Google – Page 5 – Naofumi Kagami

Priorities

Recently we saw two reports about bugs in the Chrome browser on Windows.

One bug was about font rendering. It turns out that fonts on Chrome looked bad because Google neglected to update Chrome so that it would take advantage of the new font rendering technology provided by Windows.
Importantly, both Internet Explorer and Firefox had been using this technology for ages, and Chrome was the only major browser that was still using the old, outdated font rendering API.

The other bug is related to battery consumption. Apparently Chrome fails to throttle down its power consumption even when the browser is just running in the background. This bug can be traced back to 2010, which means that Google has knowingly neglected this bug for 4 years.

This eloquently tells us what Chrome’s priorities are not. Chrome does not prioritize beautiful font rendering and it doesn’t prioritize low power consumption.

Interestingly, this is in direct contrast with Apple. Apple prioritized typography and has very good font rendering. The quality of the fonts are also very high. In power consumption, Apple has emphasized this on their mobile devices, their laptops, their operating system, and even specifically on Safari for quite a while.

Simple Reason Why Google+ No Longer Requires Real Names

Google announced today that they will no longer require Google+ users to use their real names.

The rationale is simple. Google+, although originally designed to be a Facebook killer, never became a serious contender.

Moreover, Google itself knows exactly where you live, where you commute to, which websites you frequent, which videos you like, what search terms you use. It can probably guess quite accurately what your real name is and what your job position is through your connected Gmail account. Google doesn’t need you to add a real name to your Google+ account. They already know, and much more.

Android OEMs and The Law Of Conservation Of Attractive Profits

A couple of days ago, I wrote a comment on an article on the Tech.pinions website.

The article (by Jan Dawson) was discussing how Samsung came to dominate the Android OEM market, but how it is now struggling with competition on the low-end and is also having difficulty in differentiating itself.

The comment that I wrote;

It’s very interesting that you call Samsung “exceptional”. This is because, at least in my interpretation, the trajectory of Samsung’s accent and decline is precisely what Clayton Christensen’s theories would predict.

I’ve been thinking more about what I wrote, and I think that this is such an important issue that I should put it up as a blog post. Here, I will copy my original comment and add a bit more to it.

The rise and fall of Samsung as a smartphone OEM

Jan Dawson lists the keys to Samsung’s success as the following;

“On the marketing side, Samsung has vastly outspent all other Android smartphone manufacturers and become the default option for people in mature markets looking to buy a mid to high end smartphone.”
“Its vertical integration has allowed it to compete very efficiently and effectively with screen and other component technology.”

Jan Dawson also outlines Samsung’s current problems;

Overall smartphone growth is slowing, putting pressure on Samsung’s other device categories to provide stronger growth

Samsung’s dominant position in Android is being assailed at the low end and in the mid market by a variety of competitors, many of them from China

Google is reining in Android and looking to reassert its own position and services in the smartphone market, putting pressure on Samsung and others to tone down their customizations. New flavors of Android for wearables, the car and TVs will provide even less room for customization

People are at any rate apparently tiring of Samsung’s customizations of Android and starting to look more seriously at smartphones which provide a stock Android experience or at least something more like it

Samsung’s marketing spend is starting to experience the law of diminishing returns, where each dollar of spending no longer conveys the advantage it once did. It has effectively saturated the market and can no longer derive the advantages it once did from its far superior ad spend.

I completely agree with Jan Dawson’s assessment of why Samsung was successful, and Samsung’s current predicament.

The problem is, how did Samsung transition so quickly from “huge success” to “quite problematic”.

Jan Dawson doesn’t go into explaining the transition in depth. That is what my comment tries to do by applying Christensen’s theories.

How the environment changed from favorable to hostile for Samsung

Christensen’s theories are build on the premise that continued innovation (sustaining innovation) will ultimately open-up the possibility of low-end disruption, and that it can be very difficult for some companies in some markets to counter-attack the disruptor.

