Android Things is a Failure (Premium)

Google announced this week that it would limit Android Things to smart speakers and smart displays only, effectively killing any chance that it will turn into a general-purpose Internet of Things (IoT) platform.

“Given the successes we have seen with our partners in smart speakers and smart displays, we are refocusing Android Things as a platform for OEM partners to build devices in those categories moving forward,” the Google developer advocate Dave Smith revealed via the Android Developers Blog. “Therefore, support for production System on Modules (SoMs) based on NXP, Qualcomm, and MediaTek hardware will not be made available through the public developer platform at this time.”

Google originally had far grander plans for Android Things, which was announced in December 2016 as a “comprehensive way to build IoT products with the power of Android.” The idea at the time was that developers familiar with Android app development could use their existing skills and knowledge to expand into this new market for connected devices.

But Android Things was late to market and has always been poorly supported. At the time of its announcement, even Microsoft’s IoT platform, since undercut by Azure Sphere, had broader hardware support. But then over a year and a half passed. And by the time the first non-beta version appeared in May 2018, Microsoft’s two IoT platforms still maintained distinct advantages over a system that, frankly, should have been a no-brainer for developers given the popularity of Android.

Key among Android Things’ limitations, of course, was its short three-year support time frame and its lack of a comprehensive security service like that Microsoft offers for Azure Sphere.

Google, of course, has seen success in one key area that has eluded Microsoft and most other IoT platform makers: Smart speakers. So, it makes some sense, I guess, that this would be the focus going forward. (Smart displays are really just smart speakers with a display; as such, you might see them as the same basic type of device.)

Google says it will continue to support “popular hardware like the NXP i.MX7D and Raspberry Pi 3B” so that developers can “experiment” with building smart, connected devices. And it still allows makers and other non-professionals to target up to 100 devices for free. Those with more scalable needs can look to Google’s Cloud IoT Core platform for secure device connectivity. And Google is, of course, addressing Azure Sphere, in this case with a coming Cloud IoT Edge suite of managed edge computing services.

That’s not super-interesting to me or, I suspect, to most Thurrott.com readers. What is interesting, however, is this situation in which a dominant platform maker builds a new platform, based on the dominant platform, that subsequently fails. And here, I think, the parallels between Microsoft and Google are obvious.

Microsoft dominated the personal computing market when PCs were the sole major hardware platform and Windows was the sole major software platform. It then leveraged that success by entering or expanding in new markets, in turn, for productivity software, workgroup computing, server computing, and finally cloud computing, in each case establishing itself as either the dominant force or at least a major player.

These successes emboldened Microsoft to aggressively fend off would-be competitors, often by promising to add features to its own platforms that others were innovating. And the software giant rallied around a “Windows everywhere” strategy in which the Windows brand, technical underpinnings, and developer tools were used to create a natural path forward into new markets.

But many of those efforts were unsuccessful. And I’ve often theorized that Microsoft lost track of the needs of its core developer base with Longhorn, which was delayed for years and never materialized as a shipping product. During that time, mobile and web computing exploded, and Microsoft was hobbled by antitrust actions related to its personal computing dominance. As a result, companies like Apple and Google were able to race forward without having to fend off major counter-attacks from Microsoft. The world changed.

Windows Phone is, of course, the best example of this failure. Late to market and incomplete at launch, Windows Phone suffered further as Microsoft routinely changed the platform’s underpinnings and then launched a similar but different mobile platform inside of Windows 8. After a brief run, Windows Phone finally faced its inevitable decline, and Microsoft killed it off in 2015. Windows Phone should have been a no-brainer for Microsoft, its partners, its customers, and its developers. But it was an also-ran from the start.

Android Things is a similar failure, though Google, of course, has not been hobbled by the same forces that prevented Windows Phone from succeeding. There is some hubris there, of course, and the same lateness to market. But in this case, I think, Google’s failure to successfully enter the IoT market—which is already bigger than the smartphone market that Google does dominate, at least in units sold/used—is instead most closely tied to high quality competition, to a degree with which Microsoft and Windows never really had to deal with.

That is, Google isn’t the sole dominant force in personal computing today. And some of its biggest competitors, especially Amazon and Alexa, are surprisingly competent. Remember, Apple was busy going bankrupt just as Windows hit its apex in the late 1990s. And the Microsoft of that day was only able to fend off Netscape’s superior web technology by behaving illegally. Netscape was, comparatively, a tiny company.

It’s not clear today whether Google’s failure with Android Things will have the same debilitating effect that Windows Phone and mobile have had on Microsoft. But I doubt it. Google, as noted, has other general IoT platforms in the works, and it is still a major cloud player, albeit one that is a distant third behind Amazon and Microsoft. And Google’s success in smart speakers—which is really a success for its AI-based Google Assistant has nothing to do with Android Things—is, will help offset this defeat nicely.

But I’m always fascinated to see tech giants fail in instances when success seems preordained. And that, in doing so, they often repeat the same mistakes that their predecessors did. This is one such example. But it’s not the only one: Android TV and Wear OS (previously Android Wear) are two others.