Google’s Eric Schmidt once predicted that mobile development firms would be writing apps for “Android first” by mid-2012—which largely didn’t happen. But at I/O Google’s Ibrahim Elbouchikhi asserted, “It has taken a long time, it is slower than we like, but we are getting there.”
Google is arguing that Android is now at least as good as iOS, and soon it will be better. “Last year was sort of about reaching feature parity with, let’s say, other competitive platforms, where this year it has been all about going up to the next level. Innovating, doing things that are different,” said Google’s Ellie Powers. “Like now we have the beta testing feature unique to our platform and other sources of analytics coming together.”
She added, “We are still very new. My mother still hasn’t figured out why people would want to buy apps. But most people have. I think there are a lot more business models that are going to develop in the future.”
