Remember last week, when we talked about the rumours that Research In Motion might bring Android application compatibility to its new QNX-based mobile operating system? Well, while the following news seems to have nothing to do with RIM, it does show it’s possible to bring Android application compatibility to other platforms. Myriad has announced Alien Dalvik, which allows Android applications to run on other platforms at comparable speed.
Alien Dalvik comes from Myriad, an unknown name perhaps, but they’re no small player. Alien Dalvik allows Android applications to run on different platforms at comparable speed. It seems developers only need to repackaging Android package files (.apk), but for users, the process is entirely transparent, and will function exactly like a native application.
“From a user perspective, Alien Dalvik is completely transparent. Alien Dalvik applications appear as native and can be seamlessly installed on device without user disruption,” the press release reads, “All the user sees is that he now has access to a wider range of applications, thus encouraging a higher frequency of downloads and increased ARPU.”
The video is indeed pretty impressive.
Alien Dalvik will be released commercially later this year, and will initially run on MeeGo, with other platforms in the pipeline. Myriad will unveil more information during Mobile World Congress next week, so hopefully we’ll maybe get to try it out ourselves. Let’s hope it becomes available as open source as well, so that it can be hacked onto other platforms and devices as soon as possible. I’d love to play around with Android applications on my Windows Phone 7 HD7.
Well I was one of those people who was skeptical that merely running a version of Dalvik would be sufficient to allow all android apps to run seamlessly. But this seems to prove me wrong. The animations and transitions were not as good with the alien dalvik version, but it is very impressive overall. This could be a game changer not just for competitors who want a piece of the android pie without actually running android, but for google too. The fact that more phone can run android apps makes it an even more attractive platform for developers.
It seems like win all around, except for Oracle who probably would certainly object to this version of dalvik as well. The legal uncertainty might keep other phone manufacturers away for now.
Would be interesting to see Apple “Think Different” about this one and allow it on iOS… Apple would have the upside of having the only hardware that ran apps from both of the major development frameworks. The opposite, running iOS apps on android devices, is probably next to impossible (or close enough that no one would ever seriously try).
I realize there is no way in hell this would ever happen, just saying I think they will be pissing away a competitive advantage for no good reason other than corporate arrogance.
Android is slowly winning developer mindshare even with Apple’s lock-in on the appstore – the release of the iPhone on Verizon will probably slow down Android’s growth a bit, but I don’t think it will stop it. Their appstore lock-in gambit will certainly work for a few more years, but it will be their platform’s eventual undoing.
No, they have a perfectly good reason for not wanting that to happen. If Android apps run on everything, they become the common development platform for everyone. Stuff gets made for android first and ported elsewhere later. New features from Apple don’t get used because they aren’t present in Android, because that is the lowest common denominator. Its exactly the same reason they tried to ban other toolkits in iOS. They want to Apple to always be the first concern in the developers mind.
While I agree, couldn’t one say the same about running Windows applications on an Apple machine? I suppose it all has to do with how transparent it will truly be for the end-user to set up.
My point is, as far as current trends show, Android is already becoming the common development platform for everyone. As big and mighty as Apple is, they are still only 1 vendor in a sea of phone manufacturers who have almost universally jumped on the Android wagon.
Yes, Apple has a huge piece of the pie, and they sell a whole lot of phones. Their market share will more than likely even increase with the Verizon deal. But the more draconian their policy’s become in the app store, the more developers will jump ship and go to Android. They are experiencing a slow but steady brain drain.
All other things being equal, developers and users are going to prefer the platform with multiple vendors. This has been proven true over and over and over again in the tech industry. Apple has the benefit for now that all other things are not equal, their hardware and software distribution model has very tangible advantages – but eventually the competition will catch up…
All true, and all reasons they wont allow something like this… but all of those reasons boil down to corporate arrogance imo. Apple is playing it so close to the vest they are eventually going to suffocate themselves out of the market. Using their market share and the app store as a club to beat their developers into submission does not win one many friends. The app store is becoming notorious for the kinds of apps you can’t write for it… That is not a good sign for its future longevity.
Eventually, even with all the financial benefits Apple’s ecosystem offers, some developers just get fed up and want out – and Android is waiting there with open arms. At least if iOS could run Android apps Apple would not be losing the fruits of those developers completely – they may lose the revenue from software sales in the app store, but that is better then losing the hardware sales…
You may think I’m full of it saying stuff like this… After all Apple has admittedly had monumental success with iOS thus far. But if they keep going down the path hey are going now, by the time they realize they are bleeding market share to Android it will be too late to do anything about it and they will be back to being the same old Apple we were all used to, nothing more than a 10% niche player in the market.
Edited 2011-02-09 04:36 UTC
Well I’m not a big fan of Apple either and I dislike the restrictions they put on their phones, which is why I won’t be buying one. But you’d have to be blind not the see how everything they do is geared to making themselves huge piles of cash, they care about being the most profitable smartphone maker more than they care about being the biggest. Even if their ever more draconian rules drive some developers aways, I can’t them losing enough that they fall below that critical mass of developers that makes the app store concept work.
Exactly. Hence my “Think Different” remark… For once I would like to see them actually try and maneuver themselves into a position as a dominant long term market force rather than doing the same innovate-and-cash-out routine they have historically repeated over and over again in the tech industry.
The one exceptional product they have had is the iPod. They have managed long term dominance in that market, but their competition is primarily Asian gadget makers for which making mp3 players are little more than a hobby. It is an entirely different ball of wax to repeat that kind of success in a market with serious competitors, like the mobile phone market.
