Peter Kafka writes this morning that The Daily will be headed to Android tablets as soon as this spring. This move was expected,"But I’m still a bit surprised to see the move to Google come this early, given the emphasis that News Corp. had placed on its Apple relationship prior to launch earlier this month," wrote Kafka. 

In fact, at the launch event for The Daily, Murdoch said that, "We think last year, this year, and next year will belong to the iPad.” Guess Apple will have to learn how to share. 

Kafka also drops the nugget that subscriptions are ahead of expecations so far, so it will be fun to see if that changes when the free trial period ends this week. 

As The Observer reported earlier this week, News Corp. opted to go outside of Apple for premium advertising, choosing NYC's Medialets istead, but has been relying on Apple for continuing technical support as it gets The Daily off the ground. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Bloomberg reports that Apple is working on an iPhone that's cheaper and smaller than those currently available (are they making iPhones for small children? babies?), and the company is trying to develop technology that ports the phone across networks.

The idea, according to Bloomberg, is to combat Google's Android, which is grabbing a rapidly expanding share of the global smartphone market. 

The new Apple device is expected to sell for around $200, and it'll be two-thirds the size of the iPhone 4, or about the size of six books of matches, or three and a half cigarette lighters.

The question now is whether Apple will experience declining profit margins as it lowers the price of its phones. Such an event would surely disappoint people who had previously thought this company would always make the coolest, most unique products, forever.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Honeycomb seems stable, smooth, and elegant--a big step up for the OS. Google is making a really smart move in not trying to copy the iOS tablet interface (which is in itself a zoomed-in mobile phone interface) and rather has been focusing on incredibly rich widgets, notifications, and context-sensitive navigation bars. 

So Google has a mature or near-mature tablet OS. What now? The iPad, and the rumored next-gen iPad have a huge head start. How can Google compete with thousands of native apps, rock-solid software, an enormous installed user base, beautiful retail locations? The answer isn't clear, but if history is any indication, the search giant isn't going to go head to head with Apple.

The tablet shown at Google today wasn't a Google-branded device, but a Motorola Xoom, which will most likely be sold in cell phone stores when it launches. Apple's strategy has been to release a single magical piece of new technology; a mature device creates a new market. Android has been playing the role of the fast follower, and it seems like Google will retain that role for now. The advantage that Google has is that it can rely on a team of companies to release tablet after tablet while the company continually upgrades Honeycomb until it hits on a killer combination that makes an Android tablet something that you might want over an iPad.

With Android phones, it took almost three years for that killer combo to emerge. And even if, by some miracle, the first Android tablets are as good as the iPad, these devices compete on apps. The iOS app store is a mature platform with a huge number of apps, many of which are natively written for the larger screen of the iPad. The Android market is flooded with a tremendous number of buggy apps, none of which are written for Honeycomb.

While Google says that any app written for Froyo or Gingerbread will work great on Honeycomb, anyone who has used iPhone apps blown up on an iPad screen will tell you that a good tablet app is much more than an enlarged mobile app. At its conference, Google showed 15 applications natively running on Honeycomb tablets. At the end of the conference the company promised 50 apps at its next event, but that's still just a fraction of Apple's offerings. 

So will the Google tablet follow in the footsteps of the Android phone, transitioning from scrappy upstart to the No. 1 selling smartphone OS? Google has been able to put a dent into the iPhone's dominance by flooding the market with hundreds of Android phones, from the inexpensive and feature-light to the flagship uberphones. But that approach will work less well in the tablet market.

A phone is a multifunction device, but generally it is used in a very utilitarian way: to make calls, to get information, to send messages, to check in. It doesn't really matter if the experience of using the phone is pleasurable. Many Android phones are bare and functional. They get the job done, and at the end of the the day that is all that matters. A tablet, however, is all about the experience. A tablet needs to be elegant. Using an iPad is a pleasurable experience, and that pleasure is a huge part of the iPad's cachet. If Honeycomb tablets start flooding the market with the usual Android growing pains--not enough memory, choppy animation because of slow processors, crashes, bad battery life--then Google may shoot its chances of success in the foot. No doubt eventually a truly great Android tablet will hit the market, but when it does, it may be lost among dozens of similar tablets that no one wants.

But Google is about to introduce Honeycomb, a version of its Android OS built specifically for tablets. 

Many analysts expect that Android tablets will quickly come to dominate the market, much as they did in the smartphone sector. 

All Thing's Digital's Ina Fried sat down with Matias Durate, the lead designer on Honeycomb, who quickly showed Eric Schmidt isn't the only Googler prone to saying wild things about the future of technology. 

