A two horse race for mobile operating systems? Not so fast …

… to jump to conclusions (excuse the horse racing pun about jumping)

It wasn’t too long ago that many wireless pundits were talking about the two horse race between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems.  They were fairly fast to dismiss RIM, Symbian, MeeGo, webOS, Windows, Java and several others.

Then we saw Apple’s continued “bullying” of the industry including its locked down app distribution approach, its insistence on 30% of all subscription revenues (even from publishers that don’t have 30% margin to give away), and its aggressive stance against “innocent” developers that were using the words “App Store”.  Those cease and desist letters were not pretty.

Then we saw Google’s acquisition of a device manufacturer – Motorola.  Now that really shook things up.

So, just when we thought that after a decade of fragmentation things were settling down, it could all be up in the air again.  On Friday I spoke with Caroline Lewko, she heads up the Wireless Industry Partnership, and she wrote the following in her e-newsletter;

While I was at the Intel devcon this week, someone made a comment that there is only room for 4 platforms in the industry.  Intel expressed that they aimed to be #5, with the newly announced Tizen platform (the combined Meego, Limo and Linux Foundations, supported by Intel and Samsung).

That begged the question – who is #4?  There was common agreement that Apple, Android and Microsoft were the top 3.  Interestingly there was a lot of discussion and consensus that the #4 spot belonged to Amazon, due to their integration with a proven retail model.  Not that they really have their own platform… yet… (rumours of a webOS fit are rampant), but the fact that Amazon is already in your wallet shows a similar pattern to what Apple did with the music store start.

So who is #4?

Check out all the great work that WIP does within the wireless industry at their website.

Anyway, if it’s not a two horse race any more, who are the other thoroughbreds bringing up the rear or making a big push for home as they turn the final corner?  Here are my thoughts, but I would love to hear yours.

LiMo, MeeGo, WhereWillTheyGo

Maybe, just maybe, they will be a contender, as Caroline highlighted above, because of the backing of Intel and Samsung.  But I won’t be betting on that horse anytime soon, neither will the developers that I know.

Microsoft Windows Mobile

There is a growing sentiment towards Windows by developers, especially now that Nokia has committed to make lots of phones based on the OS.  Microsoft and Nokia now have to deliver large volumes of phones, apparently they are revealing them next week.  They need to be in market quickly, otherwise Nokia’s CEO’s shares in Microsoft will plummet (ouch, did I really say that?! – Well it’s true, click here).

webOS

There was Palm, then Palmsource, then PalmOS, then HP acquired it and it became web OS, what a checkered past!

OK, so HP have now decided to ditch all of it, but webOS is a great operating system and there are strong rumours that Amazon or someone equally powerful will pick it up.  HP’s fire sale on tablets running webOS also shows that people will buy any OS if the price is right (quite ironic after the HP fire sale that Amazon called their new tablet “Fire”.)  With Amazon’s might, webOS could quickly become the third OS.  Developers will flock to webOS if there is a ready-made money-making distribution channel such as Amazon.

BlackBerry

People are too fast to write off RIM.  Unlike Google’s and Apple’s semi-aggressive dominant stance, if anything RIM has been a little too Canadian and laid back, but has never done anyone any harm.  They don’t have any conflicts of interest (whereas one could argue that Android does now, with the Motorola acquisition).  They make great hardware, they have an incredibly rich platform, and QNX is a superbly designed OS just waiting to get some traction in the market.  RIM will once again have its day in the sun, and the BlackBerrys will ripen again.  Unless they get acquired in the meantime, that rumor mill is working overtime right now.

Samsung Bada

Now this is a dark horse.  Not many OEMs could make a proprietary platform fly, but Samsung has the might and staying power (and market share) to make Bada relevant if it wants to.  I believe Samsung will put bets on at least 2 horses, maybe 3, because they won’t bank solely on Android / they have terrific Windows experience / they own Bada.  Let’s also remember that not everyone in the world is buying smartphones, the featurephone uptake is still huge and Samsung are dominant in that space, hence why Bada could be significant.

Oracle Java (JavaME)

This week I am attending, and presenting at, Oracle OpenWorld 2011 and JavaOne, in San Francisco.  With 100,000 attendees it is the world’s biggest technology conference.  I will write a further blog article at the end of the week on my findings.  Do remember that Oracle is one of the world’s biggest companies, and Java is such a ubiquitous technology (in everything from Blu-Ray players to TVs to set-top boxes as well as over 2 Billion phones), so don’t think that they couldn’t change the game if they wanted to.  Their lawsuit against Google shows that they care about their Java platform.  JavaME gets more sophisticated with each release, so as the handset manufacturers and carriers get increasingly worried about the dominance of Apple and Android, don’t be surprised if they gravitate back towards Java.  Hands up though if you remember SavaJe, that could have been a game changer but it fizzled out.

Adobe

There’s never a dull day in this industry – on Monday of this week Adobe acquired PhoneGap, the HLTM5 app porting guys, that’s another amazing move in this horse race.  Adobe clearly care about mobile, and Flash continues to be a strong method of serving up content, especially now that all tablets apart from the iPad support Flash.  So Adobe now have Flash and HTML5 authoring tools, what will their next move be?  Here’s a good analysis at Rethink Wireless.

Browser-based operating systems

There’s Google’s Chrome OS of course.  Also, take a look at this, a new entrant, Carbyn (strange name), http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/15/carbyn/, they have built an OS using HTML5!  There are also murmurs that Microsoft’s Silverlight could go the same way.  If in the future everything is served up via the browser, will the underlying OS be as important anyway?

Finally, a word from history – Symbian

When Symbian was announced in 1998 (as the next step beyond that great British invention Psion), it represented a consortium of all the big players and such was destined to be the de-facto OS of the smartphone era.  However companies dropped out of the consortium (in the end not everyone wanted such a level playing field) so eventually Nokia picked it up and tried to run with it.  Then they had the idea to spin it back out as open source under the guise of the Symbian Foundation.  That didn’t work either so they brought it back in-house again, then they decided to can it, then they outsourced it to Accenture.  It’s exhausting just to write about it!

The saddest thing for me was an email from Nokia saying something like “Symbian is being closed, you can contact us to obtain all Symbian code and documentation on a CD or USB stick.”  12 years of mobile pioneering, condensed onto a USB stick and thrown away.  At least the USB stick was useful afterwards.

Summary

It would be unreasonable of me to try to predict where any of the above is heading, because I failed to predict that Google would acquire Motorola, that Adobe would acquire PhoneGap, or that HP would launch devices running webOS and then scrap webOS a few weeks later.  Can you predict what might happen next, and whether the race is over or whether there are still some fresh stallions in the stables waiting for their big run?

Terry

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