to Lollipop as I write this. Apart from that if not regularly updating, a lot of manufacturers now ship their low end and mid range devices with the latest version of Android pre-installed. Over time I believe the problem of fragmentation in Android would be solved with or without the help of Google.

Apart from allowing customization to Android's UI, I also believe that Google should stop third parties from pre-installing their apps on Android Wear/TV/Auto. As I have already explained in points 1,2 and 3, a lot of monetization loss for Google simply occurs from the fact that Google allows installation of third party apps. While preventing manufacturers from installing third party apps, Google should also not pre-install its own apps. This would in turn create a more neutral platform and protect Google from possible EU investigations and fines. By now most Google apps have created a name for themselves to become the go-to app for users to perform the particular function. For example lets say an Android Watch comes completely empty with no apps pre-installed apart from certain utility apps. Lets say a user wants to install maps on his/her Android Wear Watch then 9/10, the user would opt for Google Maps and Gmail for email. On the other hand pre-installing apps is not going to make the less popular apps of Google more popular. Google has been pre-installing Google + for a long time now yet it no way rivals Facebook. If you want more proof that pre-installing apps isn't important then consider iPhone. Google Maps isn't pre-installed yet comes on the top of apps list. As far as I seen quality of apps matter more than pre-installing them.

On a side note its also worth mentioning that the lack of customization of UI in Android Wear/Auto/TV will provoke manufacturers even more to adopt the AOSP version rather than Google's version.