Google June 23 launched Android 2.2 to open source, enabling coders to make applications that take advantage of enterprise capabilities and new APIs that leverage Google's cloud computing assets. Andy Rubin, the vice president of engineering for Google, announced the open-sourcing of Android 2.2 at the launch of the Motorola Droid X smartphone in New York City June 23. The Droid X will launch to consumers July 15, and Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha said that the device will get an over-the-air upgrade to Android 2.2 later this summer.
Google June 23
launched Android 2.2 to open source, allowing programmers
to offer applications that take advantage of enterprise capabilities and APIs that leverage Google's cloud computing assets.
The company first
introduced Android 2.2, or Froyo as it is also known, at Google I/O in May. Vic
Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google's mobile products,
showed
off significant speed improvements to CPU-bound code and Android Web browser.
But it's the enterprise and cloud capabilities that may
win the day for most Android developers, who are already
seeing the Froyo pushed to the Nexus One.
Andy Rubin, the vice president of
engineering for Google, announced the open-sourcing of Android 2.2 at the
launch of the Motorola Droid X smartphone in New York City yesterday.
The Droid X will launch to consumers July 15, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay
Jha pointed out that the device will get an over-the-air upgrade
to Android 2.2 later this summer.
When that happens, the Motorola Droid X will be able to enjoy
Microsoft Exchange capabilities such as account auto-discovery and calendar
sync.
Moreover, Android 2.2 boasts device policy management APIs so that developers
can write programs that can control security features of the device such as
remote wipe, minimum password, lockscreen timeout and other tools.
That will make the Droid X and other Android devices to
come, enterprise-capable devices to rival Apple's iPhone, whose fourth version
launched June 24 to critical praise.
One thing the iPhone 4 won't have are certain APIs that
enable developers to use the cloud. Rubin noted:
"We're developing new
ways to harness that computing power, giving APIs to third-party developers
that don't exist on the device but exist in the cloud, so those APIs can be
connected to from a third-party service and then pushed to devices."
Specifically, the Android Cloud to Device Messaging API,
which provides a mechanism servers can use to tell mobile applications to
contact the server directly, to fetch updated application or user data.
This
API will let programmers use Google's massively parallel servers to write apps
that offer mobile alert, send to phone, and two-way push sync functionality.
Developers may test this API, the enterprise capabilities and other tools by downloading the Android 2.2 SDK from
here.
Meanwhile, while the iPhone 4 seems poised to shatter records for smartphone sales, momentum for Android is revving.
Google at I/O a month ago said Android was launching on some 100,000 devices
per day. Rubin revised that number to 160,000 at the Droid X launch
event. That's two devices new Android devices every second.
There are also 60 Android devices, coming from 21 OEMs
and 59 carriers in 49 countries.
"The volume and variety of Android devices continues
to exceed even our most optimistic expectations," Rubin said, noting that Android
devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured in some cases.
That sounds an awful lot like the challenge Apple has
faced in getting its iPhone into customers' hands.
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