Android’s Got Charisma, Still Building Momentum
The upcoming Honeycomb-powered Motorola Xoom stirred quite a bit of buzz, being the first device powered by Google’s tablet-dedicated OS, but all that publicity is causing a bit of back-lash this morning, and it’s Adobe’s fault. According to the fine print on the bottom of a Verizon ad, the Xoom, which launches this Thursday, won’t feature Flash support until spring of this year.
“When Motorola’s big Android tablet, the Xoom, launches this Thursday it will be missing one of its key selling points against an iPad.” According to a Verizon ad picked up at Engadget, the Xoom won’t have Flash support until the spring of 2011.
The Motorola Xoom is supposed to be competitive with the iPad, but the absence of Flash supports means a whole lot of content would not be available to prospective customers. Nonetheless, this update represents yet another win for HTML5, which is expected to win over Flash’s share of the market; a forecast supported by Apple as well.
The Xoom may not have the ideal launch, but this is not the only downer Google has to face. According to media research firm IHS Screen Digest, Google’s Android Market is only the second largest app store after the App Store, and the 4th most profitable after the App Store, Ovi Store and Blackberry App World. That adds up to a mere $102 million in revenues for 2010 (not including in-app advertising), compared to the App Store’s whopping $1.78 billion.
” Surprising: Android Market was not the second or even the third most lucrative app store for developers according to this research, which ranks BlackBerry App World second with $165m of revenues in 2010 (a 7.7% share), and Nokia’s Ovi Store third with $105m (4.9%).”
The Android Market’s 4.7% share,size and revenues may be lagging behind the competition, but Google is getting ready to pick up its pace. Phandroid.com reports that 3 new Android Market links have gone live, which suggest that Google is prepping to take on iTunes, and launch its own media services including books, movies and music.
“But when is all of this going down? We’re not sure when exactly these URLs went live, but the following list of them point to the Android market landing page:
http://market.android.com/music/
http://market.android.com/movies/
http://market.android.com/books/”
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