The winners of the first Android Developers Challenge are going to be announced next week and 20 lucky teams will walk away considerably richer. There will be ten winners of $100,000 and another ten will receive $275,000 for their efforts. And that will be the end of the first Developers Challenge. Later in the year we will get to do it all again.
At a cursory glance, you wouldn’t really know the first 20 major applications for Android are around the corner. Without digging around a little bit, you aren’t going to find much news to report on. It’s a little ironic that the closer we get to milestones and the official launch, the quieter things are getting. Why has Google gone silent?
Let’s be fair here. The Open Handset Alliance is a consortium of 34 members, all bringing different things to the table. Why does the burden get put on Google to speak about Android? There are carriers and hardware makers involved after all. Why can’t one of them speak up and give us a clue as to what’s going on? There aren’t even people speaking on conditions of anonymity about the closed-door meetings. Fortunately, there are people within T-Mobile who have used, tested, and played with Android. Otherwise, it’s all a big mystery.
It’s sad to think of all the potential customers Sprint and T-Mobile miss out on by not giving people a reason to wait. Buy a magazine ad with just a simple picture of your logo and the Android robot together with a “Coming Q4” tag and watch how effective it is. Whenever the Dream (or whatever it ends up being called) comes out, the device will have to be incredibly compelling to get people to switch carriers and pay early termination fees.
The official Android Developers Blog had not posted anything in over six weeks at the time of writing. There are days I try to think of something to write about for an editorial or opinion piece. I shouldn’t have to be waiting so earnestly for Android news. I’d much rather be in a position to pick and choose what to cover. The only stuff getting written about in Android circles during those months was mostly negative press.
My prediction was this: Android would be major news for the following week as people looked at the semi-finalists and winners, trying to figure out where they’d end up and how they’d factor into the big picture. There were going to be some angry voices complaining about the judging system, but most of the top 50 teams I spoke with were extremely happy just to be considered for the second round. There are always going to be people with an axe to grind, and they tend to get the press.
I’ve watched Android articles go viral much faster when they spread vitriol and hate. It was time for some good news and positive publicity. Hopefully it would start with that week’s announcement and continue full speed up until the first handsets arrived. The less that gets said officially, the more speculation fills the void. Most terrible movies don’t get screened for critics because the studios know how bad they are. I was hoping Android would get screened for us critics as soon as possible.
