The annual Google developer’s conference starts today in San Francisco: Google I/O 2011. Moscone West is jam packed and I’m there live with Larry Dignan and Sam Diaz to bring you the best coverage available.
Note thst in addition to the summary below you can read unedited a href=”https://catch.com/m/BhY_1/E0HjXI8bwEP”>notes from the keynote and also the Q&A session.
There are over 5000 attendees here live, and 122 viewing parties going on around the world. For example in Cairo there are 1000 people watching at 2am.
From one device in one carrier in one company, Android has grown incredibly. As of now there have been 100 million Android devices activated worldwide. There are. 36 OEMs, 215 carriers, 450K Android developers. 310 Android devices in 112 countries. Velocity is still increasing - today over 400K Android devices are being activated every day compared to 100K per day this time last year. As of today there are over 200K apps available on the Android market. In terms of application downloads, there have been over 4.5 billion app installs as of today.
Android 3.1 rolling out today. This includes user enhancements including: ability to scroll through recent apps, resizable widgets, USB hosting, more. Android 3.1 will be available on Google TV this year.
Ice cream Sandwich will be out in Q4 for all devices. Adding new APIs to optimize for different sizes. It will be open source. Some fatures were previewed including head tracking, and zooming in on faces in video chat.
Google also announced movie rentals from Android market, streamed from cloud, and a new movies app on tablet and on the phone. You can pin movies to the device so they will be downloaded for offline viewing. “Thousands” of movies available. The tablet app is available today, with the phone app in a couple of weeks for Android 2.2+.
Music beta by Google was announced today as well. Listen on web or compatible device. Import from iTunes via Windows or Mac application. All existing playlists will be there or make new playlists. “Instant Mix” creates a playlist for you from your favorite songs with machine learning app. You never have to use a cable to listen to music again. For offline listening it caches recent songs and you can pin them like videos. When you get a new phone all you have to do is sign in and your music is there right away. Launching in beta today, invitation only to US users, up tou 20K songs. Free while in beta.
Google has started a new iniative to develop guidelines for updates: new devices will be upgraded and supported for at least 18 months. Lots of partners on this including all major US carriers.
Where is Android is headed as an open platform and ecosystem? Google wants developers to write apps for new classes of hardware and create their own hardware. To allow a variety of hardware devices they’re starting the Android Open Accessories project. A demo was given plugging phone into an exercise bike. The API is available now for Honeycomb and Gingerbread at accessories.android.com and a session later in the day. It’s all open, with no approval process.
The Android@Home project allows connection to all devices in your home, wirelessly. There is a new protocol for low power devices. Google is partnering with Lighting Science to create light bulbs available that speak the protocol later this year.
Project Tungsten is your home hub. A music app can direct sound to Tungsten devices throughout the house. They demoed a device that added a CD to library by touching it.
The most popular announcement was a free Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for all attendees. That’s 5000 free tablets, folks, complete with a Verizon LTE SIM card.
