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All Quiet in Androidville on Eve of ADC Announcement

Scott Webster
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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, I am in position to know that 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” in it and watch how effective it is. Have your fanboys help generate buzz with a screenshot or two. Whenever the Dream (or whatever it ends being called) comes out, the device will have to be incredibly compelling to get people to switch carriers and cough up early termination fees.

The official Android Developers Blog has not posted anything since June 19th. We’re talking six weeks without a tiny morsel of new information. There are days that come and go and 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 things about Android. I’d much rather be in a position to pick and choose what I want to cover, not dig for it. The only stuff getting written about in the Android circles these last few months has been mostly negative press.

My prediction for the next few weeks is this – Android will be major news for the next week. People will be looking at all of the semi-finalists and winners and trying to figure out where they’ll end up and how they’ll be used in the big scheme of things. There’s going to be some angry people complaining about the “flawed” system used to judge the applicants, but it’s likely to be the same people as before. I’ve spoken to a lot of the top 50 teams and they were extremely happy to be considered for the second round. Heck, most of the so-called losers in the first round were cool with how it went down. There are always going to be grumpy people who have an axe to grind. Unfortunately, they tend to get the press. The whole “squeaky wheel gets the grease” thing.

I’ve watched some Android articles go viral much faster than others and they are usually the ones spreading the vitriol and hate. It’s time we got some good news and positive publicity out of Android. Hopefully it starts next week and continues full speed up until the first handsets arrive. The less that gets said offficially, the more speculation we have. When you are talking about products, services, and contracts, you want people to know as much as possible. Unless, of course, it’s not all that great to begin with. Most of the terrible movies that come out nowadays don’t get screened for critics because they know how bad they are. I’m hoping that Android gets screened for us critics as soon as posible.

34 Weeks of OHA #26

Guest Blogger
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Company Name: SONiVOX

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: SONiVOX is a premier developer of audio technologies and solutions that empower consumers to create Sound That Rocks.

What they do: Sounds.

Virtual Instrument Libraries. Wavetables (not waterboards… wavetables). MIDI. Formerly known as Sonic Implants, they’re probably best known for sound libraries sold under the SONiVOX MI (musical instruments) brand.

They offer a number of genre libraries for the consumer – techno beats, sounds of the human body (called Anatomy – you might think it’d be all squishy, pooty, slurpy, sucking-chest-wound kinda noises, but it’s more like human beat-box, throat singing, etc.), or my personal favourite — Samaurai hip-hop for $59.95.

They also offer professional libraries; multi-thousand-dollar collections with everything from caterwauls to the noise a cat makes when you throw it at the wall. They offer one called Broadway Big Band for $2500 with “Realistic Note Transitions” and “Multiple Microphone Setups”. Or the $3K Symphonic collection, which was…

…recorded exclusively within the exquisite Victorian confines of the renowned Sonic Temple in Roslindale, MA, the Sonic Implants Symphonic Collection offers exceptional recordings of orchestral instruments performed by musicians from the Boston Pops and Ballet orchestras, captured in sparkling detail by a team of award-winning recording engineers and honed to perfection by a design crew with more than thirty years cumulative experience in soundware development.

This is high-end, quality stuff. But, before you think this company is all class, consider AdME (Advertising-Driven Mobile Entertainment), the “Next-Gen Advertainment Platform”, a recent spin-off company, which features “advergaming”, and allows you to do things like play games based around shooting at Osama Bin-Laden with hair products, or something, all on your mobile device. I’m kinda joking here, but I’m kinda not; check out the demo for the Crest’s MobileSparkle game which features crosshairs framing a smiling, sparkly-toothed mouth. This really is the worst kind of spam advertising, offered by marketing departments that really don’t understand the demographic they’re aiming for. Apparently AdME’s tech utilizes some aspect of SONiVOX’s audio goodness, but it’s clearly being put to use for nefarious purposes here.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

“The Open Handset Alliance is music to mobile industry ears. Finally, developers like SONiVOX have a common stage upon which to not only create, but commercialize new, innovative ideas.”

So says Jennifer Hruska, SONiVOX’s president, on the OHA quotes page. There’s no content to this quote, and it’s not as punny as she’d like to think. Thankfully, there’s better on SONiVOX’s audioINSIDE page:

The sole MIDI audio solution in the OHA and Android Platform, SONiVOX audioINSIDE is an advanced, device-hardened audio synthesis solution with high quality MIDI audio capabilities used primarily to create interactive mobile gaming applications.

The big thing they’re bringing to the table here is JET, a part of their audioINSIDE product, which delivers rich MIDI-based music funtionaloty for Java games and apps. Its biggest feature is its tiny footprint, oh-so important in the mobile world. Go check out the site for the lowdown; they’ve got a list of features that all sound cool and stuff, and that I guess I’m glad someone is bringing to the table, but really there’s nothing here that lights a fire in my loins.

