Why Android Rocks in India?

I'd like to welcome Muthu Ramadoss to the Hello Android team. Muthu is the founder of the India based IntelliBitz Technologies and will be helping out posting news stories and giving his insight into the emerging Asian mobile market. His first article will tell you why "Android Rocks" in one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. Enjoy! - hobbs

2008 in India started pretty weak for the software industry, with TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) announcing the first ever layoff of 500 of its employees. With US economy under pressure more such layoff are expected this year in Indian software firms. So its only fair to say that the high flying, credit card spending, all night partying Indian software folks are a wee bit nervous.

Let me tell you our story.

We run a mobile development company in India. And we run Linux. We have downloaded tons and tons of free open source software to develop stuff. If you are not aware, running any sort of company in India is not easy. We are not funded like in the valley and so doing any development with upfront investment is considered suicide at its prime form.

But you know what, We're feeling great!

Yeah, and its because of Google. Android in particular.

Mobile is the future. Mobile is for the masses. Mobile will change the face of India. Hard to imagine? Consider this. Indian Mobile (Telecom in general) users are set to overtake US by next month, and maybe china shortly. Mobile usage in India is growing at an unbelievably high rate and its not going to slow down anytime in future. So there's tons of reasons for us to feel great.

Lets talk about the Indian companies and their thrift mentalities:

A. Indian companies never like to spend money on software.
B. Indian companies hire hoards and hoards of average programmers.

Lets talk about Android. And why it Rocks!

1. Android is free, open-source. So we don't have to go buy expensive hardware/software to run it. We don't have to join any legion like some other mobile SDK's demand or show our affinity endlessly and become a die-hard fanboi just to get our hands on an SDK. Compare Android with iphone, we cannot even run iphone because we don't have anything to with Apple yet. Android development can be done on Linux/Windows/Mac without issues.

2. Android is Java based. This is the killer feature, IMHO. We don't have to go scouting for the superstars like in the Ruby world. We can be happily coding with average programmers. And you know what, this is a big deal for small startups in India.

Match A,B with 1,2 above. Android wins, on both counts!

Imagine this.

When the bored housewife in some rural remote Indian village who is completely isolated from the supposedly mainstream urban India whips up her shiny new Android powered mobile phone gifted by her hard working farmer husband and downloads fancy meals to cook for her love..

We know Android Rocks!!