Hence to understand what happened to Samsung, we should analyze how technical advances changed the competitive landscape, and allowed low-end disruptors to enter the market. That is what I tried to do in the comment;

When the product is not good enough, the attractive profits flow to the integrator. This was the situation at the beginning. Samsung’s ability to integrate the hardware stack and to also put a UI (that was attractive in the sense that it more closely imitated iPhone) on top was the reason they had the best Android product.

As technology improved, customized integration became less necessary. This caused modularity in the hardware stack. SoC vendors like MediaTek are prime examples of the hardware becoming more modular. Also, as Android got its act together and became less ugly, Samsung’s ability to put their UI on top became less important and even downright annoying. Hence the software vendor (Google) increased its power. In fact, integration within the software stack increased. In total, the Android value chain became modularized and Samsung’s strength as an integrator waned.

Samsung tried to buck this trend by creating products that we much better than those assembled from modular parts (which is the same as Apple’s strategy). Hence they designed their own CPU and added features to their software. Unfortunately, both were unsuccessful. Neither created value that appealed to their customers.

The first item explains why Samsung rose to dominance. Samsung is very vertically integrated in hardware. It has top-level semiconductor technology, display technology, wireless technology, etc. Importantly, because Apple had to rely on Samsung for key components, Samsung learned of Apple’s iPhone plans many months before their competitors. None of their competitors had a similar advantage. This allowed Samsung to rapidly produce the best Android smartphone hardware

One thing I want to add that is rarely mentioned is that Samsung’s TouchWiz UI was well received during these early years. Before Android 4.0, the Android UI was pretty bad (Android 4.0 was a huge overhaul of the UI). Samsung’s TouchWiz imitated the iPhone UI much more closely than stock Android, and this was no doubt one of the reasons why Samsung was so successful. Hence in this context, Samsung’s ability to create a good UI skin was also a key factor in its success. As far as I can tell, yearning for a stock Andorid experience is post Android 4.0. Until then, stock Android was not “good enough”.

Going on to the second item, we start to see how technical progress changed the environment. Christensen has described how markets eventually favor modularity over integration after the products become “good enough”. As component technologies improve, it becomes less important to fine-tune the components to obtain the necessary performance. Customers are now satisfied by products that are simply assembled from “off-the-shelf” components (from SoC vendors like MediaTek for example). In many cases, even the assembly is outsourced to China. Because fine-tuning is less important, this allows low-end entrants without extensive hardware expertise to enter the market. Because the low-end entrants do not need much hardware expertise, their business models are often very different from Samsung’s. For example, Lenovo is a low-cost assembler of hardware, an operation that doesn’t require much R&D spending. Cherry Mobile, a fast growing smartphone brand in the Philippines is actually a carrier, not a hardware maker. Xiaomi, a fast growing fabless smartphone maker in China that sells mid-range phones with razor-thin margins, earns profit not through hardware sales but through service sales and reduced costs on marketing.

It is also important to note that many of the new entrants mainly have strengths in their local markets. Cherry Mobile (Philippines), Xiaomi (China), Lenovo (China), Micromax (India), Wiko (France), BQ (Spain) are some of the examples. Being local companies, they have some marketing advantages over Samsung and can better tailor their products to local preferences.

To reiterate, technical progress has allowed low-end entrants with a very different low-cost business model, to enter the smartphone market. Samsung’s integration and expertise in hardware is no longer a competitive advantage. In fact, it could even become a liability because it could make it difficult for Samsung to directly address these low-end entrants.

Technical progress has changed the initially favorable environment for Samsung into a hostile one.

Google’s increased power over OEMs

This is explained by “the law of conservation of attractive profits”, which I have described in a separate post.

It also explains why Google now has the power to reign-in Android. The negotiation power of the integrators has declined and has shifted to the OS and service vendor. Google did not have this power until the hardware stack became modular.

The law of conservation of attractive profits allows Google to have stronger influence over Samsung. However, as I described in the previous post, I tend to think that this is temporary and that the attractive profits will transition back to the OEMs who have alternative business models.

