Gabor Torok's Forum Nokia Blog

On Google's move in navigation

2009-11-05T02:37:11+01:00

It's been announced a couple of days ago that turn-by-turn GPS navigation would be supported soon on devices based on Android 2.0 platform. Free of charge. The new Google Maps Navigation offers free turn-by-turn navigation garnished with Google's core business (search by voice and in plain English, search along route) and existing services (traffic, satellite and street views) for Android devices.

I was shocked to hear this news. The two biggest map data providers, Tele Atlas and Navteq, have been acquired a few years ago, former for $2.9bn by TomTom latter for $8.1bn by Nokia. Their main revenue sources were licensed map data and value added services e.g. turn-by-turn navigation. Since Google uses either its own map data or one that is freely available, I think I told everything: they do whatever they want. It is still unknown how Google will monetize on the new service - other than ruining competitors -, but advertisement seems to be a very likely option.

On a related note, I found Bill Gurley's article on Less than free business model quite interesting. Briefly, Google offers Android to OEMs free of royalty, even more, they pay ad split to them. In other words, it's not only that OEMs don't have to pay, but on the contrary, they will get paid. One of the commenters of this article gave a hint on another business model that Google may try to follow: don't bother with ads, but offer a package to navigation device makers, news agencies, automakers, roadside advertisers, etc. A package that is based on continuously updated traffic data that can be used to provide always optimal routing information.

How can competitors react on Google's move? Without own map data it's very difficult to compete with someone who's giving away the same service that we are selling.

Stefan from IntoMobile suggested that Nokia should make map data free and wait for the flood of new mapping services - let's see what innovation will result in. Not a bad idea, but would leave Nokia in a bit of passive role, wouldn't it?
The other option could be to do the same as Google may do in the future: sell a package instead of showing ads (see above). Why Nokia? Because it has maps data. Which platform? It's rather Maemo than Symbian - we're talking not only about mobile phones, but other embedded devices, too.
Finally, the third option is advertising and provide free service. Who? Microsoft doesn't have own map data, but has Bing and Yahoo! search, which is a good basis for advertising. Whereas Nokia doesn't have search, but has maps data (I told you that Nokia should have bought Yahoo!). Perhaps these companies should form an alliance?

Looking forward to your comments,

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Enterprise Mobility Development

2009-10-28T23:06:40+01:00

Some of you might have read one of my previous posts in which I wrote that I had had to choose between mobile and enterprise development mostly for personal reasons. I was sorry to realize this because mobile is my passion, but I thought the change was inevitable. Now I don't.

It's a cliche that the job market is much bigger for enterprise developers than for mobile devs. That was one of the main reasons why I had to change area, too - not as if I didn't enjoy enterprise as well. The interesting thing I've just come to realize that there's a gap between the boundaries of the two areas: it's for people with knowledge on both (otherwise huge) areas. The opportunity is great for both kinds of developers coming from either direction, because it offers a way to reach out even more people.

Now you understand why I read an article the other day with great interest: it described the required skill set for an enterprise mobility developer. First, it just confirmed that my theory was right: there's a need for such people. Second, let me add some more points to the list provided. I could have extended the list on the original blog post, however, for that I should have had an account on that site which I was reluctant to create. Here's the list:

Bandwidth: I think it was network what the author really meant. Bandwidth really is one of the characteristics that one needs to pay attention to, but it's also worth mentioning different types of networks (from 2G to 3.5G, WiFi, VPN, etc.), their main characteristics (e,g IP address re-assignments, frequent network outage), roaming, etc.
Options for development: today's popular web development (very important to note that it's mostly applicable for smartphones only, thus not an option for the vast majority of mobile phones) vs native vs any other environments.
Testing: never-ever forget that emulator/simulator is not the same as the real hardware. Peculiarities of various networks also count (quality, reliability, QoS, etc.).
Option for cross-platform development: one company may target one platform at a time, however, it's also wise to plan ahead and build the foundation with the future in mind.
Deployment, maintenance: app stores vs downloadable install packages from own site. Keeping enterprise service and mobile client versions in sync so that they're always fully inter-operable. Auto-update. Etc.
Monetization, marketing: what I really mean here is making use of app stores as efficiently as possible. It's today's trend for mobile manufacturers to have their own stores and compete with carriers who would also like to monetize on this opportunity (by having their own stores). Sort of a war between vertical (manufacturers) and horizontal (carriers).