I dunno, maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that noises were gonna be a part of the platform no matter who was hired to do the implementation. Whether its SONiVOX, Google themselves, or the wanna-be hair-band vocalist down the street who sells dimebags of oregano to middle-schoolers, there’s gonna be sound on the platform no matter who gets tapped to do the job.

Maybe SONiVOX’s product is seriously innovative. I dunno; I’m not qualified to make that assesment. But here they are, a member of the OHA, so try and remember them when you get your shiny new Android handset beeps at you.

Is Google Android Open Enough for the End User?

AndroidGuys
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For days I’ve being reading on tech blogs and in discussion boards on how open Google’s Android is. Some wonder whether it is even open at all. With all the latest happenings regarding the new SDK only being issued out to a selected few of developers leaving the others stranded in old SDK wilderness for God knows how long.

My worry is not whether or not Android will be open. I have no doubts that it will be open. But will it be open enough for the end user? Will it be possible for us to remove and add anything we like to an Android phone or will the carriers still reign superior on what we can and cannot do with a device our hard earn cash has bought? Call me naive, but it is difficult to see why carriers would give in to Google and Android unless there is something more sinister at work that we are yet to know about.

Users who want a fully open device, capable of doing anything with, make up a fraction of the millions of subscribers a carrier has in its clutches. I have personally spoken to a lot of mobile subscribers and a majority of them don’t care too much about being ‘open’. They just accept whatever their carrier dish out without making a huge deal out of it. What is Google doing to do to make sure that the few in the world who appreciate open truly get that? Whenever we pick up the newest Android phone from our carrier, are we going to to be hindered in some way from taking advantage of the Android openness glory? It would be a real disappointment if Android just turns out to be another mobile phone operating system.

I’m hoping that when my sweaty palms get hold of one of the first Android phones I will be able fire it up and instantly remove all unwanted predefined carrier items. I want to be able to run any application I so desire, launch some Instant Messenger client and never worry about text messages again. I also want to be able to make calls using some random VOIP application. If I end up unable to carry out those tasks, or a host more, then why would I, and everyone else here, continue supporting the platform? We deserve an OS that is open for the end user, the people who matter most, not the carriers and their investors in expensive suits who have no idea what open is all about.

Maybe it’s high time Google think about their own network or partnering with an existing carrier who is not afraid of opening up because if Android ends up being part open and part closed then all Hell’s gonna break loose. I’d hate to say it, but I could definitely see myself being part of the angry mob.

34 Weeks of OHA: #25

Guest Blogger
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Company Name: SkyPop

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: Next generation services for mobile devices.

What they do: Back in college we had something called Skypop. Basically, take a 1 litre of your favourite soda (A&W Root Beer), add a half litre of vodka or rum, and then drop in two tabs of … um … stuff. I remember a friend once sat down with a Skypop and watching the Dark Crystal; before long he was screaming at the screen about his Grandpa’s moustache and “The liquid pigs.”

This is much the same effect as what one gets when visiting the website for the mobile software company SkyPop. There’s a calculatedly amateurish animation in which some dude points his apparently SkyPop-enabled watch at a jungle revealing, in turn, an ancient Mayan or Aztec temple and a bathtub. There’s also a snake. And that’s about it. I was trippin’.

Trying to find any other information about SkyPop in the intertubes is a relative exercise in futility. There’s basically nothing out there. They’re all, like, secretive and stuff. This is apparently a marketing technique.

I did discover thet the company’s CEO and co-founder, Bruce Leak, ran the engineering team that developed the original Quicktime, and also co-founded WebTV, which was purchased by Microsoft and subsequently fizzled into obscurity. It was Bruce who delivered the blurb on the OHA quotes page, which is no help in deducing just what the hell it is that his company does:

We are excited to be part of the Open Handset Alliance and the next generation of mobile devices that it will empower. Android is the first platform that enables SkyPop to fully deliver on our vision of consumer services for the future of mobile devices.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

When the Android SDK was first released Bruce and Timo Bruck, SkyPop’s CTO released a video showcasing the results of their playing around with developing for the platform. This video was among a few others available on the official Android site.

The first result was a Soduku app. I was underwhelmed.

As a second example Timo gave us a taste of a game he developed which integrates location awareness and social networking. He doesn’t give much in the way of details; it’s something involving friends and enemies and their locations plotted out on a Google maps interface. It leverages instant messaging. It has swooshy graphics. I continued to be underwhelmed. Knowing the physical location of your friends is, frankly, the most banal use of location aware handsets that I can imagine. They claim it’s like a Tricorder, to which I ask “How?” Can it be used to scan the molecular composition of a rock or detect the makeup of gases in an atmosphere? No. Can it be used to analyze the damage done by a phaser blast? No. Has it ever been used as a prop in an over-hyped sixties sci-fi show? No. So, pretty much, it’s nothing like a freakin’ Tricorder at all; it’s just a lame-ass app for a mobile handset.

