The can't-avoid Android 05/02/2010

Charles Cohen, chief executive, Probability

THREE MAKES a trend, right? Then how's this little threesome, all on the same day: 

1)In China, the factories that used to churn out phones running ripped-off, no-good software, instead start installing Android, the free phone operating system created by Google. 

2)Mediatek, who make most of the chips used in mobiles, announces it's making one that supports Android. 

3)T-Mobile announces its handset list for 2010. It contains lots of Android phones. 

As mentioned, Android is the mobile operating system developed by Google, which is free for anyone to use when they make a mobile phone. In plain English, what this means is that twelve months from now, you will find it hard to buy a regular, consumer mobile phone which isn't either an Android phone or an Apple iPhone. 

This is pretty amazing. In fact, tt's the break which mobile gambling has been waiting for. 

Until now, making mobile gambling games has been hard going. 

Even when you had your game working on the latest Nokia, another ten would come along and you would have to start all over again. 

But even when you do cover pretty much all the flora and fauna of the mobile world, the basic problem that all mobiles share is that they were designed as phones, not media devices. Indeed, the fact that the keyboard takes up most of the floor space it a pretty good clue. 

What this meant is that although the customer could easily download your app to their phone, the manufacturer sometimes made it almost impossible for the player to find the thing again and start it up. 

Some days, about half the calls we get to our call center from new players are about missing apps. But the people aren't stupid, their phones are. 

So thank you, Apple. The iPhone has put apps front and centre - literally. You download the app and there it is, right on the desktop. Tap it to start. And as Apple has had 3,000 million apps downloaded from its AppStore, I guess you could say the idea work. 

And here is what makes Android matter: it's an app-friendly phone software for app-hungry consumers, that any manufacturer can use, for free. The news over the last day or so shows just how quickly this new age of mobile devices is going to take over. You could say it's an iPhone for the rest of us. 

And once the rest of us have app-phones, the rest of us will start looking for apps - and services, games, and gambling.  

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Posted: 05/02/2010