Fretful Amazon wishes it could get more Android action Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Amazon reportedly wants “deeper integration” with Android to persuade more phone makers to promote Amazon services. Specifics are absent from the report at The Information, which suggests “factory level” bundling. The only Amazon initiative that could seriously shift the industry …
Amazon also want to get into washing machines, dishwashers etc - right from manufacture. That way, when hooked up to the web they can detect when you're low on powder and automatically order it for you. To be delivered by fucking drone. What could possibly be wrong with this marvellous vision of the future?
Like Hudl?
What stopped Tesco selling them still, did they not make any money on them?
I think the issue is that if you allow competitors stores etc but you have fronted up the hardware costs on the plan to rake it back on purchases, unless you can lock the user down it wont always work.
I wonder how much google makes on play services other than the store compared to say amazons music/video products?
While Amazon was founded as a shopping empire, Google was founded as an information one.
So, Google provides communication, location services, file storage etc. Which covers the fundamental tasks of a smartphone.
Amazon... doesn't. OK, they provide some excellent content, but they don't control the base layer of apps that a smartphone is primarily used for. An Android phone without the Google apps on it just isn't very useful.
Err are all the features of AWS just a gimmick then? Amazon is capable of offering almost all of the services Google offers...and if it got its shit together...with a higher level of configurability.
Google Drive et al are fine...but what if you could containerise elements of your file storage to prevent cross contamination of junk.
E.g. young Tarquin gets his own private 2GB of the 50gb family drive, mum gets her 4GB little Esmerelda gets 2GB and daddy gets the rest.
Amazon could easily do that within the scope of AWS.
They could also containerise email for folks. Sonrather than all the mailboxes going into a vast database with the rest of the herd a family / business could have their own segregated mail setup.
From a front end perspective it could resemble standard emailbservice but from a backend perspective its isolated, encrypted and stored separately.
Amazon has the resources to pull off something special but they just want to hawk tat.
to be able to easily get my Amazon apps loaded onto my Android phone without having to check/uncheck the "allow from unknown sources" box. Amazon regularly gives away pay apps, a few of which are actually worth having. I understand why this doesn't happen but with the recent addition of app permission management, it would be pretty easy to allow the user to designate "known sources" to trust for installs.
One simple and easy to use switch is hardly difficult. Anyone who can't follow the instructions from Amazon / Humble Bundle / whoever is too stupid to be allowed to use it.
It's the companies who make it as hard as possible - Apple and Amazon - to put other stuff on your kit who need an enormous kick in the bum.
Oh, and Amazon ended their 'free app of the day' some months ago.
There's a reason people like stock android.
If I want to add shit that gos through my permissions and delivers content from a company I want to be the one that chooses that content. Why can't they understand, liking crap you can't remove added by the manufacturr or phone provider is like buying a dell PC and going oh its got Norton pre-installed how wonderful.
I also tried a Fire tablet and really disliked the closed off OS and in-your-face continual bombardment of Amazon services and advertisements. It was the worst OS I've ever tried, by far. No wonder its so cheap. If you have an Amazon Prime account I can understand how it could be handy for consuming Amazon content, and only Amazon content, but compared to any other tablet the reduced functionality was too limiting for me.
They invested heavily in skins, themes and “unique social experiences”. For a year or two it worked, but today, many users prefer a vanilla “Stock” Android.
Wait, what? Which particular year or two did it work? Pretty much all carrier and manufacturer skins, themes and especially "unique social experiences" were awful.
Unless of course you meant "worked for them" - given the strong competition that was never something that would have worked for long.
Back in the very early days of Android HTC Sense in particular added a lot of useful features and UI polish on top of the stock Android and was an improvement in usability and functionality. As stock Android has improved, and the OEM skins added more and more new features, resulting in more bloat and slower performance stock Android became better than the OEM additions.
HTC Sense was pretty good, yeah, based on their earlier "TouchFlo" work on Windows Mobile.
But the way they went about it was all wrong. Rather than being a simple default launcher replacement with a bunch of other things using as many standard Android API features as possible* it was crowbar'd in using proprietary hacks, meaning any changes Google made to Android would mean HTC had to change a lot of stuff that suddenly broke. Didn't exactly help them release timely OS updates for existing handsets, if that was even a priority for them.
* Really the first OEM to do this was Motorola, and only after being bought by Google
I still remember the days Orange would cripple a perfect Ericsson/Sony Ericsson or Nokia with their tat and menu systems that were just horrible. I blame the Operators more than the manufactures for making it happen before the smartphone ever came along. Apple has one thing I like about it, and that is it doesn't allow the messing and customisation.
I have a Sony Z1 compact I stopped using because of the crap O2 insisted on putting on it, and as it is not unlocked so I cant without effort install pure Andriod from Sony I'm never buying anything other than Nexus again.
"Amazon reportedly wants “deeper integration” with Android to persuade more phone makers to promote Amazon services."
What a complete load of Crap. Starting in the 80's and 90's and continuing to this day, retail companies realized they could make more money putting you into debt than they could selling you their product. They no longer care about the products they sell, only the amount of debt you rack up on their charge cards.
Today software companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon... have I forgotten anyone) have realized they can make more money selling your online habits to the advertisers than they can selling software.
I stopped using amazon's app store right after they came out with "amazon underground".... let me own everything you do on your phone and you can use these apps free.. F off..... amazon
F off microsoft
F off apple
F off google
Start selling your product and not ME and my online habits.
You can hardly blame google for the failure of OEM skins. They were clearly allowed, and the OEM has huge leeway in what they can control. Even Facebook can completely redesign the home screen.
However, skins have invariably been rubbish, and as you say, it is the users who prefer stock android. That's competition, not anti-competitive behaviour.
If OEMs provided a better experience, and released updates in a timely manner, then users would have more reason to like the OEM 'value add'.
Completely agree with you.
After years of using an Android (See user handle), I finally switched over to iPhone a few days ago. The reason - I got fed up of waiting for fixes and updates from Google, only to find Hardware Vendor/the Carrier wont be releasing it to the model I own.
I know there are stock Androids available but usually its either not the model I want or at the payment method that is convenient.
I know in the grand scheme of things my moving to iPhone is insignificant, but I wonder if this kind of frustration will reach critical mass?
Many new cars are coming with Android Auto/Apple Carplay. In a few years, all new cars will probably have it. For Android Auto, you have to get it from the Google Play store. Which would leave out the Amazon Fire phones (for most users).
Android Auto/Apple Carplay is another nail in the coffin for Windows 10 phone and other small marketshare smartphone OSes.
My brother bought himself a Fire tablet because it was cheap. He was pretty much ready to throw it away until I managed to get Google Play installed on it so he could actually do something useful with it.
So, Amazon are more interested in spamming their corporate name everywhere rather than making products that consumers want, what else is new?
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