Looking back on Android's 2010: Underwhelming Nexus One sales, a revamped Market, and taking down the iPhone one jab at a time

This is speculative article written from the perspective of Christmas 2010.

2010 was the year in which Android truly announced itself to the world as more than a mere irritant to the mighty iPhone.

Google showed its intention to own 2010 from the off, announcing its own phone on January 5th. A co-venture with HTC, the Nexus One had been the subject of much internet rumour throughout the final quarter of 2009.

The phone itself proved surprisingly underwhelming, both critically and in terms of raw sales. By choosing to advertise and distribute the Nexus One online only (though it made a number of half-hearted deals with mobile providers), Google severely limited the appeal of a device that could well have gone supernova given the Google branding.

Instead, the valuable mainstream audience who continue to place their trust in more traditional media (and hence advertising) stayed well away, choosing to side with more established products - such as Apple’s iPhone.

However, it soon became apparent that the Nexus One was just another of many well-placed jabs in a sustained Android onslaught on the howitzer-throwing iPhone. With high-quality handsets from HTC, Motorola - which produced the near-faultless Milestone 2 - and Sony Ericsson continuing to sell reasonably well, it could be argued that the iPhone began to die a death of a thousand cuts in 2010.

It remains to be seen if Apple can come off the ropes and launch a convincing counter-attack in 2011.

One area Android continues to lag behind in is its games offering. Thanks to the sheer variety of handsets on the market, alongside the (until recently) relatively poor and detached user experience of the Android Market, Google’s OS has been unable to gain anything like the traction of Apple’s unified App Store in terms of downloadable games.

It also didn’t help that Google took so long to implement the ability to play gaming apps directly from expanded memory devices. With most Android units continuing to include limited onboard memory throughout much of 2010, developers found themselves severely limited in terms of the permitted file size of their games.

In the second half of the year, however, there have been signs of a change in fortunes. The release of Google’s ‘Jam Roly-Poly’ OS update in May brought with it a much improved Market service, as well as the essential ability to run games from expanded memory.

We’ve already seen a raft of iPhone ports in the ensuing months, with some - such as Firemint’s Real Racing Pro Deluxe - actually turning out to be much enhanced versions of the iPhone originals, utilising the meaty Qualcomm 1GHz processors that have become standard in all high-end Android phones since the Nexus One.

Admittedly, sales are still some way off of Apple’s ever-impressive effort, but the chasm is closing rapidly.

One games-related area in which Android found unexpected success in 2010 was the field of Flash games. With Apple’s continuing lack of support for Adobe’s Flash technology, start-up developer Serial Flasher enjoyed considerable success with its Flashy Get app for Android.

The app funnelled a number of web-based Flash games into a single, user-friendly frontend, along with emulated touchscreen controls where necessary. This attracted considerable criticism from a number of smaller developers, who felt that allowing such an app onto the Market undermined their own efforts to get a viable pay-per-game eco-system up and running on Android.

As we reach the end of 2010, Google can look back on a year of mixed fortunes for its wide-open Android OS with considerable pride. When it looks forward to 2011 and beyond, though, you have to suspect that the only way is up for the little green robot.