Sources: Forbes,android.com,wikipedia+self
Introducing Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich
Android 4.0 brings an entirely new look and feel. The lock screen, widgets, notifications, multi-tasking and everything in between has been rethought and refined to make Android simple, beautiful, and beyond smart.
Because of the rapid developments of this open source OS for mobile devices, the mobile computing have reached a new level where almost nothing is impossible using your mobile phone.
And since this OS is basically Open source software that had a strong base developed by Google and Android, the applications available for the users in the Android market place are simply amazing in nature. Users can get huge varieties of useful and entertaining applications in the Android Market and all of them at a very affordable range. Sometimes developers have their software or application available for free for the users.
Because of the increased usage, the percentage of abuses are also increasing at an alarming rate.
Many people might just want to get your sensitive information while you are using your Android applications through Internet. Besides, there are several sponsor companies who would like to get users analytics from the developers in order to do their own market analysis.
With all abundance resource, the safety issue is also the maximum in case of Android and Internet.
Without Internet, there is not much use of an Android Phone, as all the major applications are web based.
And since Androids are Wi-Fi only devices, the only way to get connected to the World Wide Web using an Android phone is through Wi-Fi connections. And as most of us might probably know that Wi-Fi or internet hotspots are usually free to use services where the network security is not strong and it is difficult for the network administrator to track the device that is attacking other users in the network. Therefore, every time you use your mobile phone to use Internet using a Wi-Fi connection, your android device is exposed to extreme risks.
Android is not just an operating system for mobile phones and it’s likely that it will be used for netbooks, ultra-portable laptops which started to become popular last year.Daniel Hartmann managed to install Android on an Asus EEEPC 1000H “with nearly all of the necessary hardware you’d want (including graphics, sound and the wireless card for internet) running”. It’s also interesting to see that some Android code references Asus Eee 701, the first Asus netbook.
VentureBeat speculates that we could see the first netbooks preloaded with Android in less than a year, but Android could become a general-purpose operating system for any kind of devices. Installing apps for your car or TV is not too far fetched.
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As high mobility devices — smartphones and tablets — sap energy from personal computers, market participants are looking for another horse to back besidesApple.
So far, only Google’s Android platform has made any progress, and its traction is just in smartphones. No other operating system has yet mounted a credible challenge to iOS.
The ranks of the Android army may thin a bit if intellectual property issues get beyond Google’s control
And yet, Google is strangely silent about Android, failing to indemnify its customers against legal claims and guarantee that all rights have been cleared for Android. In addition, developers are a bit perturbed by the lack of a unified Android code base, but this is a minor problem compared to Android’s legal status.
The ambiguity of Google’s commercial support for Android has led to a bizarro world in which Microsoft ends up licensing Android to customers like Velocity Micro and HTC.
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But while Microsoft provides covering fire, the coup de grace may come from another quarter. This past Friday, Apple won a preliminary judgment against HTC for infringement by Android of patents related to intellectual property in iOS. The developer community is terrified.
Although that fear may be exaggerated, this scenario does suggest that the next phase of the battle between the major players is going to be legal in nature rather than innovative or customer-focused.
When behemoths find each other infringing on one another’s overly broad patents, they tend to settle and set up a nice cozy oligopoly with a bit of fauxcompetition thrown in for decoration. Competition always evolves into the establishment of borders; to wit: cars, movies, and music.
The players are carving up the map now because, once everything stabilizes, not much will change hands. Little guys will be reduced to city-states. Someday, somebody may slap some sense into Congress, and serious patent reform may finally happen, but, until that day, the big guys will derive huge value from the patent system’s utter state of dysfunction.
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Google may suffer from not having as large a portfolio of overly broad patents as Microsoft and Apple, but the company has a lot of cash to sustain its efforts.
Intellectual property wars have been intensifying for a while as rival companies try to stake out valuable territory, and if you observe who’s notsuing whom, you learn that companies with big patent portfolios tend not to fight each other (e.g., Microsoft and Apple).
Does the future hold a lawsuit between Microsoft and Google?
Microsoft is building a good case that it does have rights in Android through these de facto agreements. A business partner’s willingness to pay Microsoft for access to intellectual property represents an opinion beyond Microsoft’s own. The wisdom through now has been that Android is a viable, open, free alternative to iOS.
If Android stumbles, the field of Apple competitors reopens, and Hewlett-Packard’s webOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 for tablets get a clearer shot. If Google ends up having to charge its customers for Android and pay royalties to Microsoft, then Microsoft increases an already nice stream of revenue from Android. The move also has the effect to raising Android devices’ bill of materials, making Microsoft’s (and other’s) devices more cost competitive.
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