And I'm sure we've still missed a lot from the list. In any case, that was my two cents. :)

Cheers,

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Smartphone OS market share - 2012

2009-10-09T20:56:49+02:00

Yes, you read it right: it's 2012. Gartner published a report (link: Computerworld) in which they forecast the following smartphone OS market share for 2012:

We could all see the trend which players remain, disappear or gain strong foothold for a while by now. Nokia has always been the strongest when it comes to smartphones and they will be able to keep their position according to Gartner. They have a huge loyal user base and Nokia as an Internet company and phone manufacturer in one will probably be able to fight successfully against its competitors.

Apple has great technical innovations (form factor, made touch trendy with multitouch, etc.) in addition to the ability to sell (how easy it is to forget about this!). Their tight control on most parts of the mobile value chain is very different compared to what their competitors do, but it has proven to affect user experience in the right way and made this business very profitable for the company.

Google is a goliath in Internet business with huge influence on people's lives already. They use this power to become successful in mobile business with a great strategy: cost reduction for everyone, let it be manufacturers, network operators, developers, users, etc.

All these companies are able to make people passionate about their devices. The term, convergence, has been already accompanied with smartphones in the past few years, however, it's always been about integrating something into the device: MP3 player, FM radio, digital camera, GPS, etc. This time it's different: we're living the age of integrating the mobile phone into an even bigger thing, a cloud called Internet. It's no surprise why Google is successful with Android: people are already dependent on their services and they "only" had to provide the means for mobile users to access these services via their beloved gadgets.

It wouldn't be surprising if these figures became true by 2012. All the remaining players are less innovative (Palm Pre is a copy of iPhone), struggling with finding their identity (M$), are not offering a portfolio that is wide enough (BlackBerry is a business phone), etc. It might be worth noting that data communication will be dominant by 2012 and will drive the growth of MID-market. Wonder if Gartner has reckoned with this, too.

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Ps.: Google Chart API is our friend. :)

Smartphone statistics, 2008

2009-03-12T17:16:54+01:00

Gartner released their statistics about worldwide smartphone sales, which contains useful information not only the previous quarter (Q4 2008), but the whole past year. I'd like to share the following two figures with you:

Comments:

Nokia is still #1, but it's market position is seriously challenged by RIM, Apple and HTC.
Even Apple is suffering from decreased sales in Q4, but that didn't prevent them from being ranked as the third vendor by sales.

Comments:

Symbian had lived better days a year ago, but it's still a bit more than 50% of smartphones that runs this operating system.
RIM and Mac OS X performed exceptionally well even during the tough economical situation.
Although the share of Windows Mobile shrank a bit, it still maintains its third position. Only blinds can't see that not for long.

Finally, some words on regional sales:

Dramatic increase (69%) is experienced in sales of smartphone in North-America, which now accounts for 20% of mobile phones in this region. Carriers are agressivelypushing data plans that is beneficial for vendors, too, offering vertical mobile solutions from hardware manufacturing to providing developer SDKs to cloud services.
While overall device sales dropped, Asia/Pacific recorded a 2.3% growth in smartphone sales.
EMEA region were up by only 2%, Western-Europe sales increased by 9.6%. Samsung drove sales in 2008 with Omnia as its most successful product.

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Transforming mobile industry

2008-10-16T16:44:30+02:00

I read the following quote from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia CEO, in InformationWeek:

"The industry as whole is in the middle of a transformation, and it's a very exciting time," said Kallasvuo. "It's moving from a device industry to an experience industry, and we're making a conscious long-term effort to capitalize on that."

It is so true that it inspired me to write a summary on how things have changed in the "smarter" segment of mobile sector (read:smartphones) lately. Let me recap what was the situation in the near past and then talk about how things are changing recently.

In the classic device manufacturer - network operator - user triangle the roles were as follows (simplified version): user purchases mobile phone from network operator (or elsewhere) and uses those services that are primarily provided by the network operator. The manufacturer never gets any money after purchase and the user is often unhappy with the content/quality of provided (value-added) services.

This is now about to change. The two most important changes (as I see it) are that 1: the above triangle is "rectangularized" by an old/new member of the value chain, a separate content/service provider and 2: that device manufacturers such as Nokia and Apple OR operating system vendors such as Microsoft and Google want to get money after sales, too: they'd like to enter services business. As to point #1, not as if content providers hadn't been present so far, however, the means to access content and the capabilities of devices have not been ideal so far to say the least. As for point #2, there are two reasons why manufacturers would like to enter services business (take it over from operators?): first, there's a great demand from users to consume content that operators have not been good at providing and second, there's great money in it. Apple and Google are very good at providing services now they'd like to be involved in adding new means (i.e. phones) to accessing their services. Whereas Nokia and Microsoft are both in a strong position in smartphone market and naturally they'd like to get more money out of the whole business.

