The fourth Google I/O 2011 kicked off today in San Francisco and it will be a 2 day event. Google I/O is the annual community meeting for the developers of Google and Android from around the World. The highlights of day 1 is as mentioned below. I put down these highlight so you don’t have to go through the live blog. So far this years highlights seems pretty cool and here they are for your eyes only:
• All the numbers are on world wide basis. 100 million Android activation in 2011. 36 OEMs (original equipmets manufacturers), 215 carriers & 450K developers are now the part of the Android family. Around 400,000 devices getting activated per day. 200,000 available apps and 4.5 billion apps download.
• Devices running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) can be used as hosts. Increased usb devices support including game controllers.
• Google TV will be getting Android 3.1 this summer and the developers will be able to create apps for it.
• Android Ice Cream sandwich is the new version of Android. This one OS will fuel – Phones, convertible Laptops and tablets. It will have enhanced UI (User interface) for better performance and will be releasing sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. The main purpose of Google is to put an end to the fragmentation of Android and hopefully this will be the first step towards it.
• Android market homepage (market.android.com) now have instant movies for streaming. More bad news for Netflix. This functionality is same as using Netflix with the starting price of $1.99 and HD for $4.99. You’ve got 24 hours to complete the movie (well that sucks).
• This is the big one – Music Beta by Google is the cloud service from Google for which many of us were waiting. This makes Google number 2 in launching the cloud music service just behind Amazon who launced the service couple of months back. Now Apple will be under pressure to release their own cloud based music service. Visit this link to explore more. Android phones will have the app for this and any device running Android 2.2+ can download this app today.
• Android Open Accessory announced which supports Android 2.4.3 & 3.1
• Launch of ADK – the reference hardware design. It can be used to control hardware using your Android device via usb and hopefully bluetooth in future.
• Android@Home is something new which Google is trying where you are in control of the appliances at home like dishwasher, lamps etc and can fiddle around with home devices via Android devices. It seems home automation gets the attention of Google and it is now upto the developers to make it a house hold name. Lighting science which is the part of Android@Home will start selling the Android controlled lights by the end of this year. So far no pricing mentioned for this.
It is one hell of a show put up by Google and its Android team and we all have to wait to see what Google has in store for day 2 of the I/O conference. Impressive so far.
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