Google VP Andy Rubin recently spent some time speaking with the Silicon Valley Mercury News where he shared a few details about the future of the mobile platform. Rubin acknowledged the rapid maturity of Android and how it had kept developers and OEMs up at night. After what seemed like a new release every few months, he expected to see Android updates slow to once a year. Not terribly groundbreaking news, but it was good to see Google put it on the record for handset makers and carriers.
Our product cycle is now basically twice a year, and it will probably end up being once a year when things start settling down, because a platform that’s moving — it’s hard for developers to keep up. I want developers to basically leverage the innovation. I don’t want developers to have to predict the innovation.
The obvious comparison was the iPhone with its annual OS update cycle. The difference with Android: Google and its partners could still release multiple form factors per year. Innovations in processors, screens, and hardware didn’t have to wait for a software milestone. The best part of a slower update cadence was that it addressed the biggest gripe about Android: fragmentation legacy devices. Having nearly every phone on the market share the same build would give everyone access to the same apps.
As for where Android was headed next, Rubin pointed to cars:
We’re at about 4 billion cell phones. About 1.4 billion internet-connected PCs. Like 1.2 billion automobiles. Some 800 million TVs. And it’s like, “OK, let’s target the top four.” Let’s do everything we can to get the big ones. Remember, our business is volume, because it’s an advertising business and we want to delight a lot of people. And how do you delight a lot of people? You get in the products that they use every day.
