Mobile Operating System Rivals Line Up at Mobile World Congress
22 February 2008• Linux Takes Helm of Mobile Web But Too Immature to Bear the Burden
• Stylish Internet Devices Trump Android Promises
• Mobile Linux Rivals Face Off
• Microsoft Signs Sony Ericsson, Buys Danger But Mobile Web Role Still Uncertain
• Nokia and Google Team Up Too
The battle for supremacy in operating systems for mobile devices - from handsets to portable media players - will determine a great deal of the mobile Internet’s capabilities as evidenced by Microsoft Windows dominance in PCs, as opposed to Linux or Apple, determines how people access and use the Internet.
As Google has discovered, according to the BusinessWeek article “Japan: Google’s Real-Life Lab,” the many different operating systems on cell phones and their dissimilarities makes life difficult even for a Web-based applications such as Google’s search. One of Google’s executives in Japan told BusinessWeek that Google’s hopes to make getting information on a phone nearly as easy as on a PC faces as the biggest hurdle the complexity of handsets. Instead of just two dominant operating systems as with PCs, the article says, there are hundreds of versions of phone software. That causes differences in the buttons in the handset and what they do. For example, some models have buttons that let users jump around a Web page while others rely on a jog dial or a pointer like a mouse.
It’ll also determine who makes a lot of money, who will fail and who’ll be the also-rans.
It involves some of the world’s largest and most successful companies - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Nokia, Apple, Intel and the like. But, as often happens in technology, a start-up or surprise entrant may capture the prize.
The currently visible contenders in operating systems in the mobile space are:
- A standardized version of Linux from the LiMO Foundation (http://www.limofoundation.org) that’s customized for mobile devices
- The widely-used Symbian that Nokia initiated but does not wholly control
- Microsoft’s Windows Mobile
- Various versions of Linux that are already in use
- Google’s much trumpeted Linux-based Android
- Apple’s OSX - available only on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch but open to third party software developers
The following article from this week’s Wireless Watch reports on the current state of matters. It’s based on observations and interviews at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that was held last week in Barcelona.
Mobile Linux
Mobile Linux - or rather, a top-to-bottom platform with the open source OS at its base - has become the number one weapon in the fight to take the leading role in defining the mobile Internet experience, and the devices that will support it. Whether or not the operating system and its ecosystem are yet mature enough to bear such a burden of responsibility - and the experiences of Google Android tell us the answer is almost certainly ‘no’ - it is at the heart of a power struggle that will be highly significant to the future fortunes of several key players, most notably the search/online advertising giants, Nokia and Intel. Although all parties set out their stalls at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, in fact the mega-event made clear that this is a battle that has only just begun, and where no party has demonstrated sufficient credibility yet to claim any rights to take the helm in the mobile Internet.
Google assembled supporters for its Android platform while the supposedly complementary LiMo Foundation - which, in fact, is the best available weapon for those looking to limit Google’s impact - took the high ground in having real, usable tools. Companies that positioned against one another in conference sessions one day were forming alliances the next -most notably Google and Nokia - while Yahoo and AOL were both seeking to carve out their own role alongside these behemoths. Just to confuse matters further, the large operators were getting more aggressive about their own contribution to the mobile Internet chain, with Vodafone setting up its own Internet services division to try to steal some momentum back from the suppliers.
But perhaps the clearest lesson, and one that Google needs to learn very well, is that in the mobile world real, compelling devices trump grand open access strategies and clever software concepts every time, as proven by the under-specified but much loved iPhone.
So the Android prototypes were largely dismissed as systems for a future and uncertain world, and were probably most interesting for the insights they gave into the various chipmakers’ Linux strategies - while the passion was reserved for the real handsets, and the multimedia/Internet machines emerging from Samsung, Nokia and the others.
Microsoft
And then there was Microsoft. With its bid for Yahoo rejected, though of course not failed, the company’s mobile Internet strategy remains somewhat unclear, but the Windows giant knows it must act decisively if it is not to lose its way in a world that is increasingly alien - driven by Linux not Windows, and by success in small consumer devices, something that has eluded Microsoft outside its enterprise heartland. We have argued before that there is a logic to Microsoft making common cause with the old enemy in mobile, Nokia, in order to head off Google, but at MWC the other Symbian-oriented phone maker, Sony Ericsson, suddenly seemed a more likely candidate to help Microsoft out of its handset rut, announcing its first ever Windows device, partly as a response to the increasingly high profile HTC, whose effort to escape from its Taiwanese ODM box and create its own brand is based around Windows smart phones like the popular iPod touch. And if neither Scandinavian proves amenable, Microsoft is still building its armory in mobile Internet devices, acquiring Danger, the well-regarded designer of the cult phone, the Hiptop/Sidekick.
Sony Ericsson will use the Windows Mobile OS in its new Xperia X1 handset, an arc slider with a three-inch display and Qwerty keypad, due in the second half of the year. Like Nokia, it is looking beyond Symbian - in which it is an investor, and where it co-owns the UIQ user interface with Motorola. While Symbian is powerful in smart phones, especially in Europe, multiple OS strategies are the only way to get into a wide range of markets and achieve the goal of delivering a range of user experiences, each geared to a different set of users.
