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Google’s Android mobile operating system has become increasingly popular over the last 12 months, with an increasing market share and a growing adoption (and availability) of the Android App Store. Android has been gaining ground on the iPhone for months now, even seeing a higher market share than their old rivals in certain areas of the world.

Add this to Google’s dominance in the search industry and their movement into numerous other areas (shopping, maps, internet browsers, applications, document sharing – the list goes on and on) and you’ve got a company that’s a major competitor to some of the biggest companies in the world (including Apple, Microsoft and numerous others).

However, could the growing popularity and subsequent adoption of the Android mobile OS pose a genuine risk in terms of personal data management and overall security?

Many people are predicting that Android will become the biggest and most widely used mobile platform in the world within 12 months, offering a real incentive for developers of malicious software and criminals to try and attack the network. Whilst this could in theory be levelled at Apple and any other popular service or software, what makes the Android platform a higher risk (in terms of IT security) is the open source nature of the platform. This means that developers worldwide have access to the Android source code, making it easier to develop malware for the plaftorm (with nothing to stop them distributing it on the Android App Store).

Whether or not Google will take steps to reduce this issue remains to be seen, but it’s worth noting that there has already been a 400% increase in malware on the Android mobile operating platform since the same period in 2010.

Post by Phil, who works for a distribution and logistics company in the South West.

So, here’s a question for all the gadget fans: is Android unfashionable? At first it would seem like something of trick question. After all, the numbers most definitely tell us otherwise. Android is now the operating system installed on the majority of phones out there currently. But let’s backtrack on that a second: does ‘installed on the majority of phones’ mean the same thing as ‘fashionable’? After all, Android isn’t overtaking iPhone or Blackberry to take number one positon, it’s overtaking Symbian. Symbian is the operating system behind most phones from the last decade. Your mum probably has it on her phone. Your grandmother may even have it. That’s not especially ‘fashionable’, is it?

The Case of Blackberry

RIM’s mobile devices were most definitely fashionable, and you know what? I can’t explain for the life of me why this was the case. Ok, so the Blackberry messenger application kept many a financially unsound user from racking up bad credit over their text message bill, but the time of restrictive messaging allowances are now truely over. Everyone surely gets three thousand of the things. And when it comes to one important factor – the aesthetics – I simply cannot understand why people every found these ugly things attractive enough to swing them around like fashion accessories. Oh wait, the trend setters (reality show stars, pop-starlets) were probably paid to.

Regardless, Blackberries are kind of on the way out, but a much heftier opponent approaches.

Apple, the Undisputed Kings of the Smartphone?

Android has only one thing on iPhone. Fortunately for the members of the handset alliance, it’s the only thing that matters to most of us: Price. Want an Android, you get out your Credit Card. Want an iPhone, and you may as well ship in the gold bullion.

The problem is though, the iPhone does and always has looked like a million dollars. Its design philosophies are so radiant that they’ve seeped into every crack of the machine. Only Apple could sell you a device without an accessible battery and make you love it precisely because there’s no ugly seams to make your 2001-esque monolith of evolutionary thought look less striking.

Aesthetics

One of the most common criticisms (and arguably benefits) of android is the split nature of the platform. Most manufacturers have a high end version of their devices, and a low end version. You get whichever one your Vanquis card can stretch to. Some (like HTC) have high end, mid, low end devices and then just keep expanding upwards with variations on their most expensive models. By aesthetically? On the screen, the android UI ranges from pleasing (HTC sense) through ‘ok if you like blue’ (Sony Ericsson) through dull as dishwater (the default, as seen on the Nexus One). As for the cases of the phones themselves? There’s always some weakness or other. The HTC legend has a beautiful aluminium shell, but flimsy looking buttons. And the Galaxy S? Can you Say ‘Overgrown iPhone 3 Rip-Off’?

Conclusion

At the moment, I’d say that Android is at a crossroads. People who don’t care how their phones look have them, and people who love features AND aesthetics have them. But there’s no ‘wow! You have THAT phone’ factor. They’re not specifically fashionable, but they’re not yet unfashionable either.

As Halloween has just been and gone, I thought it would be a good time to have a look at the scariest technologies around at the moment.

However, a quick search on YouTube revealed Tom’s Top 5 (a Revision3 Internet Television production), where they have a look at exactly that. So sit back and enjoy the 5 scariest technologies, as picked by Tom himself:

Guest post by Simon, who works for a company specialising in business objects training and business intelligence solutions.