This might be the shortest OHA profile yet, ’cause I simply have nothing to say about these guys. There’s nothing out there. So I’m putting the call out to the troops. What is SkyPop doing for Android? Is there a reason I should be excited about these guys? If anyone has the inside scoop or an angle I haven’t considered, let me know. Shoot me an email.

Mystery is not enough. At this point, SkyPop holds the distinction of being the single least interesting OHA member. They’re even lagging behind Broadcom (ouch!).

34 Weeks of OHA: #24

Guest Blogger
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Company Name: SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc.

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: SiRF is the leading provider of GPS enabled location platforms for mainstream markets with focus on wireless, automotive, consumer electronic and mobile compute devices.

What they do:

SiRF Technology, Inc. is a world leader in creating technologies that confer “location awareness” or “location intelligence” to a wide range of consumer products… In the constant tension between lost and found, SiRF’s GPS solutions tip the odds in favor of being found.

Location intelligence, eh? I need some of that. And that bit about “the constant tension between lost and found” is lyrical and profound. These SiRF folks give good copy.

They’re GPS chipset makers. And, judging by information from the wikipedia page covering their SiRFstarIII, they’re damned good GPS chipset makers. The SiRFstarIII is a high sensitivity GPS receiver, noted especially for its ability to get a signal in dense, obscured environments. Like, say, one’s bathroom. Ever tried to get a GPS signal in your bathroom? It doesn’t happen. Trust me, I’ve tried. I would have been screwed if I hadn’t by chance discovered that I wasn’t nearly as lost as I thought I was and my living room was just on the other side of that door. Perhaps if I had a SiRFstarIII handy I would have made it out before day twelve and wouldn’t have been forced to eat the frozen buttocks of my dead colleague.

The list of companies that use the SiRFstarIII is impressive: Acer, Asus, Fujitsu-Siemens (hee-hee, I said “siemens”), HTC, Hitachi, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Packard Bell, Samsung… It’s even used by Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom, so they’ve got the GPS luminaries on board.

The secret to the SiRFstarIII is a whole whack of ARM processing power built in. It can decode the truth in situations, such as heavy urban areas, where the GPS signal is reflected and bouncing around and confused, and it can deal with weak signals, such as in forested areas. It also has a really really smokin’ fast acquisition time, so if the signal drops it can be snatched up again quickly.

Cool beans.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

SiRF is actively working on the Android platform to include some of the more innovative features of Secure User Plane Location (SUPL), a standards-based protocol that allows a mobile handset client to communicate with a SUPL Location Platform (SLP), including transport layer security (TLS) for location privacy and multiple session capabilities to provide the most compelling user experience. SiRF is also implementing support for Android-based assisted GPS (A-GPS) handsets, including mobile station based (MSB) and mobile station assisted (MSA) positioning methods to facilitate the Android platform passing Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and 3GPP conformance testing for third-party certification.

“SiRF is applying its vast end-to-end location solutions experience in working with leading global handset manufacturers, LBS infrastructure vendors, application providers and wireless operators to deliver a robust, high-performance location capability to the Android platform,” said Kanwar Chadha, founder and VP of marketing for SiRF. “We believe our ardent focus on driving the location ecosystem gives us a distinct advantage when it comes to understanding the handset location capability certification process as well as the subtleties of how GPS and other technologies need to mesh in order to create a truly seamless locative experience for consumers in the applications they care about.”

Well goddamn. Want to know what that means? You sure? Alright… SUPL, or Secure User Plane Location, is basically a communications standard for A-GPS systems (which require communication with a server to determine location). MSB refers to a positioning system where the mobile device both acquires the positioning information and does the location calculation itself, whereas an MSA system communicates the positioning information to the network for location computation. As for a location ecosystem, that’s just marketing speak. Feel better?

Here’s the important stuff you should know: location awareness is probably the most essential piece of the Android puzzle for Google’s bottom line. Reliable knowledge of a user’s location is what will really enable Google to take their targeted ads to the next level. On a home PC or laptop, Google can target based on browsing habits and mail content; on a mobile platform with GPS or reliable cell-tower triangulation tech those ads can be far more situational and far more tailored to the users current context. Check this bit from a USA Today article from back in January, in which Cole Brodman, T-Mobile’s Chief Development Officer is quoted:

By combining “unique information about consumers from the Web,” he says, with “other information” from mobile devices, such as location, “Google believes search responses can be much more targeted for Google, and that the value they can bring back to advertisers can be quite a bit higher.”

The location awareness focus for Android was made even more obvious when the first round winners of the Developers Challenge was announced. Apps that made use of location awareness in innovative ways made up a dominant percentage of the rewarded software.

It’s clear that SiRF is going to play a major role in this strategy. They have the tech, thay have a bunch of fancy buzzwords like “location ecosystem”, and it appears that they’re crotch-deep in this Android thing helping Google fully realize the potential of a location-aware platform.

