NEWS LAST WEEK THAT MOTOROLA INC. HAD SETTLED ON Windows Mobile and Android as handset platforms in an effort to simplify, focus on innovation and manage costs underscored the unknowns involved in such choices.
Because leading OSs come with “patrons and politics,” with unknown implications, one analyst said. The future is anything but clear.
Operators and handset vendors want fewer platforms to support, for cost-management purposes and to attract developers, but choosing those platforms in some cases means embracing competitors for the data revenue expected to flow from projected increases in smartphone use.
“Operators recognize the value of ARPU improvements from harnessing Symbian, Windows Mobile and others, but these OSs come with their patrons and politics,” said analyst John Jackson at Yankee Group.
And those patrons are stepping up their game.
Case in point: Google’s Android platform – an open-source Linux effort, license-free to all comers – has reached market via the G1 handset at T-Mobile USA. Google clearly intends to use the spread of the Android platform to fuel its own ambitions in mobile advertising and the next frontier in software-and-services.
By some accounts, Nokia Corp. reacted to this threat to Symbian’s dominance in the smartphone market – and its own
ambitions in software-and-services – by taking full ownership of Symbian and declaring that it too would become an open source OS, free to handset vendors and their operator partners.
“It looks like a bit of a land grab,” Jackson said of these efforts. “It’s about establishing a point of control to monetize the distribution of content and services to the downstream user. And it’s about attracting developer interest and, thus, innovation.”
Operator choices, fears
The “Shakespearean tragic flaw” confronting handset vendors and operators alike, Jackson said, is that these OSs are largely being championed by parties intent on rivaling the operators for much of the resulting data revenue smartphones will drive.
In Motorola’s case, why would it spend several hundred million dollars to shape its portfolio around Android, and reject Symbian, when operators’ disposition toward Android as a platform remains an unknown? Jackson asked, rhetorically. (Motorola also said it would drop Symbian’s UIQ platform and an internally developed Linux platform.) Especially when Symbian, a mature platform, has just become ostensibly free and therefore presumably “de-politicized”?
“That’s a big risk/reward calculation,” Jackson said. “Android will only be successful to the degree that it is strategically valuable to the major, global operators. That’s an unknown at this point. The same is true of Apple’s OS X. A lot hinges on what happens with Nokia’s Ovi, Apple’s The App Store and the Android Market.”
The shifting market share of various OSs (see sidebar) begs a question, Jackson said.
“What does Nokia do with Symbian in the long-term?” the analyst asked. “I think that’s still an open question. Open-sourcing it will accelerate the distribution of the platform on the basis of its stability and maturity, at a time when Linux solutions are either untested, unstable, under-developed, or, as in the case with Android, similarly politicized.”
“Who is behind Linux, in general?” Jackson continued. “Is it the LiMo Foundation? Is it Android? We know that Linux is the basis for a number of different initiatives that are gestating out there. But who’s going to control it? Who’s going to scale it? Right now, Linux is Symbian without a marketing department.”
To analyst Mark Donovan at comScore/M:Metrics, the economic downturn may hasten vendors’ and operators’ decisions to narrow their choice of smartphone platforms.
Donovan called it a “four-horse race” that will pit “open” systems such as Symbian and Android against proprietary systems such as Apple Inc.’s OS X (featured on the iPhone) and Research In Motion Ltd.’s patented BlackBerry platform.
The analyst said he was somewhat surprised that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has “languished” to an extent and that an upgrade to version 7 isn’t due until late 2009. But that delay probably reflects that current offerings in the market have raised expectations and Windows Mobile 7 must meet them to be a contender, Donovan noted.
While Jackson said all of these considerations are “highly irrelevant” to consumers, who are focused on what experiences and services these OSs can deliver, Donovan pointed to the direct competition unfolding between Apple and RIM. Both vendors are marketing their platforms as the differentiator underlying their device-and-service “goodness,” he said.
“Brand remains important in certain cases,” Donovan said.
