Apropos of nothing I suppose, one thing I've noticed recently is a lot more use of the little green android logo in advertising and branding aimed at end-users.
When I first saw the little green Android logo, I had assumed it would be associated with how developers saw the Android brand, like Duke for Java. In fact, I was surprised two Summers ago when we were on our way home from an amusement park and I saw a banner in front of a cell phone shop with the little green android on it. [BTW, does he have a name?] I'm bringing this up because of the obvious Duke comparison. I remember reading an article way back in like '96 or '97 from a marketing person saying that Sun should be putting Duke all over the place, shouting his name from the rooftops to build end-user awareness of the Java brand and its value-proposition, particularly in contrast with Windows. [This was in a JavaWorld or PC World or something… I looked for it for 10 minutes last night but couldn't find it again.] Now obviously, this didn't happen. The end-user had little awareness of Duke ,or of Java's value proposition. Heck, I'd argue that Sun never worked out a good story on the value of Java to end-users (that something is in Java is not good enough if you don't explain why that's a win, and Sun never really got anywhere with WORA). In many ways, they lost the message -- read a MacAddict or other long lost magazine from that period and you might find Java defined as "the thing you turn off in your browser if you want to speed up the web and not crash as much." So, obvious difference with the Little Green Android. He's showing up in commercials all over prime time and sports events in the US. Can I say first… WELCOME change from that those goddamned creepy metal-in- your-eye Droid ads! THANK YOU! Second… I don't think this isn't coming from Google, directly, so it's kind of interesting to ponder about who "owns" the Little Green Android as a character and what he can do. So far, he consistently doesn't have a voice(*), and I wonder if that's by design/contract, or if all the carriers using the LGA in their ads have had a "meeting of the minds" (**) about the character's traits and agreed to make him more of a mime-style character. (* - perhaps ironic when you consider that voice integration is one of the distinctive traits of Android, something iPhone doesn't do much of) (** - I'm using the original and nearly forgotten meaning of this expression, the phenomenon of separate parties reaching tacit agreement without ever physically meeting, and instead inferring each other's intentions from their independent actions. It's a useful expression that unfortunately has gotten misused to the point where its primary meaning is now "smart people sitting at a conference table") But to contrast with Duke, can we say that Android does have a specific message it communicates to end-users? Sun never communicated what the value of Java is. I think it's clear there is a distinct Android message that end-users are getting. Granted, I think the message is "It's like the iPhone, but ____" with various ways of filling in the blank: * it's on my carrier * it's politically correct * you can get a physical keyboard etc. Maybe someone else can identify what specifically the Android message is. But at any rate, it's just interesting to me, because I'm seeing a lot of cases where some new iPhone app gets announced -- especially if it's a corporate app from like a retailer -- and half the Facebook comments are "we want an Android version". So, there's a message about and a demand for Android among end-users that has never existed in the Java world before. --Chris On Jan 10, 5:08 am, "Vince O'Sullivan" <vjosulli...@gmail.com> wrote: > One more thing that Android supporters (and I'm an android user) > forget... > > ...is that whilst Android may be starting to beat iOS on numbers and > possibly even features, Apple still has a stranglehold on the > smartphone market mindshare and their smartphones are still the device > of choice where price isn't a factor. Additionally, all new and > interesting (as opposed to "me too") smartphone software comes out on > iPhones first and Androids second (if at all) and that's not likely to > change any time soon. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