"What I am looking for is that sense that you get when Jazz musicians improvise together,” he said. “The computer should be doing things in concert with you, in support with you not acting like a servant waiting for commands and then returning with results," Duarte said. People always think of cybernetics with computers as being this thing that happens far in the future and you have Star Trek, Borg-like scary things,” Duarte said. “But the way computers are used today through social networking ,through e-mail, through accessing information like Google–They are already becoming (those) cybernetic parts of our mind.”

To sum up: Google tablets will be like jazzy mind servants who anticipate our every whim. Watch your back, Apple. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

But Android phones are now the No. 1 seller, not just in the U.S., but around the globe, displacing Nokia's Symbian. 

Smartphone sales have been exploding recently. A new report from research firm Canalys finds Android is number one OS among the 101 million smartphones sold in the fourth quarter of 2010. 

The real question now is whether Android can achieve a similar come-from-behind victory in the tablet space, which Apple currently dominates.  

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

The app is now available to Android users in addition to iPhone and BlackBerry users, who no longer need both a phone and a computer in order to cause specific foods to be prepared and seamlessly delivered to their doors. Progress!

New Yorkers and city-dwellers in 13 other metro areas rejoiced; the underprivileged residents of the rest of the country had no idea what we were talking about.

Seamless Web has been incredulously described on Twitter as a "lifesaver" that has "changed my life." Food delivery professionals can now look forward to that much more time spent in crappy weather.

ajeffries [at] observer.com

Mobile research firm Zokum released the results of a new study today which found iPhone users are 84% more loyal to their product than consumers who have Android smartphones. 

Interestingly, however, Android users are more likely to repurchase an Android phone that iPhone users.

How to explain this discrepancy? Well, the loyalty score given to the iPhone is based on a single question - "How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?" 

So iPhone users are the type of people who would sing the praises of the device they own--even if when push comes to shove, they might not buy it again. 

IPhone users are also more likely to pay for apps, while Android users prefer the free ad-supported variety. 

Gluttons for punishment is the only way to describe it. 

bpopper at observer dot com - @benpopper

The newest version of Google's Android operating system, code named Ginger Bread, will act as a sort of electronic wallet.

Users can simply touch their phones to a sensor and pay for items using Google Checkout, Paypal, or a number of other systems.

Google's typically garrulous CEO, Eric Schmidt, was abnormally reserved yesterday while showing off the new technology, probably under strict orders to avoid putting his foot near his mouth while debuting something as sensitive as an electronic wallet.

Schmidt also showed off the technology on a secret new phone (the manufacturer was disguised with a piece of black tape), which is rumored to be the second coming of the ambitious but short-lived Google Nexus phone.

The new Nexus S will supposedly be available, as before, without the restrictions or crapware that comes with buying a phone subsidized by a carrier like AT&T or Verizon.

bpopper [at] observer.com | follow me on Twitter @benpopper

Today Dell announced that it will be moving its 25,000 employees from Blackberries to its own Dell Venue Pro - a phone running the new Windows Phone 7 operating system.

(The move by Dell stings, but its probably the only way that company can sell a smartphone these days...)

The more troubling problem for RIM is that this is part of larger trend. Once considered the high end of mobile, RIM has been surpassed in the era of the app.

In recent months it has been reported that major institutional clients like Bank of America, Citigroup, UBS and JP Morgan Chase are considering switching their staff from RIM to iPhone and Android.

Unless RIM can produce a sexy smartphone and bulk up its offering of apps, it will never have the appeal of iPhone or Android. And companies like switching from RIM corporate accounts to employees personal smartphones because it saves them money.

A major security breach on Android or iPhone might help RIM to retain its business, as security has always been one of their selling points. In fact, the best move might be a compromise, with RIM switching to Android, but retaining many of its proprietary security features.

But Fred Wilson, one of New York's most prominent venture capitalists, doesn't think the success will last.

"iPhone and iPad have been amazing products that have opened new markets. But I do not think they will own either market in a few years. Android will," Wilson wrote on his blog, AVC.

Wilson isn't implying that Apple will suffer the kind of catastrophic setback in did in the '90s, when the company's stock price plummeted and it suffered three straight years of losses.

But he does believe that, just as it lost market share to Microsoft in the PC era, Apple's tight control will mean that more open systems like Android will come to dominant the market -- if not in profit margin, at least in size.

"I am encouraging every company we work with to invest as heavily in Android as they invest in iPhone/iPad. I actually think they should invest more because Android is still wide open and the iPhone/iPad marketplaces are leaderboard driven and the leaders have been established and it's hard to crack into the top ten anywhere."

One point missing from Wilson's argument is that developers creating products for Apple only have to think about a single coherent universe.

Working on Android, on the other hand, requires developing for a fragmented marketplace, which can add a lot of cost and labor to the process.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper