I just caught this blog post from Seth Weintraub from Fortune on Android:
Andy Rubin just Tweeted that Google (GOOG) is activating 300,000 phones a day. That passes Apple’s (AAPL) iOS, that passes Blackberry (RIMM). That even matches any figures that Symbian has ever put up. Google is closing in on an astounding 10 million phones per month. Recall that Apple just had its biggest quarter ever with 14.1 million iPhones sold
It is no secret why every mobile company I have seed funded through BOLDstart Ventures is either already on the Android platform or soon will be. This whole battle of licensing the OS vs. maintaining control of the full ecosystem from OS to hardware reminds me of the early days of Microsoft and Apple. We all know who won back then – Apple had the best damn product but Microsoft had more distribution. I am not saying it will play out the same way but looking at the early numbers it is pretty clear that the Android OS will eventually be in more hands.
This brings me to another point. Right now we are looking mostly at consumers but what about the enterprises? RIMM is still the dominant player in large enterprises like banks, etc but as well know RIMM does not have a fighting chance. Smartphones are entering the workforce and enterprise whether IT likes it or not so how best to deal with it? Will Apple or Google focus their efforts here? I just made an investment in a stealth company that solves this problem for Android. By downloading an app, a user can now run another instance of Android on their device which is secure and can be managed through the cloud by IT with various policies. Think of it as a virtual machine running on the handset. This can be great for corporate as now their employees can buy their own Android smartphones, use it personally, but also live within the confines of IT policy by simply clicking on the App and entering work mode, for example. More to come on this in the future. Why not start with the iPhone? Well Apple’s strict policies for applications prevented the company from doing so. Either way, this will be a great battle to watch in the future.