Google I/O and MeeGo Developer Conference – A Tale of Two Events

First off, let me say that it is not fair to directly compare the two conferences to draw a conclusion about the comparative future of Android and MeeGo. Both software stacks are at a different place in their respective life cycles, and important maturity indicators such as overall ecosystem support (silicon providers, device manufacturers, application developer community etc…) as well as software quality/complexity are simply at a different stage for each technology.

However, who is interested in fairness? There is a perception in the marketplace that Android and MeeGo are competitive technologies in a proliferation war that includes other heavyweights such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and HP. If industry analysts put all of these software stacks on a single Mobile OS market share chart, they’ve got to be competitive, right?

Not quite. One important reason Android got to where it is today is that its first mass-market device, the HTC G1, sold millions of units across the globe, thus delivering a very tangible proof point to rally a worldwide ecosystem to participate in the development of Android. MeeGo’s proliferation, partly because of the rather wide device scope the software stack is attempting to cover, is following a different path.

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