Google Should Have Made The gPhone

AndroidGuys
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If you have spent time in the dating game, you know the harsh reality: it is usually better when you are being wooed by someone, than it is when you are running after them. When you are the one who is trying to win over someone, no matter how great your qualities and offerings, they may act reluctant, express doubts, second guess your motives and in the end, not accept you at all. On the other hand, when someone is wooing you, even if they know your negative qualities and idiosyncrasies, even if you act all pricey, they might still brush those aside and pursue you; they will be happy to accept you as you are and make a good life with that.

Reading about Google working with handset makers and carriers, I get the impression that Google is wooing a bunch of Reluctant Rebeccas who are demanding much and not making it easy for Google. The angst of a hassled suitor is best expressed by Google’s director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin: “This is where the pain happens,” he says. “We are very, very close.”

Very close, but no cigar… yet.

Imagine how much better it would have been if things were the opposite: if all the carriers and handset makers were lining up at Google’s gates because they were desperate to have this great new awesome that Google had built. Even if they had to a pay high price for it.

Google should have built The gPhone first. It should have worked with one handset maker, in secret (with occasional leaks to the “person familiar with the matter”, of course!), to build the most awesome piece of mobile hardware. And, instead of spending time and resources to build and manage a reluctant alliance, Google should have concentrated all its own energies on doing what it does best: make innovative software with a revolutionary, irresistible UI.

With such exclusive focus, Google would have been ready to launch the g(od)Phone this June or July. Imagine the launch where Google not only showed off an awesome, unlocked, full-featured, uncrippled phone, but also offered the open mobile platform Android for free to anyone who wants it, and announced the Android developer challenge! Now, that would have been a true 1-2-3 knockout punch from which that other locked-and-limited-but-shiny-and-popular phone coming out in July would have found hard to recover. Carriers would have lined up to get the gPhone on their networks ASAP. Handset makers would have lined up to get Android on their phones ASAP. Developers would have lined up to churn out apps for the original godPhone and all other Android phones ASAP. Happy customers the world over would have lined up to get the new gPhone ASAP. Really, can you imagine how all that would have played out? That would have shaken up the mobile world, alright! Then, Google could have built the OHA as a strong coalition of willing converts, rather than a loose alliance of skeptical and reluctant participants.

Instead, what we have today is a situation where Google is scrambling hard to help T-Mobile launch the first Android phone before the end of the year. This is taking up enough of Google’s resources that Sprint cites that as an excuse for not offering an Android Phone on its own network yet. Of course, Sprint has other excuses too: top management shuffling, plans to skip 3G and go straight to 4G with the Android phone, preference to offer its own branded services on the phone (read ‘walled garden’) rather than offer Google’s built-in services. Sprint, purported founding member of the OHA, has made ambiguous and non-committal statements about Android from the very beginning. So, I am not surprised that they are not ready to offer an Android phone any time soon. In fact, I’m glad that Google is first working with T-Mobile, the carrier which cripples phones the least among all the popular US carriers.

Google should have learned from its Gmail launch. Gmail is a complete email product, with innovative, unique features. It wow-ed the world when it was launched. Some Gmail features are so unique, almost no other email provider has replicated them or even offered them as options years after Gmail launched. Remember the days when people all over the world were desperate to get an invite to Gmail? Now imagine that Google never built Gmail, and instead built a plug-in to work with Outlook or Yahoo mail or any other email system, to bring the Gmail features like threaded conversations, labeled mails, hidden quoted text, etc. to your existing mail box. Google would have had to go through hard and frustrating times to get the plug-in to work with the numerous mail systems out there. Having done that, it would have been even more difficult to get the other email providers to offer this plug-in as an optional feature, if at all. Even if Google had offered the plug-in as an independent download, it would not be as ubiquitous and useful as Gmail is today.

Google’s attempts to push Android on reluctant carriers and handset makers is akin to pushing a Gmail plug-in on existing email systems! Moreover, it makes you wonder what compromises and limitations Google might be building into Android in order to make it acceptable to the carriers. I’d like to believe that Google would not do that, but then I’d also have liked to believe that Google does not offer a self-censored search engine in China.

Anyway, what is done is done. For better or worse, Android is on the path it is on now. Nobody wishes for its success as much as we do. But it’s still not too late for Google to make and market its own branded, full-featured and unlocked godPhone which can be held up as a standard for other phones to measure up to. Perhaps, they should partner with the struggling Motorola, which has put its best engineers to work on an Android phone, to make the ideal gPhone. An ideal gPhone would serve Google (and us, the mobile customers) very well. For one thing, it would show the world what Android can really do. And, it would prevent carriers from crippling other Android (and even non-Android) phones too much. Why would people buy a crippled phone if a full-featured one is available? And even if the carriers crippled their phones a little, they would be forced to offer something in exchange – like awesome hardware or innovative services or simply cheaper phones – to tempt customers to buy those phones. Would be a win-win for everybody.

