2014 was a great year for Android, so 2015 has a lot to live up to. A lot of great new stuff was released last year – like Android Wear and Android 5.0 – that have set the stage for what should be a very exciting year, and we’ve given our top 3 things that we expect to see.
1. Rise of the  Chinese manufacturers
Xiaomi. Huawei. Oppo. OnePlus. These are just some of the names that you may have heard of, but should get used to hearing this year. There are quite a few more names, but they are all names of Chinese manufacturers, and they are growing fast.
Xiaomi is the fastest growing of all these companies, who last year expected to log around 300% increase in sales over its 2013 performance - Huawei has similarly improved its sales by around 40%. These are all signs that the Chinese smartphone market is growing in leaps and bounds, and its only a matter of time before it is saturated, at which point it’s likely that these brands will start targeting the Western markets.
Sure, Huawei and Oppo are already relatively familiar to us, but it could be argued that their investment in markets outside of Asia are tentative at best, at least compared to the marketing they do in their hometown. Recognized or not, I’d say that 2015 is the year that Chinese manufacturers start to make their move on markets outside of Asia and people will pay attention – because for every argument there is accusing these devices of being mass produced and low quality, there is a counter-argument that these devices are just dirt cheap. While those passionate among us will likely not give these devices even a second look, there are plenty of people who are happy to go with a cheaper option that does the job pretty well, and that’s something we all need to recognize.
2. Second generation Android Wear devices
Smartwatches grew in stature in 2014, and while many pundits refuse to say that they are now mainstream (these are the same pundits who say the Apple Watch is a ‘gamechanger’ ), it’s hard to deny that Android Wear has put discussions of smartwatches on everyone’s lips.
Some of these devices, like the Moto 360, had us salivating at its very appearance, which quickly gave way to a feeling of indifference when the device was released into the wild. This is a problem that has plagued smartwatches since the very beginning: the feeling that these devices just aren’t quite good enough yet. The Moto 360 is pretty much the epitomization of that sentiment – great looks, great software, but poor battery life and questionable design choices (*cough* ambient light sensor *cough*) that have people wondering what could have been.
2015 should change all that as most all manufacturers who launched a device in 2014 will be revising their designs with a follow-up smartwatch. These devices should hopefully address many of the concerns that were raised on the first gen, and while I instinctively feel like they still won’t be the perfect companion devices that we envision them to be, it will invariably be a step in the right direction.
3. More stock Android operating systems from OEMs
This last one is more of a wish than something that I have explicitly observed. With Android 5.0, Google has created something wonderful: an overhauled user interface (UI)Â that is as beautiful as it is powerful. There’s lots of bells and whistles behind the scenes as well which make Android 5.0, at least in theory, an incredibly formidable beast.
Seeing as Google has painstakingly overhauled everything with Material Design, I’d expect to see that more OEMs will take advantage of the animations and UI features that are available in stock Android rather than spending time and effort to customize it unnecessarily. This is already obvious on Android 5.0 for the LG G3 which has done away with much of the customization that featured on its KitKat software and opted for a much more stock Android system.
Obviously, I’m not expecting OEMs like Samsung to completely abandon customizations like TouchWiz seeing as they’ve invested so heavily into it already, but hopefully more companies will see that Google has them covered already in the UI space and give us all a more stock approach, which can only benefit all of us.
And that’s it – that’s the top 3 things I’ll be looking out for in 2015. If you have anything else you think is going to happen this year, feel free to let us know in the comments below.