Looking into the future

One of the more interesting features of the recently announced Android “L” is the new ART runtime. This looks like it will significantly improve Android performance on low-end hardware. This will accelerate the shift in power away from Samsung and towards the low-end entrants. Combine this with the Android One reference platform, and we will likely see almost all value in low-end Android hardware sucked out. Samsung will have a very hard time competing in this market, and since their competitors are now asymmetric, it’s very hard to see how they can launch a strong counter attack. However, since most of the entrants are local, the spread of low-end entrants might be a gradual process.

On the high end, especially in markets where the cost of the smartphone is subsidized by the carrier, Samsung will continue to be the dominant Android OEM. Other Android OEMs simply cannot match Samsung in marketing and product features. Whether that is enough given the strength of iPhone is yet to be seen.

Importantly, Google’s strategy is providing absolutely zero incentive and zero profits for OEMs to innovate in hardware. With this market structure, it’s difficult to see how the low-end entrants could evolve to the point where they can overtake Samsung in the high-end, even Xiaomi or Lenovo. I don’t see this ever happening in the foreseeable future.

Actually, this could make Apple more dominant in the high-end, and Google probably won’t even care.

Gmail with Material Design

I was just thinking about Material Design within Google’s own apps, and it occurred to me that at least in my case, the Gmail app would never look like the screenshots on the web.

For example, the screenshot below was taken from CNET and it surely looks nice (Material Design on right, current design on left).

NewImage

However, my Gmail account on my Android phone actually looks like this (yes, I only use my Gmail account to sign up for newsletters and mailing lists. I never use it for communicating with someone I know, but you get the idea);

Screenshot 2014 07 02 20 13 05

When the current Gmail cannot find a photo, it uses the first letter of the sender’s name instead. This is totally ugly, and what’s more, completely useless.

I wonder how Material Design solves this…

Or maybe it’s a setting deep in the menus…

I think we have to keep in mind that when we communicate with close friends, we tend not to use email anymore; we use messaging services, Twitter or Facebook. For these accounts, we often have photos. Emails are for work, mailing lists, notifications, etc. We normally don’t have photos for these. At least, I don’t.

To come to a good design, designers have to understand how the product will be used, in what context and with whom. At least, I think that is how good designers are supposed to approach problems.

Google Self-Driving Cars and The Car Industry

Reuters article; “Google, Detroit diverge on road map for self-driving cars”

Not too much of a surprise for anybody who has worked in a regulated industry.

In 2012, a small team of Google Inc engineers and business staffers met with several of the world’s largest car makers, to discuss partnerships to build self-driving cars.

In one meeting, both sides were enthusiastic about the futuristic technology, yet it soon became clear that they would not be working together. The Internet search company and the automaker disagreed on almost every point, from car capabilities and time needed to get it to market to extent of collaboration.

I think that this part sums up the situation well;

“There was a certain amount of arrogance on the Google side, in the sense of ‘We know what we’re doing, you just help us,’” said a second person, representing a major car maker, who was involved in discussions with Google.

“We’d say, ‘Well you don’t really know that much. And we’re not going to put our name on a project like that because if something goes wrong, we have a lot more to lose.’”

I seriously doubt that Google has the patience and the willingness to work with others that is required to pull this off.

Japan’s Largest University Switching to Microsoft Office 365 from Google Apps (Docs)

The largest university in Japan, Nihon University will provide “Office 365 Education” for all of its 100,000 students according to the Microsoft Japan website.

I’m still in the process of researching the details, but some things that have been mentioned that I find very interesting;

Nihon University had been using “Google Apps Education Edition” since April, 2007.
Reason 1: Faculty staff used Google Apps but student uptake was not good. Students preferred to use their own free mail accounts.
Reason 2: Unfamiliarity with Google Apps was a reason for slow uptake. By providing the software that everybody is familiar with (Office), Nihon Univ. hopes that students will also use scheduling and address book features.
Reason 3: Students were pirating MS-Office install disks. Office 365 will make that a non-issue. Nihon Univ. chose the A3 plan with Office 365 ProPlus, which means that faculty and students can install Office on 5 PCs per user.
Annual price per faculty is 410 JPY, per student 230 JPY. This ends up being cheaper then when they were using “Google Apps Education Edition” because even when they were using Google, they still needed to buy significant installations of MS Office.

Although we still need more examples to see whether this is a trend or not, I sense strong beginnings.

Cloud is getting cheap

The most powerful allure of Google Apps is the price. For general consumers and for education, the price is free. This was possible because Google had a robust advertising model. By injecting ads in the web user interfaces, Google could justify the cost of providing the service for free.

Historically, Google was uniquely positioned to provide an office suite for free. Other companies could not do this profitably.

However, as technology improved and the hardware required for cloud services dropped in price, it became feasible for companies without a robust advertising model to provide free or very cheap cloud services. This can be witnessed in the recent announcement at Apple’s WWDC 2014. Apple announced that they would be providing CloudKit effectively for free.

We are now at the point that we don’t even need advertising anymore. It has become feasible to provide free or very cheap cloud office suites, even without advertising. Hence anybody can do it. Google no longer has a unique advantage in providing services for free.

Google Apps never became “good enough”

With the cost advantage of Google Apps eroding, the argument for choosing either Google Apps or Office 365 now rests on the benefits that each platform provides. This is something that Google Apps was never designed for.

Since its inception, Google Apps was designed as a simplified version of MS Office that justified its existence by being much cheaper. Although it had some unique collaboration features, it never evolved to become better than MS Office. It was always obvious that if it lost its cost advantage, it would lose out against MS Office.

Looking at the reasons why Office 365 was chosen over Google Apps, it’s very apparent that Office was still an application that both faculty and students needed to use from time to time. Google Apps had never become “good enough” on its own.

Microsoft is changing

Since the costs of providing cloud services had decreased, the only roadblock for Microsoft going aggressive with Office 365 was the possibility of cannibalization. Office 365 could potentially cannibalize sales of their standalone office suite.

A few thing have happened that might have changed their minds.

Adobe has been very successful with their Adobe Creative Cloud.
Microsoft’s new CEO is a cloud guy.

What are the trends?

These are the trends that I think we are beginning to see.

Google’s strength in advertising will no longer be sufficient to maintain an advantage (based on cost) in the cloud. Cloud costs have gone so low that advertising is no longer necessary for a free/low-cost service. Subscription services are proving to be a good business model.
With the price issue becoming less of a concern, competition in the cloud will focus more on features and usability. In established markets, one feature that will continue to be extremely important is compatibility with de-facto standards (both in file-formats and user interface).
As the focus shifts to features and usability, native applications will maintain their advantage against web apps.

Material Design On The Web: A Well Funded Research Project

The new Material Design announced at Google I/O is supposedly an ambitious cross-platform design language that spans not only Android devices, but also the web.

Anything that is this ambitious should be treated with a healthy grain of salt. Let’s verify what Google means by cross-platform.

Android version compatibility

Given the severe OS version fragmentation of the Android platform, it is important to understand the entirety of version compatibility for Material Design.

Unfortunately, I could not find resources on the web that gave me a good comprehensive idea. I think Material Design will only be supported on Android L. There appear to be some support libraries that will make it easier to support older versions and a Material Design version with the same code, but it looks like that will be it.

Browser compatibility

Google does provide details of browser compatibility for Material Design on the web (the Polymer project). Unfortunately, it doesn’t look too good. According to this discussion on the web, Google is not taking browser compatibility very seriously.

In terms of compatibility, it is simply not up to the standards that most web developers would regard as sufficient.

Summary

The lack of Android version compatibility is understandable and will not present an issue. It will be adopted over time.

The issue is with Browser compatibility. Although impressive, there are many similar projects to bring a nice UI to web apps, and none are as restrictive in compatibility as Material Design. Web developers can simply chose one of these. There is little reason to believe that web developers will slowly adopt Material Design.

It’s still very much a research project.

The Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits And Personal Computing

In a previous post, I wrote about my concerns on how the law of conservation of attractive profits might apply to the next stage of mobile computing, especially in emerging nations.

Here, I would like to describe how the law of conservation of attractive profits helps us to understand the history of personal computing. This is particularly instructive because it strongly suggests that this law will continue to be applicable in the future.

The law of conservation of attractive profits

I quoted a brief description of the law of conservation of attractive profits from Clayton Christensen’s book “Seeing What’s Next” in my previous post.

What it tells us is;

When commoditization occurs at a certain stage in the value chain, an adjacent stage will gain the opportunity to earn attractive profits.
Attractive profits emerge at the stage which solves the most difficult problems in the industry, typically with an integrated approach.
This integration may happen at the product component level, customer interaction level or supplier interface level.

Hence to identify which stage will earn attractive profits, we have to understand what the most difficult problem in the industry is. This is not necessarily a technical problem, but can be any stage in the value chain.

Obviously, different countries, different regions may have different problems in their value chains. In particular, the average spending power is very variable between regions and this will necessitate different approaches to the market. Hence different stages will earn the attractive profits, depending on region.

Application to personal computing history

From the late 1970s to early 1980, Apple and IBM were the powers in personal computing. They took components and assembled them into their respective proprietary personal computer platforms. During this age, the attractive profits were in designing the platform and assembling the computer.
As technology improved however, this shifted. Compaq reverse-engineered the IBM-PC, creating a clean room implementation in the 1980s. This effectively commoditized the platform design of the IBM-PC. Assembling a PC suddenly became very easy to do. When this happened, the power in the industry shifted to adjacent stages, namely Microsoft (in software) and Intel (in CPUs).
In the 2000s, the Internet came and created another layer in the value chain. At the same time, innovation in PCs started to falter partially due to the fact that PCs had become “good enough” for office productivity. The absolute processing power that Intel provided through its new CPUs no longer became important because the old ones or the cheaper ones from AMD were “good enough”. Similarly, the new operating systems that Microsoft released no longer became essential because the old ones had “good enough” features. This created an opportunity for the attractive profits to shift towards Internet service companies (which were in their infancy and not yet “good enough”), and bore behemoths like Google.
Apple then came along in 2007, bringing a totally revolutionary product, the iPhone. This caused the whole evolution cycle to go back to the beginning and once again, the company that assembled the final product commanded the most attractive profits (Apple). The most difficult problem in computing was designing and creating smartphones that were small and light, yet powerful. They also had to contend with the dilemma of very limited battery capacity and full-day battery-life expectations. This was the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers.
Hence similarly in the Android ecosystem, the most profitable company became Samsung, also the company that assembled the device.
As technology progresses and solves the most pressing problems in smartphones, the profits move away from the hardware assemblers to adjacent stages. Hence the predicament that Samsung now finds itself in. At this point however, it is not yet clear which adjacent stages will reap the profits. In particular, it should stress that is no by no means obvious whether Google services will become this stage or not.

Which layer could reap future smartphone profits?

I won’t try to reach a conclusion here, but simply point out a few things that I think are important.

Things to consider;

A huge problem in the smartphone industry is how to expand customers and how to expand usage in various countries and various market segments. It is increasingly apparent that a one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work.
The problems in the industry will significantly differ according to which market segment we are looking at. For example, high-end smartphone users may have issues with sharing links, customizing the user interface, pure Google-ness, continuity with other devices, notifications, maps, etc. On the other hand, low-end users will have issues with ease-of-use and prices. Similarly, price is much more of an issue for users in emerging countries (regardless of tech literacy) than developed countries.
Whereas hardware and low-level software affect the experience of every user, the service layer is more specialized. For example, not everyone uses a complex social networking service like Facebook and may be content with SMS. Similarly, people who often visit unfamiliar places will make constant use of maps, but there are also many people who simply go to-and-fro from the same few locations most of the time. The same thing can be said for Google Now. People don’t need to be constantly reminded of things that they do every day of the week.
Google actually doesn’t control a lot of the services that are suited to people in emerging nations. For example, their most visited property on mobile devices is YouTube. However, YouTube takes up hideous amounts of bandwidth which will be a problem in these countries. Facebook and WhatsApp either don’t have this issue or have worked hard to fix this.
Because emerging countries do not have too many people on credit cards, billing for software and services is a large issue. Carrier billing is seen as a solution for this. Carriers will be able to extract the attractive profits proportionally to the importance of carrier billing in that country.
The layer that can customize the solutions to match the different markets is in a good position to gain the attractive profits. For hardware, this would be the local vendors who can now easily create custom hardware with the help of the Shenzen ecosystem in China. For the software and services, carriers traditionally have been the gateway.

