Android’s Law

Some of us remember Moore’s Law where the transistor density of semiconductor chips doubled roughly every 18 months. It basically meant that new PCs almost doubled in power with every generation. Well, there’s a new law being touted (by David Goldman of CNNMoney) called Android’s Law and it goes like this- If you bought a smartphone within the past year, it’s probably already outdated. It’s coined Android’s Law.

It seems that handheld devices are continually delivering improved performance and power at breakneck speed. The recent barrage of Android phones and tablets to the market are examples at how quickly vendors can go ‘from scratch’ to functioning handhelds in mere months.

Think back just a few years ago, before Apple introduced the iPhone. The year was 2007 and the hottest selling handset on the market was the Motorola RAZR, which held that position for five years. Well, we’re now on iPhone 4 with a newer one being introduced shortly. Now shift your thinking to Android. If you looked at the Motorola Droid when it went on sale in November 2009, you had the best Android device on the market. Then the twice-as-fast Nexus One went on sale in January 2010. Then the HTC Droid Incredible hit the market in April. Then in June, the Evo 4G arrived and the Samsung Galaxy 5 later that month. The pace of smartphone innovation has ramped up to ludicrous speeds and mobile competition has gone cutthroat thanks to two key factors: The rise of Google's Android operating system and the predominance of Qualcomm processors.

Android is an open source, free-to-license OS. The availability of Android means device manufacturers can just load the ready-made software onto their phones instead of paying a team of engineers to develop a proprietary OS. And they can customize it as much as they like. Seeing the opportunity created by Android, Qualcomm apparently jumped on board and began to make smartphone chips that are specifically optimized for Google's OS and apps. Instead of designing their own chips, manufacturers like LG, Motorola and HTC now simply use Qualcomm's.

This is a total success story for Google and has made Android the new worldwide market leader in smartphone sales with 32.9 million handsets sold globally this last quarter (it has ousted longtime champion Nokia with 31m). Android is now growing significantly faster than the iPhone and RIM. I predict that we’ll be hearing a lot more about Android’s Law for some time to come.