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The jury is in and Google has triumphed in almost all phases of its trial against Oracle over the use of Java in Android. Oracle spent years nurturing its relationship with developers who use its products, including MySQL and NoSQL Database. But the company's aggressive move to assert its interest in Java - which is, after all, open source - puts the developer community's goodwill at risk. How badly has Oracle damaged its reputation?

The jury in Oracle's patent case against Google delivered a unanimous verdict in favor of the search giant today, exonerating Google's use of Java in Android and dashing Oracle’s dreams of millions of dollars in damages.

Google now owns Motorola. Chinese regulators followed the U.S. and Europe in clearing the deal earlier this week, removing the last barrier. Although the acquisition opens new territory for the search giant, its most immediate effect could be remaking the existing Android landscape. Will Google use its new arm to pound all competitors, or just Apple?

It is one thing to say that apps built in HTML5 function across every device on the market. It is another thing to run those apps. 

This is Part Two of a two-part series on Disassembling Android. 

"Android is open for disruption.” That's what Stewart Putney, CEO of the mobile gaming company Moblyng, said last August. He was talking about the potential for HTML5 Web apps to disrupt the Android Market (now Google Play), but he may have been oddly prophetic. Android has not been riding high in 2012. More than one competitor is lining up to strike a decisive blow.

This is Part One of a two-part series on Disassembling Android. 

Android conquered the world in 2011. Hundreds of thousands of users activate Google’s mobile operating system every day, a growth rate unprecedented in any era of computing. This extraordinary strength has carried into 2012, but Android is not the brazen warrior it was a year ago, and its vulnerabilities are starting to show. Is the world’s leading smartphone platform ripe for disruption?

Last September, during the f8 Developers’ Conference, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said that the company had no plans for a “central app repository” – an app store. Today, Facebook is changing its tune. The social giant has announced App Center, a section of Facebook dedicated to discovering and deploying high-quality apps on the company’s platform. The App Center will push apps to iPhone, Android and the mobile Web, giving Facebook its first true store for mobile app discovery. 

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock. Laptops are doomed. In the next five years, tablets will displace notebook-style computers to become the dominant personal computing platform. And the transition from laptop to tablet has already begun.

That Apple remains in first place in the tablet market comes as no surprise. IDC's latest research shows that in the first quarter of 2012, Amazon's once-hot Kindle Fire is struggling. According to IDC, Amazon's share dropped from nearly 17% of the tablet market to 4%, with fewer than 700,000 units sold compared to Apple's 11.8 million.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the nation’s two largest wireless carriers, intend to market the heck out of Microsoft Windows Phone to prevent Apple from gaining a stranglehold on the U.S. smartphone market. But the strategy has many pitfalls, including the fact that the carriers still can’t afford to live without the iPhone. Bottom line, their love-hate relationship with Apple isn’t ending any time soon.