Google and the Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits

In this blog, I have touched on Clayton Christensen’s “law of conservation of attractive profits” a few times (in Japanese: 1, 2)

The law of conservation of attractive profits is briefly described in Christensen’s book “Seeing What’s Next”. Below is a passage from the book;

We have also called the law of conservation of integration the “law of conservation of attractive profits,” because companies make attractive money when they solve the hardest problems. The hardest technical problems mandate solutions that are tightly coupled integrated systems. When modularity and commoditization cause attractive profits to disappear at one stage in the value chain, conservation of integration means the opportunity to earn attractive profits with propriety products will emerge at an adjacent stage.

Conservation of integration explains why it is not accurate to characterize and industry as integrated or disintegrated. There are numerous types of integration in any given industry. Specialists are integrated, just in different ways. Whereas integrated firms might span an entire industry’s value chain, specialist firms might be integrated to produce a single component that itself is not good enough. Or they could be integrated across whatever interfaces drive customization and convenience, which could be the point of customer interaction or the interface with suppliers.

I find that the law of conservation of attractive profits gives us great insight into how personal computing evolved from computers like the Apple II to the iPhone. This is a long topic, and I hope to touch on it sometime in the future.

For the current discussion, I would like to touch on how Google seems to be trying to manipulate the smartphone value chain and whether it will succeed.

To understand the current situation better, I suggest readers listen to two excellent podcasts which describe the different strategies that Apple and Google are pursuing.

Regarding Google, what is suggested in these podcasts is that Google is trying to commoditize both hardware and software so that their services will reach the widest audience possible, thereby providing Google with data to feed their machine learning project. They do not seem to care about creating an ecosystem in which their hardware OEMs and application developers can sustain profitable businesses.

Viewed from the law of conservation of attractive profits, this can be explained as Google attempting to commoditize hardware and software, so that the service layer will dominate attractive profits.

The question is, will this work?

Listening to Ben Bajarin in the Tech.pinions Podcast, it dawned on me that there is another layer that actually has a bigger chance than Google of gaining the attractive profits. That is the carrier layer.

Carriers have the following advantages;

Carriers are the interface to customers, and importantly, they control the billing, especially in emerging countries.
Carriers own the pipe and can control the flow of content through their networks. For example, they can provide unlimited access to WhatsApp and Facebook, while restricting access to YouTube and other sites.
Carriers are local. This means that they can tailor pricing and promotions to fit the local situation. This is especially important in emerging countries where the spending power of the average citizen is a fraction of that in developed nations.
Before the introduction of the iPhone, carriers had huge power in the ecosystem. So much so that Steve Jobs famously called them “orifices”. It has already been proved that the market structure is such that carriers can command huge profits if the circumstances are right.

Ben Bajarin briefly touched on Cherry Mobile in the Philippines, which is a carrier that is selling its own brand of smartphones.

I am not yet familiar with what Cherry Mobile is actually doing, nor have I spent time thinking about this in more detail. It does appear however, that Google is not the only potential beneficiary from software and hardware commoditization. In fact, it seems totally possible that services will also be commoditized and that the carriers will reap the attractive profits.

This is a theme that I will continue to think and hopefully write about.

Google I/O Keynote

Yesterday, before Google I/O kicked off, I wrote a piece about my worry that Google is winding down Android development. Well today, after reading people talk about the keynote (I haven’t yet taken time to watch the 3 hours), I’m still not sure.

