Less than two weeks ago, i wrote a post about the challenges of Android being sort of stuck in the middle. The middle between two extremes – iPhone and Blackberry.
But after last weeks Google I/O conference, I’m more excited than ever about Android for Mobile for two important reasons:
1. Developers. Android is now activating 100k mobile phones per day. That’s huge and if you are a developer you need to pay attention to that.
2. Android Platform. They released several new usability features but the platform is getting very interesting, particularly the Cloud to Device API. I first read about this on Daring Fireball and then I went over the Google project page for C2DM and read up on the details. John Gruber points out examples of how C2DM is going to work:
Buy an app (or song, or anything) from the Android Marketplace using a PC web browser, select one of your Android devices, and the item you just purchased will be pushed directly to that device over the air.
Take the current URL from your PC web browser and push it to your device, over the air. If it’s a web page, it’ll open in the Android web browser; if it’s a Google Maps URL, it’ll open in the Android Maps app.
Developers are going to have a field day with that API and I can’t wait.