Andy Rubin has said that they plan to focus a lot more on tablets this year, and make sure that people understand that they are buying into the “Google ecosystem”, just like others may be buying into the Apple ecosystem, or even the Microsoft ecosystem. This is very insightful of Andy Rubin, and it shows that he’s willing to do something about that. In fact he even says that Google will try to promote Android in a more organized manner, so all people understand that.
“The educated consumer realizes it now that they’re either picking the Apple ecosystem or the Microsoft ecosystem or the Google ecosystem… we’re going to do a better job at making people understand what ecosystem they’re buying into.”
I’ve long believed that Google should do a better job of actually promoting the Android brand to people, instead of letting people just think whatever they want of it (and it’s not always good), and also by leaving it entirely to manufacturers, the manufacturers barely mention Android as a bullet point, because while they want to reap all the benefits of the ecosystem, they want the device to be known as a HTC device, or a Samsung device, and so on – not really as an Android device.
So this is Google’s problem, too, by refusing to participate in promoting it. It’s the same type of problem that is not allowing them to gain more market share in tablets faster – because they still refuse to believe the lack of apps for tablets is such a big deal. Or maybe they do know apps are lacking, but they are not willing to do anything pro-active about it. This is dangerous thinking because I don’t think Microsoft will think the same way, and will try to get many apps for it’s Windows for ARM platform from day one. Google needs to think the same way if it wants to compete.