Google has closed its new ‘open’ Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ software to outsiders, explaining it doesn’t want the mobile OS designed for tablets on smartphones. “We have no idea if it will even work on phones,” Google’s Andy Rubin tells BusinessWeek.
While Google is often seen as the direct rival to Apple’s iPad 2, the new Android software will also compete with RIM’s PlayBook and HP’s webOS. Honeycomb is already part of Motorola’s Xoom and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. Rubin says Android 3 will be closed to outside developers for “the foreseeable future.”
Although the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant has regularly closed its Android software to outsiders in order to work with hand-picked partners, Rubin told the publication his company “has not changed our strategy” of vision of its software as an “open-source project.”
Apple, which has released several open-source projects, including the Darwin kernel – the basis for Mac OS X – as well as Andress Book, Calendar and others. CEO Steve Jobs has chided Google about how it defines ‘open.’
“Google loves to characterize itself as ‘open’ and iOS and iPhone as ‘closed.’ We find this a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches,” Jobs is quoted.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
4 responses to “Google Closes Android for Tablets to Phone Developers”
They are trying to be a little like Apple with this move and I don’t have a problem with it. I use a Nexus S because I hate skins on Android, they are very bloated and buggy.
Google have already said they are working on a unified phone/tablet version of Android based on 3.0 (very similar to how the iPad 1 originally shipped with iOS 3.2 and iPhone 4 had 4.0 until they merged with iOS 4.2). Clearly they don’t want people mucking about with the tablet-only version of Android (e.g. hacking it to run on phones) until they release a universal 3.x/4.x version of Android that officially supports both form factors. (Android is already fragmented, why make it worse?) So they’ll close 3.0 until the new universal version is done (and as they’re not sure how long until that’s going to be ready 3.0 is closed “indefinitely”).
Nothing to see here folks.