Rugged Android device comparison table, and contemplations over Android in the rugged market
On October 18, 2013, RuggedPCReview.com launched a rugged Android device comparison table. The table allows interested parties to view full specifications of all rugged handhelds and rugged tablets we’re aware of.
Given the absolutely massive number of Android devices activated worldwide — about a billion — it’s amazing how few rugged Android devices are available. As we recently reported, both Honeywell/Intermec and Motorola Solutions have launched initiatives to make rugged Android devices available to industrial and enterprise markets, and other manufacturers are offering ruggedized Android-based handhelds and tablets as well. But there aren’t many actual devices, probably less than a couple of dozen in both categories combined. And even that small number includes products that are available with either Android and one version of Windows Mobile or another, which means they aren’t really optimized for either.
Add to that the fact that few of the available Android-based rugged devices are on the latest, or even a recent, version of Android, and that much of the hardware isn’t anywhere near the technological level of consumer smartphones and tablets, and one has to wonder all over again why Android has such a terribly hard time to get going in rugged/industrial devices.
On Microsoft’s website you’ll find a white paper entitled “Choose Windows Mobile Over Android for Ruggedized Handhelds” written by Gartner in February 2011 (see here). Among the key recommendations there were to “remain with Windows Mobile for ruggedized handheld-computer solutions, and to prepare for a transition to full Windows in subsequent implementations” and to “limit the scope of Android-based ruggedized application development through 2013.” Of course, the two and a half years since Gartner issued the paper is an eternity in mobile electronics. At the time they still mentioned Android as the #2 smartphone OS behind Symbian!
Gartner also cautioned that the lack of FIPS-140 compliance (FIPS 140 is a U.S. government computer security standard that specifies cryptographic requirements) was an issue for Android, and they predicted that enterprise software vendors would probably create HTML5-based client applications with cross-platform abstraction layers to provide some support of Android devices. FIPS-140 compliance was indeed an issue with Android, and one that’s even now still only addressed on a by-device level. Cross platform application development is now available via platforms such as RhoMobile and iFactr.
I don’t know how widely read Gartner’s 2011 report was, but over the past three years the rugged computing industry certainly heeded Gartner’s advice of choosing Windows Mobile over Android for ruggedized handhelds. Gartner’s 2011 arguments made sense, but probably even Gartner didn’t foresee that the installed base of Android devices would grow from under 200 million back in 2011 to a cool billion today. One could easily argue that playing it safe with Windows Mobile precluded participating in the rapid, massive learning curve with Android over the past two or three years.
There are no good answers, and hindsight is always 20/20. Except that even two or three years ago it was quite obvious that Windows Mobile was doomed, and Microsoft did not seem to have a compelling roadmap in the mobile space. In historic terms, the predicament the rugged handheld and tablet manufacturers have been facing over the Android issue is no less harrowing than the predicament they faced a decade and a half ago when there was increasing pressure to abandon their various proprietary operating platforms in favor of Windows CE.
What’s the answer? Hard too say. It is impossible to ignore a user base of a billion and counting, because that billion already knows Android and how it works. On the other hand, Android’s fragmentation is vexing, there remain questions about platform security (see overview of Android security), and the fact that Android’ was as clearly designed for capacitive multi-touch as Windows was for a mouse makes it less than perfect for gloves and wet places. At this point it is also still possible that Microsoft might somehow pull a rabbit out of its hat with Windows Embedded 8 Handheld, causing a percentage of the rugged mobile market to go one way and the consumer market another. Remember that the Palm OS once dominated the mobile OS market to an extent where Symbol (now part of Motorola Solutions) had a Palm-based industrial handheld (see here) before the tide went the other way.