Sony Ericsson is an important ally, but the appeal of Danger for Microsoft is less obvious. It is unlikely that the software giant bought the device maker for its cult, but niche, handsets, or its own operating system, but on the other hand, Danger’s ’software-as-a service’ expertise, could prove valuable to improve the mobile Web experience that Windows Mobile can deliver. Danger has recognized strengths in its user interface, social networking, and integration of services through a carrier’s network. For loss making Danger, the acquisition saves it from attempting an IPO, which it was planning to do this year to raise about $100 million. Danger lost about $28 million in its last fiscal year and $21 million the previous year though its 2007 revenue reached $56 million, up from $49 million the prior year.
Sharp and Motorola make Danger Sidekicks for T-Mobile USA, while Danger also drives Hiptop devices sold in Europe and Australia, and by SunCom Wireless Holdings in the US, which is in the process of being acquired by T-Mobile USA. Windows Mobile is steadily growing its share of that market from about 9% last year to a projected 13% this year, according to data from Nomura.
Nokia and Google
Despite Microsoft’s activities, Nokia remains the company in the vanguard of shaping the mobile Web, with Google biting at its heels. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in his Mobile World Congress keynote that his company will “reshape the “Internet”, particularly by enabling a “context aware Internet” that combines multimedia features, Internet and assisted- GPS, all geared around Maps. Google may be the new enemy at Nokia, but that doesn’t meant that it can’t also be a strong supplier, and Nokia, acknowledging that it has no answer to the generalized search engine, announced that several of its leading devices will support Google search.
Never were the battle lines between Nokia and Google made more clear than when the Finn spent over $8 billion buying location specialist Navteq last year, a move that was bound to take it head-on against Google Maps, and which represented a far broader battle of the titans, for no less a prize than the right to drive the shape of the mobile Internet. But neither company can quite do without the other. It would be foolish, and increasingly impractical, for Nokia to exclude Google from its platform, and in any case, arguably it would rather have the search giant within its fold than fighting rear guard actions outside, teaming up with Nokia challengers.
And whatever high sounding phrases Google may utter about disruptive models and new mobile channels, the real prize for a company that is after ubiquitous access to its adverts has to be the company with 40% market share.
The new collaboration builds on previous cooperation over Google search, which was previously available on Nokia Internet tablets. Now Nokia is integrating Google search with its own Nokia Search application and will put it on the new N96, N78 and 6210 Navigator and on Nokia 6220 classic devices, plus more handsets in the future. Nokia pointed out that this was in “selected markets” - clearly those where Google is dominant - so we wouldn’t expect to see it shipped in territories where Nokia has huge market share like India, or in very immature and large foreign language markets like China where Google has less market share. But Nokia promised to make Google search available in 100 countries around the world, in more than 40 languages.
Nokia Search is a location-based search, which will get better as it is more integrated with Navteq. It takes any search and adds a location dimension to it, looking up local directories, which cover around 40 countries already. Nokia Search also offers one-click access to phone a search result, find it on a map or get directions, so Nokia is offering its customers the chance to extend the results of simple Google searches onto systems which Nokia controls - and where, in the mobile world, it is ahead of Google’s own enhanced features.
The sign that tapping into Google’s base while seeking to rob it of power in the enhanced mode is the continued aggressive contest over mapping. Nokia announced a beta version of Nokia Maps version 2.0 with enhanced pedestrian navigation, adding multimedia city guides, satellite images, and a new user interface. This adds Walk, a pedestrian focused navigation component, to the application, while still offering Drive, a car navigation system. It will also be possible for users to buy local multimedia guides to city centers and areas of special interest. Nokia Maps 2.0 also has, for a fee, real time traffic feeds with dynamic re-routing in 18 European countries. Also, Orange and Nokia announced at MWC a memorandum of understanding to partner on value added services such as location-based services, maps, mobile advertising and gaming, which the two say will lead to a strategic partnership during 2008.
Yahoo
Meanwhile, Yahoo - fres`h from rejecting Microsoft’s unsolicited $44.6 billion bid, claiming the offer “substantially undervalues” its worth - showed again what it has been demonstrating recently, that operator alliances may further its mobile cause better than trying to create a whole new approach like Google. Its latest coup is to become T-Mobile’s exclusive mobile search provider in the operator’s northern and central European markets. T-Mobile will introduce Yahoo oneSearch at the end of March, with the two companies planning to develop a differentiated oneSearch experience optimized specifically for T-Mobile subscribers for future release. They also plan to collaborate on introducing T-Mobile incarnations of Yahoo services like Flickr, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance. The offering will focus heavily on ‘federated search’, including contextual responses culled from multiple sources, not just the Web.
Medinux
There’s also Medinux, short for Asianux Mobile Medinux Edition, which is expected to come on phone and non-phone portable computing and Internet access devices that use new Intel chips called Menlow that use less battery power than other chips.
Intel developed Menlow for Web browsing on handsets and other mobile Internet devices. Anand Chandrasekher, head of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, said Menlow can enhance the Internet experience on mobile devices and provide software developers a single platform.
Based on Linux, Medinux is expected to make its first appearance within a few months on various mobile Internet devices that use Menlow.
There’s already a Medinux research center in Beijing and technology support centers in Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo plus one coming up in Taiwan.
Medinux is expected to come on Intel-based mobile Internet devices (MID), typically gear that connects to the Net but not via a mobile phone network, within a few months. The use of Medinux on MIDs that have the low-power Menlow processors and chipsets is expected to allow development of devices that constitute a new category of small, truly mobile consumer devices that provide a PC-like Internet experience - communication with others plus access entertainment and information on the Web.
South Korean software developer Haansoft, a member of the “Asianux” consortium of software companies in Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam, said at last autumn’s Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan that some members of the consortium are collaborating with Intel to develop the Asianux-based mobile operating system.
No comments yet