Another aspect in the new business model is whether or not shall mobile OS vendors require license fee for their software to be included in shipping devices. I'm talking about free and open-source mobile OSes, like mobile Linux. Although mobile Linux stacks have not gained so much popularity in the past years, they still do attract manufacturers wishing to lower their bill-of-materials (BOM). Google Android and the new Symbian (Foundation) OS are another two good examples for "license-fee-free software stacks" and Windows Mobile is for fee-based. iPhone's Mac OS X cannot be mentioned here, since Apple doesn't allow anyone to license their software stack, but make everything on their own.

How do mobile OS vendors pamper their developers?

Of course, with a free SDK to develop on. Most of them can be used only on Windows (except iPhone on Mac OS X), true emulation is available on Windows Mobile and iPhone, where development is done on the same platform as the target platform,
Free tools for development. Unfortunately not everything can be done with these tools, but you have to pay for their fee-based version should you need to use more advanced features (e.g. on-device debugging in Carbide.C++),
Signing your own installation package is mandatory for both iPhone and Nokia S60 phones, but not on Windows Mobile and Android. Latter advocates that the user is always capable of making proper decisions on security-related questions and it does not restrict the availability of 3rd-party applications by requiring signature. As Symbian's David Wood put it: let's see what operators will say on it.
As to developer support, old players are in the best position here: there's a great community support for Windows Mobile developers as well as materials to train themselves. The same is true for people who are developing for Nokia phones. Whereas the first non-beta Android SDK has just been introduced (you can imagine the level of support Google provides at such an early stage), not to mention Apple who wanted developers to sign an NDA that essentially prevents free information flow, writing books on development, etc. This has changed recently, since Apple finally scrapped their iPhone NDA and promised a new contract with less restrictions. Note: if Apple hadn't made this step they would have lost the majority of their developers.
Developers reward programs (MVP from Microsoft, Forum Nokia Champion program from Nokia), fee-based support for ISVs willing to pay for advanced services, webinars, trainings, books, etc.
Stores to capitalize on applications, themes, etc.

As to the stores mentioned above,

Apple's (in)famous App Store acts as a central distribution channel for 3rd-party applications. Unfortunately, Apple keeps this place under such a strict control that bitters lots of developers' life who simply don't understand why their programs can't be sold just because they're similar to the built-in applications. On the other hand, Apple keeps only 30% of revenue making App Store more compelling than lots of rival portals, such as Handango.
Having introduced T-Mobile G1 a few weeks ago, Google has also thought that it was a wise idea to create their own Android Market, a market place for downloading Android applications. What is surprising, though, is that Google is not planning to capitalize on sold applications, but expects mainly freebies to populate this place. It wouldn't be Handango if they didn't make the best out of this situation: why not use Handango to get some money for your Android app? It's also worth noting that Google, similarly to Apple, will be able to remove any 3rd-party applications (downloaded from Android Market) from Android-powered handsets if those applications turn out to violate developer distribution agreement.
Nokia already has their Software Market, however, things might change with the start of Symbian Foundation next year: as Antony Edwards from Symbian put it "[they're] pushing hard for a ensuring a zero, or a close as possible to zero, cost to the software vendor: so no cut of revenue for the Foundation".
Finally, Microsoft hasn't maintained their own single portal that ISVs could use for selling their 3rd-party applications, but people had to (and still have to!) use other providers. This article shows what one can conclude from job postings: with the coming of new devices based on Windows Mobile 7 a new portal, SkyMarket will also come in Q1 2009.

Nokia is very keen on transforming from being a device manufacturer to an "internet company". Their Ovi and Mosh are two examples of already launched services, which they just want to further improve with Instant Messaging (by buying OZ Communications) and Comes with Music. On the other hand, whilst strengthening their services portfolio they restructure their businesses so that they focus less on own product development (selling Nokia IntelliSync). Sometimes lowering the prices raises the revenue - wonder how the recent price cut will work out. It's especially important that since more and more people own Nokia devices, it increases after-sales revenue, too.

I've been already thinking on what Microsoft's reaction will be to open source and then found the answer: Steve Ballmer doesn't understand what's good in open source for Symbian and Google and anyway they won't get into handset business as long as they can make a lot of money from software only.

