Well... yes and no.
You could easily say I'm a fan of AOSP. My S III had Touchwiz
for about ten minutes. I'm the co-founder of CarbonDev. The idea of Touchwiz,
Blur, Sense, or whatever LG calls their nonsense on my phone makes me want to
throw it in the trash. So yeah, I pretty much live and breathe AOSP. For me,
this announcement is exciting. It means that even on Verizon, the s4 is going
to have support that is just that much better than the S III had. GPS, bluetooth,
video... all the components that plagued the S III will have working AOSP
examples. That's exciting.
More importantly, it's evidence that Google is working that
much harder to get high-end devices running AOSP into our hands. Unlike the
Nexus 4, it has a removable battery, SD card, and LTE. Obviously many of us
hope that this is just the first example of what will hopefully be a trend
other manufacturers will follow.
But it won't affect sales of the S IV one bit. First, there's
the price. Granted, many folks who purchase their phones wholesale will be
tempted. Many of those people may even purchase this device. The majority of S4
devices sold, however, are sold in places like Best Buy, or Amazon, or carrier
stores. People just aren't flocking to the (Google) Play store to buy their
devices. Many of those who do have had
poor experiences - devices out of stock, trouble getting support, etc. The Play
store experience has not yet translated very well into physical device
purchases. That said, they're
strengthening their Play store device offerings, and as we all know, Google
plays the long game.
The other reason is simply that most people don't care. Out
of all the people I know in the real world with Android devices, only a handful
care about AOSP. What is, for me, a profound difference in the way I use and
enjoy my phone amounts to a shrug and a blank look for most. The vast majority
are hard pressed to recognize the difference between iOS and Android, let alone
why it's important that the status bar icons look different.
So it's not important to 90% of Android consumers and won't drive sales. But it's proof that the big G knows what is important to their core group of fans and that our cries have not gone unheard. It indicates that stock Android is still a priority for Google. The stock experience, though once limited and in need of manufacturer tweaks, has improved to the point where Google is throwing some weight into getting it into the hands of users. I don't know about you, but my hands are very eager for it. Stock Android is still true Android - and Google plays a very long game.
So it's not important to 90% of Android consumers and won't drive sales. But it's proof that the big G knows what is important to their core group of fans and that our cries have not gone unheard. It indicates that stock Android is still a priority for Google. The stock experience, though once limited and in need of manufacturer tweaks, has improved to the point where Google is throwing some weight into getting it into the hands of users. I don't know about you, but my hands are very eager for it. Stock Android is still true Android - and Google plays a very long game.
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