34 Weeks of OHA: #23

AndroidGuys
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Company Name: Samsung Electronics

How the OHA site classifies them: Handset Manufacturer

What the OHA site says about them: A leading innovator and provider of mobile phones and telecom systems.

What they do: Samsung is scary as hell.

Seriously.

Head on over to the Wikipedia article for Samsung Group, the conglomerate of which Samsung Electronics is the biggest part. These guys basically drive the South Korean economy (20% of the entire country’s exports in 2004, 6% of the total tax revenue the country received in 2003). In addition to electronics, they’re one of the world’s largest shipbuilders and a major global construction company. They also do chemicals, financial services, retails, entertainment, cars, etc., etc. They have revenue rivaling many small countries; in 2006 it would have been the world’s 34th largest economy. They are the second largest conglomerate in the world.

These guys are the megacorporation your mother warned you about.

At the top of all this is Lee family, who has run the show for some time now. The string of Lees includes Lee Byung-Chul (the founder), Lee Soo-Bin and Lee Kun-Hee. It’s a monarchy, really.

It’s run using this weird circular ownership thing, whereby one division owns a certain percentage of another, which in turn owns a percentage of the third, which then owns a percentage of the fourth. It is thought that this arrangement allows the Lee family to keep control of everything without having a huge portion of the ownership of any one part. The system was designed by Lee Ma-Chia-Veh-Lee.

The Samsung Electronics subsidiary is the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, having overtaken Sony a few years back. They completely dominate in the areas of DRAM, SRAM, TFT-LCD, STN-LCD, flash memory, CDMA handsets, and a bunch of other stuff. As an electronics brand, Samsung has seen a steady improvement in public perception over the past handful of years, evolving into a mark of quality equal to or exceeding Sony.

And, of course, they make handsets. They are second only to Nokia in worldwide market share.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Today’s mobile industry is becoming more and more a customer-centric environment. Samsung’s joining with the Open Handset Alliance is fundamentally in line with this trend. We expect to lead the mobile industry by introducing more customer-oriented mobile phones through this alliance.

That’s the word from Dale Sohn, President of Samsung Telecommunications America, on the OHA quotes page. There’s not much there, other than a 1:1 participle-to-sentence ratio. I find it interesting that he’s so focused on how the industry is becoming more customer-oriented, a welcome change from the old days when it was more focused on mobile providers and South Korean God-Corporations. I mean, does it seem messed up to anyone else that it should be news when a consumer product/service is noted for becoming customer-oriented? Clearly, the power has gone to Samsung’s head.

They do create some cool handsets, though. Take a look at the Instinct (http://www.samsunginstinct.com/): while obviously heavily targeted at the iPhone market, there’s no doubt that its loaded to the gills with coolness. If they can bring the same standards to their Android offerings they may challenge HTC for my money. I’m not terribly interested in contributing to their world domination, but if they deliver the goods they can have my money.

Rumour has had it that the first Android handsets will actually come from Samsung sometime in September, rather than HTC as we’ve all been led to believe. It’s questionable whether Samsung would go this route, potentially diluting the impact of the Instinct – which they’ve thrown so much marketing money behind – during the Christmas season, but I’d certainly love to see their offering should it appear.

34 Weeks of OHA: #22

AndroidGuys
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Company Name: Qualcomm, Inc.

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: Qualcomm Incorporated is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products for advanced devices around the world.

What they do: Their wikipedia page describes them as a “wireless telecommunications research and development company”. Initially this line of work saw them releasing satellite locating and messaging services for long-haul truckers and various little bits n’ pieces of integrated whatsits for digital radio communications.

They hit their stride with CDMA technologies, however. As inventors of CDMAOne, CDMA 2000, and 1xEV-DO they have consistently been at the forefront the field. They are the code division multiple access ninjas. They’ve ridden their prowess all the way up to being one of the top ten semiconductor companies in the world.

Along the way, they developed BREW, the application development platform for handsets, bought naming rights for a stadium in San Diego, helped develop the Globalstar satellite system, and got their butts sued (and lost) over infringing patents held by fellow OHA-er Broadcom.

They also, interestingly, got themselves involved in email software through buying Eudora, which was, way back when, kind of a big name (I remember using Eudora Light). It limped along under the onslaught of Outlook for quite a few years, until, in 2006, it was open sourced and moved under Mozilla, where internet software that has had its ass handed to it by Microsoft go to regroup and stage their comeback.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Do I really need to answer that question? These guys invented CDMA, ferchrissakes.

As is likely the case with many other semiconductor companies, they’re probably involved mostly to provide hardware specs and reference platforms for the Android devs. As I’ve conjectured around these parts before, being a part of the OHA involves no risk for a company like Qualcomm. They provide some reference platforms, if Android is huge they win in that the software is sure to run on their stuff, whereas if Android fails all they’ve lost is some reference hardware.