True, Google previewed Android “L”, of which the most impressive part is the user interface (Material Design). This is a significant improvement over the previous UI theme “Holo” which was introduced in ICS (Android 4.0) back in 2011. Most significant are the animations and effects that are obviously powered by GPUs. The user interface concept using “depth” and animations is very similar to iOS 7. The problem is, what versions of Android will be able to run this user interface? To what extent will there be support libraries that enable older Android versions to use it? Given the reliance on GPUs, only a small subset of the animations may make it to older devices.

As always, this is in stark contrast to the situation in iOS. iOS7 supports iPhone 4 which was introduced in 2010, even before ICS was introduced. Although iPhone 4 struggles with some of the animations, it does work rather OK. It is highly unlikely that Material Design will go back that far.

Although Google has succeeded in nullifying the fragmentation issue in many respect through their Google Play Service strategy, and by also providing support libraries which help apps provide backwards compatibility, there are limits to what you can do without renewing the whole OS. Furthermore, solving the software fragmentation issue independently of hardware can actually make the hardware fragmentation issue worse. Also keep in mind that new OS releases can actually help cut off old devices and reduce hardware fragmentation.

In the case of Material Design, the question that developers will face is whether or not to update their apps to support the new look-and-feel. This depends largely on how many users will migrate to the new OS (KitKat is now on 13.6% of devices after being introduced about 8 months ago, iOS7 hit 87% after 7 months), and how difficult it will be to support users on older versions.

In the case of iOS7, supporting both iOS6 and iOS7 was not easy. At the same time, iOS7 adoption was very fast. Hence it made a lot of sense for developers to fully transition to iOS7 only.

For Material Design, the decision will be more complex. The option to fully transition to Material Design and to abandon the Holo UI will not be an option unless Google prepares support libraries that allow Material Design to work on old devices and old OSs. As I said, since Material Design probably makes full use of the GPU, this will be complicated. It could almost be Vista-like.

If Google’s support libraries do not work on a significant number of old devices, then developers will have to support both the Holo UI and the Material Design UI simultaneously. Instead, I expect most developers to simply stick with the Holo UI for a while.

In summary, I think Android has tried hard to move forward and that is confirmation that they are still eager to provide a user experience that is comparable to iOS. They are not slowing down in this regard. The problem is that Android “L” needs a lot of developer support for Material Design to succeed, and the fragmentation issue is likely to be a hinderance.

Personally, as an occasional Android Developer, I wholeheartedly welcome Material Design. I’ve only skimmed through the docs, but in addition to providing a better look, a lot of the nagging issues in the Holo UI have been addressed. I’m particularly happy that small things like overflow indicators have been added to scrollable tabs. Bottom sheets (much like action sheets in iOS) are also a very nice way of handling overflowing controls. I’d be happy if developers could get a support library that may not have fancy animations, but has the same widgets as Material Desgin.

As for the other announcements in the keynote, they actually confirms my concern that Google is trying a bit too hard to find success in other markets. It’s interesting how things like Android Auto have morphed into a CarPlay look-alike. This once again suggests that Google is better off quickly copying Apple rather then trying to pry open markets by themselves. As such, Android Wear is probably a waste of time.

What we really need right now is some feedback from Android developers. Are they excited about Material Design, or are they concerned about the extra effort?

Update

I’ve skimmed through the Google I/O videos, and it looks like the vast majority of Material Design will be exclusive to “L”. Creating a UI that is optimized on both “L” and previous versions of Android does not look like it will be much of a problem as long as you aren’t using the new “L” UI controls.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

It’s hard to say. It looks like the transition to Material Design will be slow, primarily because it will take time till the majority of devices will be able to run it. Hence most developers will also be slow to adopt it. They may be especially slow to adopt the new UI controls because that would break compatibility with older devices.

For the high-end, this isn’t good.

For the low-end, this means that there will be minimal hardware fragmentation issues due to lack of GPU power for example. For this segment, it’s probably good.