Google VP Dishes On Android Tablet and App Strategy

BARCELONA—Android is huge here at Mobile World Congress. There are Android phones and tablets everywhere, but we still aren't seeing a lot of Android tablets in American consumers' hands. One of Google's tasks here at the show is to try to change that.

Yesterday at MWC I spoke with Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's Vice President of Engineering, Android, and asked him as many tough questions as I could. Rather than summarizing, I'll give you the answers in his own words, edited for length. Here's what Lockheimer thinks about whether the Kindle Fire is truly Android, the basic principles behind Android tablets, why there's such a wide gap between the Galaxy Nexus and other phones getting Ice Cream Sandwich, and whether the Android Market needs an update to better showcase tablet apps.

PCMag: What could change the position of Android tablets in the market?

Hiroshi Lockheimer: When we launched Android back in 2008, [we saw that] it takes a while for an ecosystem of that sort to ramp up. I think we're seeing the same thing with tablets, where it's a new form factor, the manufacturers are getting accustomed to it and app developers are figuring the best way to write their apps for Android tablets and so on and so forth.

There's just a natural pace that things take. In terms of what we're focusing on for tablets...one example of what we're doing there is around content. A lot of people like to consume content on tablets. It makes sense, right? As you know, last year we launched a video rental store, for example. We'll continue to invest heavily in those sorts of technologies to make more content available for more tablets. That's a big theme for us this year.

The app developers are coming up to speed on certain applications. By the way, a lot of apps run great on both. Android has been designed since day one to support various layouts and screen sizes and things like that. It's not just one screen size, it's many. Even before tablets appeared, that's how our system was designed. A lot of applications just work fine. But if there are certain applications that want to further optimize for different screen sizes they can do that.

Q: How do I find apps built with tablets in mind?

A: This is the challenge. How do you define an app that was designed with a tablet in mind? Because there are just so many apps which work fine on both phones and tablets as they were developed originally. Before Honeycomb existed, there were apps written to our application development environment that work well on tablets today and the developer didn't have to do a thing. So how to classify that, I think, is a challenging thing. There are so many applications—450,000—and a lot of those applications work great on tablets. So to have a section in Market that is your tablet apps, I don't know what number that would be. It would be a very, very big number which would seem like a duplication of the Market.

Q: Are there any new initiatives coming this year to encourage more apps for tablets?

A: With phones there's Gingerbread, with tablets we started with Honeycomb, and with Ice Cream Sandwich we unified that experience. That's certainly a huge step in terms of developers writing applications. It is now an assumption that there is no difference between a phone and tablet. There is a single OS.

Q: Ice Cream Sandwich was released months ago, but we've seen very few ICS devices on the market. When do you see the big consumer range appearing and is there anything Google can do to help the OEMs lessen the gap?

A: In terms of Ice Cream Sandwich, that's one of the themes for this Congress. OEMs are announcing these devices, so there's very rapid adoption of Ice Cream Sandwich. In terms of what we are doing to help OEMs and frankly the whole ecosystem—there's operators, the chipset vendors, a lot of players involved—it's a pipeline, these upgrades, and [the partners are] something that we work very closely with, we're very passionate about. Once we release a new version, we want it to be out there.

Q: A representative from Motorola told me that when you introduce a Nexus, the OS is only optimized for that particular chipset. Could you change the timeframe, so when you announce an operating system, it's closer to being available on a range of different hardware?

A: Do you get something out there right away, or do you do everything at once? Our philosophy is to get innovations to end users as quickly as possible. Have you heard of the "lead device concept"? The Nexus S, the Galaxy Nexus...what we do is we develop a new version of the operating system in conjunction with a specific device and a specific launch partner in the operator. And the reason we do that is that we believe it's really beneficial from a quality and robustness standpoint to develop an operating system in the context of a product rather than in the abstract.

We take a device and fully commercialize it with our partners so that we can learn and refine the operating system such that when it's available to consumers, it's been really through the whole test process. When we do one lead device, there can only be one chipset in a device, so that's kind of the natural fallout from that.

Q: Could you provide the software to other chipset vendors in parallel?

A: There are different parts of the system that are developed...the kernel, the SDK portion, there are the applications, and different parts of the stack, and what we like to do is release the OS as a whole when it's ready. And our definition of when it's ready is when we've completed that lead device.

Q: Will we see a Nexus-branded tablet?

A: We have nothing to announce at this time.

Q: Do you rotate OEMs and chipset providers for lead devices?

A: What we focus on is providing what we believe will be the best experience for the user at the time. That means we will pick what we believe are the best choices. Historically, if you look at it, we launched 2008 with HTC, Qualcomm, and T-Mobile, then it was Motorola, TI, and Verizon. Most recently it's been Samsung and TI, and Verizon again. It really comes down to every product is unique and every year things are different, the environment is different, and we pick what we believe are the best solutions. It really comes down to how to build the best product?

Q: So there's no conscious thought like "we had Qualcomm for the last one, Qualcomm's out of the running for this one"?

A: There's no hard and fast rule.

Q: When a lot of people talk about the most successful Android tablets, they immediately think of the Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Are you working with those vendors at all? Do you consider them part of the Android ecosystem?

A: We deal with a lot of partners, and how to define in the fold and out of the fold. It's an industry where there's a lot of players, and we meet with pretty much everyone. That's part of what we do at these conferences; I spend a lot of time working with partners. I'm not sure how to classify in versus out.

Q: Do you consider Amazon and Barnes & Noble partners? Do you talk to them?

A: Yeah, we talk to them.

Q: Do you consider those tablets to be Android devices?

A: Well, they're running Android. They take the open source code, they run Android, just like there are many devices out there that run Android. Do they have Android Market on them? No. Do they have Gmail on them? No.

Q: How do you want consumers to think of Android tablets, by the end of the year?

A: The philosophy behind Android is that there is no one canonical tablet or one canonical phone. It's about choice, and about differentiation. It's about manufacturers building products that they believe should be built, that they believe users want. I don't think there's one answer to that really.

Q: Should we expect to see more Android announcements at Google I/O?

A: Google I/O is a developer focused event, as you know. Historically we've talked about topics that are important to developers.

Q: Historically you've also announced new Android platforms at Google I/O.

A: I guess so. In some cases. We'll see. At this point, I don't even know what we're announcing.

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