I apologize that saying this over and over again, but there’s not much else to really say about Qualcomm. I can even hand the mic over to someone from Qualcomm, who basically told Information week’s Eric Zeman the same thing:

Qualcomm’s involvement is simple. The main benefactor will be the the chipset division. It continues to show that we will support many operating systems and platforms. This includes BREW,Microsoft and others. With Android, we’re just saying we can run Linux on our chipsets as well. (Emphasis mine).

So, nothing to see here. Move on. Qualcomm isn’t bringing any hot new tech to the table, they’re just jumping around, waving their arms, saying “Me too. Me too.”

I’m going to close out with the words of Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, Qualcomm CEO, from the OHA quotes page. He had his PR folks working overtime on this one; it’s great for being nicely verbose while really not saying much at all:

The convergence of the wireless and Internet industries is creating new partnerships, evolving business models and driving innovation. We are extremely pleased to be participating in the Open Handset Alliance, whose mission is to help build the leading open-source application platform for 3G networks. The proliferation of open-standards-based handsets will provide an exciting new opportunity to create compelling services and devices. As a result, we are committing research and development resources to enable the Android platform and to create the best always-connected consumer experience on our chipsets.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Packet Video

AndroidGuys
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I promised something special for this week, and have delivered! Read on for the bestest 34 Weeks of OHA article yet…

Company Name: PacketVideo

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: PacketVideo (PV) is a nine-year-old multimedia software company whose software powers the world’s leading mobile entertainment services, including Verizon Wireless’ VCAST music and video services, NTT DoCoMo’s 3-G FOMA service and Orange World by Orange.

The Backstory:

Usually when I’m writing these things I have to spend at least fifteen minutes surfing around the intertubes doing research. I take a bunch of notes, write the notes down on scraps of rice paper, feed them along with a couple shots of espresso to my specially trained Rhesus Monkey, and then lock him in the bathroom overnight with an old HP laptop. When morning comes, all I have to do is post what he’s put together to the site and clean the Rhesus poop out of the bathtub. It’s a great system.

This week, however, an opportunity came my way. Rather than having a monkey put the article together, I got a PhD in Electrical Engineering to do it, a technique which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has produced a far superior product.

The PhD in this case is Osama Alshaykh, CTO for Open Handset Alliance member PacketVideo. PacketVideo is a provider of multimedia software to basically every handset maker and mobile carrier that matters: Nokia, T Mobile, Rogers, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Verizon, etc., etc. They’re one of those companies that few people have ever heard of, but almost anyone that’s ever picked up a mobile phone has come in contact with their software.

Osama Alshaykh really does have a PhD in Electrical Engineering. He’s one of the founders of PacketVideo, which he came to after having spent some time working on multimedia standards like MPEG-4 and JPEG-2000. And he’s a Fullbright Scholar. So, he’s smarter than me, probably smarter than you, and definitely a lot smarter than my monkey. I’m guessing he’s a lot less nasty than my monkey if you steal his peanuts, as well.

I interviewed Dr. Alshaykh via email last week:

The Interview:

Q: Let’s start with the basic information. Usually for my articles I take the time to do some research around the company I’m profiling, but this time I can let you just hand me the information and save myself a bunch of work. Can you give me a brief history of PacketVideo, and tell me about some of the services and products you offer?

A: PacketVideo has been around for 10 years, and in the same year we were founded, we became the first company to put video on a cell phone. Since then, our multimedia software has shipped on about 230 million mobile devices, for mobile operators such as Verizon Wireless, Orange, NTT DoCoMo, Rogers, TELUS, Telstra, T-Mobile and more. Beyond our CORE multimedia application framework, on which the OpenCORE media subsystem for Android is based, we also have PVConnect, a DLNA-certified connected home product, and MediaFusion, an end-to-end rich media content management and delivery platform. Our existing products enable true multi-screen rich media services. We’ve also recently ventured into the hardware arena with Telly, a mobile broadcast receiver that will help mobile operators launch live TV services faster using their existing phone portfolios.

Q: Wow, that Telly’s a nifty little item. Cross platform and small enough to be convenient.

Without revealing any Top Secret stuff, what’s PacketVideo’s role in the Open Handset Alliance? What is PV bringing to the Android effort?

A: Our CORE multimedia framework is a mature, modular solution on which some of the most popular multimedia services are built, including Verizon VCAST and OrangeWorld. We’ve open sourced a subset of CORE features to enable Android developers to design and launch applications that employ basic media functions, such as audio and video streaming and playback, two-way video telephony, video authoring and imaging.

Q: I understand that Rogers Wireless, my mobile service provider here in Canada, is a client of PV. I have a rather large bill this month due to a new handset I purchased and some roaming data charges. Any chance you can swing me a discount?

A: Why aren’t you using their music services? Then we could talk.

