Boone and Bain of Android

With today’s presentation of the HTC Hero and its new user interface HTC Sense one thing strikes me: Never in the past there was a mobile OS that was so open to UI customizations like Android is. Though diversity is absolutely fine for me I painfully remember the UI wars of Linux and think that the battle between KDE and Gnome was partly responsible for the slow gain of desktop market share.

But the real Pandora’s Box is the ability to run Adobe Flash on a mobile device. If anybody had doubts in the past if Flash might be a good idea on a mobile, should have a look at Adobe’s promo video for Flash on the HTC Hero. Completely senseless. Well maybe except for Flash videos, but even the Palm Pré and the iPhone have a dedicated YouTube player though a little diversity for other video services would be nice.

Android really has a big momentum and the chance to become the leading mobile OS. But why take the detour with a UI war? And what will these different UIs mean for the application development? Are consumers really accepting numerous app styles on their device? Will Android become the nerd OS, leering at iPhone users with their consistent UI experience. We will see.

Update

Now Sony Ericsson is adding its fuel called “Rachel” to the Android UI wars. See a video here.

2009-06-24, 21:34