The one HUGE problem with your argument is this: Android users are not buying much from the Android app store. Even Google has been publicly bemoaning this inconvenient truth. Apple iPhone users purchase way more apps than Android users so what is the incentive for Apple to compromise their ecosystem, which they control and users are very satisfied with, to accomodate one with no real market? And given Apple’s track record FOR THE LAST DECADE, I think they know something about sustained profitability.
Well…let’s see…the Mac, which was moribund a little over a decade ago around 3% market share, is now 9% with 90% of the profits for computers over $1000 going to Apple. That is the envy of all the computer manufacturers. iTunes created the online music market where others had woefully failed. They have now surpassed Wal-Mart as the #1 music retailer (including brick and mortar) in the US. Apple is now #1 in movie purchases and downloads. Pundits were declaring that the “tablet market is dead”…then along comes the iPad and now the “tablet market is booming!” Funny that. And, I don’t think anyone could argue against the success of the Apple Stores, now a decade old.
In short, your argument holds no water and is short on supporting evidence. I know you and your friends love your Android phones…wonderful…but don’t distort reality so you can feel better about your loyalties.
Edited 2011-02-09 17:06 UTC
First off, whether you want to believe it or not, some people who post on forums are not idiots cheer leading for their favorite tech company – sometimes they are just people who watch what is going on in the market and have an opinion… Sometimes even an unbiased one.
I don’t even own an Android device. I DO own an iPad, a Macbook, a Mac Mini, and an Apple TV. My wife and daughter both have iPhones (a 3GS and a 4 – I don’t have one because I have a company pos blackberry). I also do mobile application development, and it is all on iOS – I have never even tried to develop an Android application yet (although I do plan to).
Your snide remark about me and my “Android loving friends” is stupid and juvenille.
That out of the way, you obviously did not read what I posted… You make a good case about Apple demonstrating “sustained profitability” – they do, I never said otherwise. My point (which I won’t repeat again just because you didn’t read it) is that other than the iPod, they have never demonstrated market dominance with any product they have ever made. They may repeat the feat again with the iPad – certainly in the short term they have managed it. But I have serious doubts about the iPhone.
Market dominance is not the same as profitability – Apple is a very profitable company when they have a hot product. The problem I see is that they don’t have a good track record maintaining a dominant position once they achieve one. They have gone through cycles where they acquire and subsequently lose market dominance relatively quickly on many occasions throughout their history.
I’m not saying they have to do so to be a profitable company…I would like to see them take a bigger picture view of things and not just try to maximize profits. It would be nice for a change if I saw some decisions come out of the company that indicated they were in it for the long haul – and I don’t see that.
You can think what you want of me and my opinions, I don’t really care – but corporate relationships often work much like social ones. The kind of draconian and arbitrary “no one plays in our pool if we don’t like you” mentality they demonstrate with the app store pisses other companies off, and after a while no one is going to want to play with Apple anymore. That is not the kind of behavior you see from companies that manage to last over the long haul in a market.
Don’t try to create drama where there isn’t. I didn’t say “Android loving friends”…I said “I know you love your Android phones”. It wasn’t even meant to be a slam. People love their iPhones, their Windows 7 phones…whatever…and there is nothing wrong with it. I just have a problem about people distorting facts about another device to feel better about their own purchase.
I’m assuming you mean dominating the market through marketshare. Now, I’ll ask you…would you rather dominate the marketshare or profitshare? Apple, with just one phone, only has 3% total marketshare but they do dominate the profitshare with 39% (higher by some counts). So, to me, your argument is meaningless, considering that Apple’s real competitors are other phone manufacturers and the profits gained. [/q]
Okay…we all know that Apple had it’s problems before Steve Jobs returned in 1997. Given that, tell me when Apple achieved market dominance during the Jobs II era and lost it? If you are trying to say that the current era of Apple is just like the previous ones, then you haven’t been paying attention.
What are you saying? Who cares if you have marketshare but little profitablity? And, for the last decade, Apple has risen from the ashes to become the number 3 biggest company in terms of market capitalization in the US. What more does Apple need to prove, in your eyes?
You are in a fantasy land. And you don’t understand business, and more importantly, Apple’s business.
Apple’s loosened the restrictions on frameworks, so who’s to say they wouldn’t? We’re not talking about instant access to the Android market, but if a developer submits an app bundled with the framework and it otherwise meets app store guidelines, then why not? Devs can already use things like mono or flash to develop apps for submission, the only real restriction is not permitting sideloading of executable code.
Having said that, I’m sure the last thing Apple wants is for Davlik to become the platform target of choice and developers targeting the lowest common denominator by porting to iOS and others, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them invent a technicality.
Anyways, just sayin’
Developers using mono, flash, and other 3rd party frameworks are still compiling down to code using native iOS libraries… While they did loosen the restrictions on frameworks they still block anything that constitutes a runtime, which is exactly what this Alien Dalvik thing is. There is no chance it could make it into the app store unless Apple make some serious policy changes.
I’ll reserve judgement until I see it in action on a MeeGo or Blackberry device, but if they can pull it off, and get the majority of apps working cross platform, I would be willing to bet that we’re looking at the creation of a new de-facto standard.
WP7 only allows .NET and doubt you can build a good dalvik runtime in .NET.
Android is an OSS OS built on forks of DirectFB, the Linux kernel and ALSA. This only thing that should surprise anyone is how long it’s taken for this to happen.
It’s cool that this is working, but it’s a shame that it seems to be only available as closed-source software available only to OEMs and operators. The main market for this would probably be people with N900s who want to use Android apps to fill in the gaps in terms of native app availability, but with neither available source or even consumer sales being planned, it looks like that will never happen.
The demo platform is an N900. I don’t see a “never available on that platform” announcement on their website or press release. What leads you to believe we won’t be able to buy it for our beloved N900s?
My debit card is standing by…