Q: Well, I find much of the music I listen to isn’t offered by… Hey, wait, how do you know I’m not using their music service?

A: …

Q: What is the ‘Content Policy Manager’ component of OpenCORE? Is this where Digital Rights Management is enforced?

A: Yes, the content policy manager enables use case scenarios for digital rights management. Service providers can choose which technology and rules to include in their products by using these modules. PV provides and supports SDC, PlayReady and WMDRM10 digital rights management systems to provide users with many ways for obtaining media including renting, buying or forwarding content to your friends.

Q: I understand the OpenCORE code is open-source. How is it licensed — is it Apache 2.0 as is the Android SDK?

A: OpenCORE is available via the Android SDK, which is obtained through the Apache 2.0 license. No strings attached! Aren’t we good guys?

Q: Well, yes, you are good guys. It was the open-source part of Android that grabbed my attention when it was announced. But, I was a little surprised to see that OpenCORE does not support Ogg or FLAC audio codecs (at least, not according to the materials I read), which seems odd given that it’s open-source. What was the reasoning around not including these formats, and are there any plans to expand OpenCORE to include support for these codecs in the future?

A: PV provides a rich set of codecs and features including MP3, AAC, AAC+, MPEG-4, AVC, H.263, etc. We also opened up our system for developers to add other codecs and formats. This is the beauty of our architecture. It takes a village, you know …

Q: Well, I’m hoping there’s more than a village’s worth of participation in Android development.

Have you seen, or played with, the HTC Dream (the rumored HTC Android handset). Can it really convert water into wine? Can OpenCORE stream wine? ‘Cause, honestly, I could use some streaming wine.

A: Miracles can happen with a really innovative combination of hardware and services, but streaming wine from a phone isn’t on the roadmap. I can help stream it from a bottle! As for the rumored HTC handset, we like to consider it a legend.

Q: Wait, a “legend”? That’s rather cryptic. Are you saying that the HTC Dream that the blogosphere has been salivating for during the last few months doesn’t exist?

A: We’re not into rumors, but we are into reality, and the reality is that there will be cool Android devices and we’re very excited about that.

Q: Hmm…

Where do you see multimedia on mobile platforms heading? It seems that everything we could want is already available — music, video, streaming TV, YouTube. What’s the next step in the evolution of multimedia on my handset, and what, if any, are some of the technical or industry-related obstacles that need to be overcome before next-gen multimedia services can be offered?

A: Oh, there’s so much more that can be done, especially when you throw web-based services, your home and your friends into the mix. Imagine your phone is your ultimate remote control of your media assets when you watch TV, listen to music on your stereo system or show your grandma your cute pictures on her TV. Imagine yourself as a mobile broadcaster showing your friends your latest skating moves, live on the web. We’re moving towards the ability to merge personal interests with viewing habits.

Many of those ideas can be realized with the current networks and devices. More will be done with faster networks. Just some additional ideas to think about: Accessing your friends’ MySpace playlists and sampling music from their libraries. Or watching a music video on your phone and getting instant concert or TV appearance news about the artist you’re watching – with an option to buy those concert tickets or record the TV appearance on your phone. There are endless possibilities of integrating music, video and information of any kind on web-based mobile apps.

Q: This is the the idea that the mobile platform will the central interface for managing and interacting with our digital environment. Not just receiving, but broadcasting content as well. Very exciting stuff, and, frankly, what I’ve been waiting for.

What are your hopes for the Android platform? Do you see its openness as a turning point in the mobile industry?

A: The real pivot in the industry that accelerated with the introduction of Android, while not necessarily started by it, is the move toward openness – in networks, in platforms, in services. PV is hoping that there will be some really clever implementations of Android that loosen traditional concepts about the role a mobile device can and should play in an end-user’s life. It’s a big leap forward toward a rich media world, where access to desired applications and services is much more intuitive and way more fun. By opening platforms, we are removing hurdles and accelerating the introduction of new concepts and new approaches. A significant industry investment is made available to anyone to innovate with. BTW, all of this is applicable to any device and not only mobile phones.

Q: Well said; parts of that answer could almost serve as a manifesto.

Can you give me a job? I’m a fairly accomplished Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse developer; most of my experience is with Microsoft technologies, but at home I’m a Linux user and open-source devotee. I can cook, but I don’t do windows.

A: I think you’re more our target end-user than target employee. Most of our engineers are really great cooks. You should see our potlucks.

Free food? I’m there.

The Post-Interview:

Thanks so much to Dr. Alshaykh for taking the time to do this. It’s really nice to interface with someone in an executive position who not only has credentials that any geek can respect but also understands how openness can drive innovation. My communication with Dr. Alshaykh and the obvious confidence the mobile industry has in his company’s products have convinced my that the multimedia components of Android are in very, very good hands.

My thanks, as well, to Jeff Seedman of Ruder Finn for contacting me on behalf of PacketVideo and for facilitating the interview.

