Editorial: This Is Why Going Android Is A Bad Plan

Look, I love my Nokia Lumia 925 and I will keep telling everyone on the planet that it is one of the best phones I have ever owned. When Nokia announced, officially, that they would be putting out handsets with a ‘forked’ version of Google’s Android as the primary OS, I thought, this is the beginning of something very terrible for Nokia. Now that is a scary statement to make, but if the rumors are true, Nokia’s amazing software is already being ripped from the X to other Android handsets, nullifying the need to purchase the hardware that Nokia wants to sell.

You see, any 12 year old with half a brain can figure out how to extract an Android APK file, make a few modifications to it and reupload it for everyone to enjoy. It’s called piracy, and it is what plagues Android more than any other phone OS on the planet. Developers and companies spend thousands of hours programming their games, Apps and widgets only to have them pulled apart, ‘registered’ and posted online for everyone to side load for free. With Android, side loading is as simple as clicking one box in the settings menu. No other OS allows for such an easy side loading system as this.

Anyway, now that you have a small understanding of stealing an Android App, I’ll tell you why I’m posting this in my Windows Phone forum. People are going to want to borrow your IMEI number and your device code. You see, the Nokia Mix Radio APK was already stolen out of the Nokia X model. While the APK is locked to the Nokia X, it should be easy enough for a developer to go in and override the App into thinking that the device is something that it isn’t, and thus bypassing the security that Nokia has in place to keep their software exclusive to their devices. Think of it as a permanent way to run the ‘Fiddler Hack’ for that App.

What this will lead to is millions of Android users logging in to Nokia services without having to purchase a Nokia handset. This will lead to increased overhead, which will lead to higher costs, lower quality streams, longer buffering times and an overall service decline for everyone involved. Nokia entering the Android market may gain them some emerging market share, but the loss of the service revenue that Android will cost them is far greater than the gain of a few users in those markets.

Again, this is a completely, “Just My Thought” post, so feel free to disagree if you’d like, but I fail to see how offering up low cost Android hardware will help you reach emerging markets when the first thing that those markets are doing is replacing the “X” OS with regular Android. You may as well have stuck with a Lumia 500 series and made them cheaper.

Source: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2668241