As predicted Android is dying fast. Surprisingly Google is helping it along. There has been a lot of stunned commentary since Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility, lots of people questioning their sanity. I think this was their only move, they either had to abandon any pretense of controlling Android, or build their own stuff.
As I’ve argued before Android will become meaningless to consumers. Watch a non-techie and how excited they are about their iPhone, that level of brand recognition will not occur with Android as it exists today. Worse (for Google) the only company that is going to really get anywhere with Android tablets in 2012 is Amazon. And it won’t be an ‘android’ in any way that Google would want it to be, in fact they seem to be shut out.
So here we are, back to a ‘Google phone’ as they should have pursued in the first place. The Android misadventure has been interesting, and useful in that it blew all kinds of value out of the market and forced OEMs to rethink their strategies. Perversely Google also probably just secured the #2 smartphone slot for Microsoft in a couple years.
Bottom line for me in platform targeting: Apps on iPhone, wait and see on Win Phone 7 but be ready for it. Books on iPad, but get ready for the Kindle tablet. Not sure how to get ready for that, it may be an Android development stack, but it is very likely there will be a publishing kit for interactive books that does away with the app layer. To be seen…