Until next week…

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Nvidia

AndroidGuys
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My apologies to all the loyal readers out there for missing the article last week. I was spending some time in Seattle, doing the company-paid-for training course thing. I couldn’t find the time to get an article together. No worries, though, I’m back. Oh, and, stay tuned for next week’s profile, for which I’ve paid a few bribes and cashed in a few favors in order to bring you all something very, very special. You’ll love it, promise. I just wish this week’s article could live up to what will be coming next week…

Company Name: NVIDIA Corporation

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: NVIDIA is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. Its GoForce family of multimedia applications processors are designed for the mobile phone, PMP and PND markets.

What they do: They make graphics chips. You know this already, I don’t have to tell you. If you haven’t heard of NVIDIA, you need to go back to geek school.

The NVIDIA history as its relayed in their Wikipedia article is, really, not all that interesting. It starts out alright, with a couple of failed products punching up the first act of an underdog-rises-to-the-top success story, but it loses steam by the final third and degenerates into petty squabbling with ATI punctuated by a string of meaningless series numbers (Geforce 1 thru 8), abbreviations (GPGU, SLI, CUDA) and stand-alone prefixes (‘Ultra’). I’ve never been much of a gamer, so its hard to attach any sort of significance to this stuff.

Their website touts them as “the inventor of the GPU” and “the world leader is visual computing technologies”. NVIDIA is the 2nd largest graphics chip producer in the world, behind Intel who kind of doesn’t count. Certainly in the Gaming and High-End graphics space NVIDIA is the leader (although longtime rival ATI is always in the shadows, lurking around, maiming kittens and shafting Linux users). NVIDIA’s GeForce line is almost household name, and they continue to set standards for graphics chip technology.

I don’t have an NVIDIA in my laptop. I could have, but I opted for the Intel integrated job ’cause it was cheaper and I don’t do much gaming anyway. Also, Intel offers open source Linux drivers, which NVIDIA and ATI do not, and I hoped that would mean better support. Unfortunately, the Intel open source drivers are, apparently, ass; if I had gone with the NVIDIA chip then when I suddenly got interested in playing Eve Online I could have gone ahead and done so under Linux, rather than having to boot into Vista (the OS of Satan) just to get full pixel shader support. But enough about me.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

The piece that NVIDIA brings to the mobile space is their line of mobile/PDA, low-power graphics chips. Featuring nPower, whatever the hell that means. The big badass in their GoForce line is the 6100, offering VGA res at 30 fps H.264 or MPEG-4, 10 megapixel camera sensor support, integrated audio subsystem, TV encoder, S-Video out, and the ability to drive LCD displays at WVGA resolution, all attached to a 250mhz core with low power consumption. Oh, and it includes full DRM support, in case you were in the market specifically for a chip that would suck all your freedoms away.

There are a number of other GeForce offerings, but they’re all given numbers lower than 6100, so I don’t care.

My first feeling was that NVIDIA is here in the OHA for the same reason most of the other semiconductor companies are: because the Android dev team needs their participation in order to ensure that the platform will run on the hardware. I’ve talked about this before. Basically Google needs reference hardware and the specs to go with it to ensure the compatibility of the OS. The hardware manufacturers such as NVIDIA, conversely, have relatively little to lose by providing the specs and reference hardware in the hopes that Android and the OHA goes big and their name can go along for the ride.

But, maybe I’m wrong on this one. Maybe NVIDIA has been working with the Android folks on something big. It’s not unprecedented: NVIDIA has a close relationship with Microsoft, and the two have been working together to bring NVIDIA’s APX2500 to fruition. NVIDIA calls the APX2500 an “applications processor”; it brings an up-to 750mhz processor together with audio/video processing, an ULP (Ultra Low Power) GeForce processor, up to 12 megapixel camera support, 720p HD, SXGA LCD, and both composite and S-Video outputs. Pretty hardcore.

This thing is branded as “The key to building the next generation smartphone for Microsoft Windows Mobile devices” and it is custom-built to interact with Windows Mobile. The question here is: will there be an Android-specific APX implementation? NVIDIA has indicated that the APX2500 is but the first in a family of APX application processors. Will Android get some APX lovin’? Is NVIDIA nothing more than just another semiconductor company throwing their names in with the cool kids hoping to reap some benefits, or will there be something truly unique coming out of their collaboration with Google? I certainly hope for the latter.

Looking for a clue, I turned to the OHA quotes page, hoping there would be something specific mentioned. There isn’t, but I’m going to add the quote anyway, ’cause it fills space, and leaving readers with someone else’s words goes a long way to improve their opinion of my articles. So, until next week, here’s Michael Rayfield, general manager of NVIDIA’s mobile business:

As the mobile phone becomes our most personal computer, the user experience has never been more important. NVIDIA will be working within the Open Handset Alliance to enable rich media acceleration on a new generation of devices based on the Android platform.

Word.

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