In the short lifespan of the still nascent wireless Internet, the owners of the operating systems have already learned that best is not always enough.
Palm, Windows CE and Symbian are the three OSs trying to slug it out with marketing strategies, technical appeals and partnerships.
While history, the great leveler, has shown that success crowns marketing, that strategy alone does not guarantee a great following.
Meanwhile, each of the three operating systems boasts of a competitive advantage. Palm OS basks in being the oldest with the biggest market share. Microsoft’s Windows CE dominates the data space, while Symbian, which is the brainchild of a consortium of the major handset vendors, takes off with guarantees of support from some of the major players in the industry.
“Symbian has the most to prove, Palm has the most to lose, and CE has a chance to beat both of these mobile-world players at their own games in the business space,” noted Summit Strategies, in a study, “B2B mobile Wireless Applications and Strategies.”
Palm has dominated the market for being the first, but industry watchers believe that the lead may not hold far into the future. The wireless Internet experience is still in its infancy, and once the world throws its weight into that space, the market will tilt toward the survival of the fittest.
“As the market shifts during the next couple of years,” commented Summit Strategies, “Palm will have to defend its current lead against Microsoft and Symbian. Will Palm be able to retain its dominant position for its OS? Will Microsoft CE be able to catch up? Or will relative newcomer Symbian be able to translate its wireless roots into a real advantage for the Symbian Platform?”
Palm OS-based devices claim more than 80 percent of the worldwide market for personal digital assistants and about 100,000 developers are building applications for the Palm platform, according to Summit Strategies. Some of the devices include the PalmVII, which came into being in 1999, Handspring Visor PDA and the Kyocera QCP 6035 Smartphone.
Palm Inc. has signed an agreement to co-develop and co-brand a slew of smart phones that will use its operating systems.
The company also has signed an agreement with Nokia Corp. for smart phones that will lay Palm user interface over a Symbian-based smart phone. Nokia has announced that most of its phones will be based on the Symbian operating system.
But Palm has to contend with some technical setbacks such as its inability to handle multithreading and multitasking adequately. “It also only offers up to 8 MB of an on-board memory (compared with 18 to 32 MB for CE) and its processor is less beefy than that of CE or Symbian, which are both 32-bit,” explained Summit Strategies.
The company plans to resolve these issues by using better memory management and porting its platform from its current DragonBall processor to ARM processor.
Part of its problem is its relationship with its licensees like Nokia Corp., Handspring, Symbol Technologies, TRG, Sony Corp. and Motorola Inc. “Palm faces the tricky issue of being both the owner of the operating system platform and a device vendor, competing with its own licensees,” observed Summit Strategies.
Palm’s strengths are simple design and user interface.
Windows CE is still far behind Palm with about 10 percent of the handheld device market. But the company claims to have tripled its CE-based devices since it launched its CE 3.0 platform, Pocket PC. Microsoft said it would concentrate on wireless-enabled PDAs, the voice/data hybrid and the voice-centric smart phone.
The company’s system’s setbacks have been identified as bulkiness, complexity and high-power consumption. So, it rolled out its smart-phone version of Pocket PC called Stinger, which combines a mobile phone with personal information management, e-mail and Web-browsing capabilities.
“With its Stinger reference implementation,” noted Summit Strategies, “Microsoft says CE will be optimized for phone form-factor, with extended battery life, reduced memory requirements and real-time processing.”
Stinger’s Web browser will support Hypertext Markup Language, Wireless Application Protocol, Wireless Markup Language and Extensible Markup Language. Microsoft is working with Samsung to produce a Stinger device. Voice-Stream is working with them to be the operator.
Microsoft’s CE may have to contend with its image as a devourer. Industry watchers think it might not garner as many partnerships as it should.
“Indeed, Palm, and even Symbian, are probably revered more as potential `Microsoft killers,”‘ remarked Summit, saying potential partners may be “leery about working with Microsoft.”
Symbian has the advantage of youth. “No operating system was really built for wireless,” noted Randy Roberts, spokesman for Nokia’s operating system. “It takes into account small keypads, small displays, memory footprints and small bandwidth.”
The operating system was created by between 75 and 80 percent of handset vendors, including Nokia, Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola and Siemens. Ericsson is the first to make a Symbian-based phone, the Ericsson R380 smart phone. Nokia’s 9210 mobile phone will also be based on Symbian.
Roberts concedes that Microsoft’s operating system holds sway with data at the moment, but indicated that Symbian is not limited to consumers. “Over time, you’ll see multiple designs, product designs and shapes.”
Summit Strategies sees Symbian as odds-on favorite to dominate the smart-phone market, but it still has to produce a great product.
All the platforms will carry their strengths and foibles into the future, and time will tell who will be the king of the jungle.
