Android’s growth is phenomenal. In a very short time span, it has succeeded in becoming
one of the top mobile platforms in the market. Clearly, the unique combination of
open source licensing, aggressive go-to-market, and trendy interface is bearing fruit for
Google’s Android team. Needless to say, the massive user uptake generated by Android
has not gone unnoticed by handset manufacturers, mobile network operators, silicon
manufacturers, and app developers. Products, apps, and devices “for,” “compatible with,”
or “based on” Android seem to be coming out ever so fast.
Beyond its mobile success, however, Android is also attracting the attention of yet another,
unintended crowd: embedded systems developers. While a large number of embedded
devices have little to no human interface, a substantial number of devices that
would traditionally be considered “embedded” do have user interfaces. For a goodly
number of modern machines, in addition to pure technical functionality, developers
creating user-facing devices must also contend with human-computer interaction
(HCI) factors. Therefore, designers must either present users with an experience they
are already familiar with or risk alienating users by requiring them to learn a lesserknown
or entirely new user experience. Before Android, the user interface choices
available to the developers of such devices were fairly limited and limiting.
Clearly, embedded developers prefer to offer users an interface they are already familiar
with. Although that interface might have been window-based in the past—and hence a
lot of embedded devices were based on classic window-centric, desktop-like, or desktopbased
interfaces—Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have forever democratized the use
of touch-based, iPhone-like graphical interfaces. This shift in user paradigms and expectations,
combined with Android’s open source licensing, have created a groundswell
of interest about Android within the embedded world.
