Define success metrics for Android OS.

Question

Define success metrics for Android OS.

Asked at Google over a year ago

1.5k views

Asked at

1.5k views

How to answer Metrics questions

Interview Guide

Top Metrics interview questions

How would you measure the success of Facebook Likes?40 answers | 61.3k views
How would you measure the success of Gmail?23 answers | 17k views
What metrics would you look at as a product manager for Instagram ads?19 answers | 23.8k views
See Metrics PM Interview Questions

Invite members
Invite by email

Add another

SPD_2017 · Answer 1 · 2022-08-01T22:22:07+0000

clarifying questions:

Is there a specific goal on your mind when it comes to measuring success or is it ok if I come up with the goals? - Open-ended

Summarize:

Ok, Google developed Android OS to offer a fully open source OS. This meant anyone could access, download and modify Android OS source code for free of charge to help develop apps, mobile devices, or even a competing OS.

Global reach, Shorter development cycles, and easy customizations of user experience has helped the population across the globe to afford a smartphone since Android OS was launched.

Metrics:

I am going to apply product metrics framework here to determine possible metrics that one can measure Android OS success against and then prioritize them to come up with a final answer.

Typically user acquisition, adoption, engagement, retention and monetization are key metrics to evaluate any product.

For Android OS as we are aware, there is no trouble in user acquisition and adoption. Even though iOS is leading in the US, Android OS captures 70% of the global market share.

Given that acquisition is high, adoption follows. Hence I am not going to deep dive into adoption metrics for this exercise.

I do want to focus on the engagement metrics, since Android OS mission statement involves offering open source OS for anyone around the globe to make customizations to the user experience, develop Apps - measuring the engagement metrics over time will definitely help keep a check.

I would measure engagement in the form of D/W/M/Qt new apps developed, % Comparision QoQ, YoY.

Number of downloads of the source code D/W/M/Qt and % comparison for QoQ, YoY

Last but not the least, monetization, since Google makes Android OS open source code available to anyone, there is no monetization aspect to it. However, there are other google products such as Google Pixel, and Google cloud usage on the Android OS that can be measured to determine Android OS success that help generate indirect revenue. Measuring revenue $ generated for each vertical that is based on Android OS. # of items sold in each vertical.

Summarize:

To summarize, for android OS, engagement metrics should be prioritized since this will help evaluate the success of Android OS as aligned with the mission that Google developed and launched android OS with.

As a secondary metrics, I would track monetization/ indirect revenue generated for Google by apps, hardware, cloud storage that are developed and sold to be used in Android ecosystem.

Anshuman Panwar · Answer 2 · 2022-08-30T02:59:56+0000

Clarify

Open source OS for mobile devices

Goals

Anybody could access, download, and modify Android's source code for free of charge to help develop apps, mobile devices, or even a competing OS

By providing a free of charge and open OS, Android has helped proliferate affordable mobile devices around the world. In 2015, the average Android device cost $208. That’s in stark contrast to phones on closed platforms, which can average as high as $651. In India and Africa, Google has partnered with local manufacturers to provide high-quality smartphones for less than $100. And recently the Fero i401 became available in Nigeria for less than $60

Stakeholders:

Let’s look at the stakeholder and their value add

App developers: Can modify source code to develop apps or OS
Google: Global reach, platform for other google products, Data collection

Metrics

Since one of the goals for Android is to make smartphone affordable for everyone we will focus on adoption metrics

Adoption

# of devices running android as base OS
Market share in mobile OS market (includes any other OS built using android)
# of global users using Android

The reason Android is open source is to enable developers to build apps and competing OS so as to build a healthy ecosystem around it, we can look at engagement metrics as well.

Engagement:

# of total apps built on Android
# of new apps built (weekly and monthly)
# of source code forks (weekly/monthly
# of non-google apps installs on android

Counter metric:

no of bugs reported

Summary

Since android is focussed upon making mobile devices available and affordable to everyone, we will prioritize engagement metrics (# of devices running android as base OS) and secondly the engagement metrics which focus on building an ecosystem (# of new apps built )