Android 2.2

Android 2.2

Google's Android has done what many thought impossible: It unseated the iPhone as the number two selling smartphone platform in the US (after Research in Motion—RIM) and will soon displace the iPhone worldwide as well. There are a number of reasons for this success, but a simplified view is that Google has simply taken the best parts of each major smartphone platform and created its own open and free alternative Comptia A+ Training.

Looking ahead to the next major update, Android 2.2, it's pretty clear that Google aims to extend its lead and, over time, position Android as the dominant platform in the mobile space. And Android 2.2 hits Microsoft squarely in its one remaining successful mobile markets—the enterprise. It will adopt a number of Exchange compatibility features, including remote wipe, auto-discovery, global address book lookup and security policy support, and device administration APIs. Android already supports multiple Exchange accounts.

For its part, Microsoft is rebooting its mobile phone efforts with Windows Phone. And while I feel that this upcoming entry is innovative and exciting, success is not assured. Looking ahead, I think that Android will be the dominant player in this market and that the remainder will be split in some way by RIM, Apple, Microsoft, and perhaps one other player. Microsoft's biggest advantage in this future is that Windows Phone will offer the best integration across the PC, consumer-oriented products like Xbox and Zune, and its various online services. That will prove a big draw for some users, but not others, especially the younger crowd that's growing up on free Google services Comptia A+ Certification.

Microsoft calls its strategy "three screens and a cloud" but it's so poorly realized in today's products and services that I've renamed it to "three screams and a clod" because there's nothing more disheartening that adopting a particular Microsoft solution and discovering that the company didn't go the distance to integrate it into its other products. In the fast moving world of cloud computing, Microsoft will need to adopt at least one aspect of Google's strategy: to iterate early and often. Microsoft still doesn't get this—it's been a year and a half since the last Windows Live release, which is ridiculous. And until it does, it will continue to lose mindshare—and then usage share and market share—to faster moving companies like Google. This is the real danger of Google's market power, both to Microsoft and to the companies that rely on its technology solutions.