Rumor has it that Google is about to give up its Nexus branded smartphones and secure tighter control over how Android smartphones are updated in the future.
There is a possibility that Google could be planning a new line-up of premium Android smartphones from a number of manufacturers, with increasingly tight control over what software can be installed on them.
The search engine giant wants to ensure that they have tighter control of handset specifications; as they argue that android OS has suffered form is fragmentation of the OS. It says that the updates from the handset vendors are rather slow mostly because they add their own software on top of the OS that slows down validating updated variants.
The requirements also sharply limit the number of non-Google apps that can be pre-installed on devices, or mandate that phone owners be able to uninstall them.
The other incentive for the handset vendors is that Google would pay them to supply the handsets to its specifications. It could however also push handset vendors closer to the much feared vision of being nothing more than “beige box” suppliers, with all the control at the software companies.
The giant, according to (reliable) hearsay, is planning a $1 billion marketing blitz to support the Project Silver handsets.
