My Midnight Rant By Jagged Wraith

Are Google missing a trick with the Android Market?: "

With all the hype surrounding Apple’s recently launched iPad, it’s not surprising that there are a number of lower cost alternatives currently poised to start flooding the market. Android, as an open source OS, and one of the buzz words du jour, is obviously a popular platform choice for those tablet manufacturers. There is also statistical evidence that more developers plan on coding for Android than for the iPad. All good news for us Android fans, right? Well, there is one issue that’s been something of an elephant in the corner for Google Android on tablets: the lack of access to the official Android Market for non-mobile devices, such as tablet PCs.

In order to access the Android Market, a device has to be Google approved. In order for a device to be Google approved, it needs to pass certain hardware criteria. The exact details of the criteria to be met are a bit fuzzy, but looking at the devices that have been certified by Google, we’d assume some of the pre-requisites are touchscreen, some hardware buttons (such as back and home), an accelerometer and possibly a camera?

Possibly, but the premise behind the requirements for certification seems to be to ensure there is consistency of hardware so Android developers know what the devices they will be coding for will support. Opening up the Android Market to all devices running Android could cause further fragmentation, of a sort, with some apps being written which are completely incompatible with tablet devices, due to, for example, a lack of an accelerometer in the upcoming Archos 7 Home Tablet. Such fragmentation will only serve to frustrate non-techie users, and may even damage Android’s reputation in the long run.

Surely though, with the Android Market able to differentiate between different OS versions to prevent serving apps that are incompatible, the infrastructure is already there to prevent incompatible apps being served to tablets? We’d have thought so, and we’d be surprised if Google aren’t already considering measures for allowing a number of the tablets to serve apps from the Android Market, or perhaps even creating a new market for non-cellphones. But, for now, the scores of upcoming Android tablets will just have to make do with non-official markets, such as AndAppStore or SlideMe.