Android 5 is coming out already?
February 18, 2012
Google is apparently releasing its next Android version for tablets this Spring. That’s surprising since Android 4.0 was just released this past fall and then only on a few devices. This rush to get Android 5.0 out before Windows 8 is released in the Fall seems a bit precipitous. After all many users are still waiting for their devices to be updated to Android 4.0 sometime this year and now it looks like that update will be obsolete by the time it arrives.
Nomophobia is on the rise, with two-thirds of people now suffering from the (admittedly made-up) condition. 
Almost 500,000 “app-related jobs” have been created in the U.S. thanks to the emergence of smartphones, tablets, and social networks. 
Slip sliding away. Once upon a time, if you worked for a big corporation that provided a smartphone, chances are that device was a Blackberry — it was the device to have. No more as developers and corporations flee the platform for the greener and more secure pastures of the iPhone. 
How not to tempt Apple fanboys away from their beloved: mock them while trying to sell them a phone/tablet that does neither thing very well. 
When the iPhone 4S shipped last October, smartphone pundits declared it dead on arrival because it “lacked” 4G LTE, a four-inch display, Near Field Communication (NFC) payment functionality and a range of other checklist features that infest offerings from other vendors, especially Android devices. That string of crowd-sourced wisdom turned out to be stupendously wrong, but the real meat of the story isn’t playing out in public. 
Here’s a powerful realization for you to act upon — if you don’t take your expensive, absolutely life critical smartphone into the bathroom, it can’t fall into the toilet. Seriously, keep your business out of your business. That said, though iPhone owners are somewhat less likely to diddle in the loo, smartphone users overwhelmingly aren’t giving it a break when they go to the restroom. 
A long time coming. Consumers first heard about shared data plans from both AT&T and Verizon back in June 2011, but many of us have been hoping the carriers would come to their senses at least since the iPhone hit the scene and revolutionized the smartphone segment back in 2007. Of course, the devil will be found in the details. 
Less is more, or so they say. They being Apple fanboys, usually. But perhaps it’s a good strategy for Android handset manufacturers to adopt at this point in time. 
So, you’ve created a startup with a great product and you want to grow the business and you need money — then it’s time to find a venture capitalist to get funding, right? Actually, not necessarily. A British entrepreneur has done it all old school, expanding into three countries with scores of employees, with sweat equity. 
This little tidbit comes from the bass-ackwards school of business where the customer is stupid and exploitable until proven otherwise. That said, Verizon didn’t get to get to be the largest wireless and wireline carrier in these oddly dysfunctional United States by knowing when to quit, so gird your loins Joe and Jane Sixpack — they will be back. 
Go to the store and try an Android — it feels good. A little lagginess in the user interface and goofy, non-intuitive design aside, Google’s been doing quality work. However, the latest batch of Android innovations (not to mention security updates) aren’t getting to users. Though handset makers and the carriers won’t say it directly, if you want the latest version of Android, you will need to buy a new device. 
More than a quarter of photographs taken, at least the ones measured, so far this year were taken by a smartphone of some kind. In fact, less than 50 percent of the photos came from camera-only devices. The interesting aside here is that high-end DSLR camera photography continues to grow by double digits even as dedicated point-and-shoot products decline. 
In the desktop computer space, depending on who’s doing the calculation, Apple takes from 50 to 65 percent of the profits. And, the same can be said of the smartphone market where the company garners the same share of the spoils. So, when Google’s chairman tells the world’s digirerti that Android leads iPhone, those folks are quite naturally skeptical. 