What they've started to work on lately, which you might have already heard of in the news, is 'Windows Cloud' OS. This idea is not new at all, however, it might affect the way how people use their mobile phones today: all you need is a portable device with a tiny display, some computing power and a good browser (you can call it 'smartphone') plus a good connection to the "cloud". Data, business logic, resource intensive heavy computation - all done on remote server(s) and you get only the result to your handset. I wrote 'this idea' was not new, however, what is new is Microsoft's patent on sharing device resources. Now this one is really new, but I don't know how much I can expect from it in real life - what it shows you, though, that it would be too early to write Microsoft off. Side-note: let me recommend you Ajit Jaokar's thought-provoking blog on how network operators could make use of cloud computing.

One more point to add to why M$ is not to enter the handset business today: HTC, designer & manufacturer of feature-rich phones, says that although they can see the potential in Android devices they do belive that Android and Windows Mobile complements each other.

As to Android, it's amazing to read about the ambitious plan to reach 4% US market share by the end of 2008. If that's so easy with a single device, a not perfect software and hardware AND suppose that they will achieve it - may I ask how on Earth Nokia could not do the same?

Anyway, I found a great analysis over at Telco 2.0 on the strategic impact of Google's first handset on the mobile industry. I especially liked the statements, such as "increasingly intense competition with new entrants who are willing to change the rules" and "the world in which handset manufacturers crammed the latest technology into devices simply for the sake of having the best specification sheet and operators flogged them to consumers on the basis of megapixels and memory is changing" and finally "it has been fascinating to watch ‘old school’ industry commentators pick apart the technicalities of the G1 spec sheet and Android platform, all the while forgeting to look at this announcement through the customer’s eyes".

Finally, some words about other members of the mobile industry whom we don't hear much about (well, at least I haven't lately).

Sony Ericsson has rationalised their R&D investment recently. This move, however, didn't prevent them from announcing a new run-time environment, called Capuchin, mixing Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite technologies. SE is eyed-up on Android, too, not only Windows Mobile (Xperia X1) and Symbian so this along with Capuchin will make their way to follow Nokia's approach by offering lots of alternatives for mobile software development.
Motorola is also interested in Android, so much that they are building-up a team of 350 people to develop on Android.
Samsung is not interested in anything else but manufacturing. This will not make their position stronger in today's competing market.

That's all for now about mobile industry news, thanks for reading so far!

All comments are welcome,

Tote
mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Silicon Valley doesn't respect Nokia

2008-08-20T23:57:50+02:00

In response to the article I found on Forbes.com, Nokia Software Problem, let me collect my remarks on the statements in a single post. The list of statements below simply follows the same order as they appeared in the original article.

"Nokia sells close to half of all smart phones worldwide"
Well, around 70% would be more accurate, but then it couldn't have been said that "close to half".

"N95's only edge was in watching video"
Hmm, let me smile at it. I think GPS, 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, etc. also come in handy every now and then. These things were all new in a Nokia device at the time when N95 was introduced and although Nokia might not have been the first in introducing them, the point is that video was not the only thing users could enjoy.

"Symbian is not dead, but it has a limited amount of time to act to capture developer mind share before it is too late,"
I don't know how many times I wrote this on various forums: developing for a Symbian-based device does NOT mean pure Symbian/C++ development. On the contrary, the range of possibilities is much wider: you can program in Flash (Lite), Java (Mobile), Python (for S60/UIQ), (Open) C, Widgets, .NET, NS Basic, etc. My question is not solely addressed to Apple: is there any other manufacturer in the world who can compete with this at this very moment? Is it the not-closed-but-not-too-open-either Apple who although enables Objective-C development, but nothing else? For example, Java, which is not only available on all other platforms, but also the primary language for 3d-party development on Android? Not as if I had heard too many good things on iPhone developer support, but are they really the ones who will save the world?

"Applications written for the iPhone, by contrast, will run on every iPhone."
Ehh, typically naive, beginner approach. I wouldn't write an article if I were such a beginner, though. How many iPhone models can we talk about at the moment? Two. There's a rumour on Apple introducing iPhone Nano still this year and I bet that that device would introduce variation both in hardware (e.g. screen size) and software. And having spent almost a decade with mobile software development, I can tell you that software development becomes exponentially more complex with the introduction of variations. I think we should get back to this question in 1-2 years time-frame and then we'll see how programs written for old models will work on new ones and vice versa.

"Carriers here have been loath to give Nokia much love over the years"
Yeah, this one is a hit on the nail. I find it very interesting how much North-American carriers favour US phone manufacturers (Palm, Microsoft, Apple) and Canadians (RIM). It is one of the root causes (if not THE) why Nokia has failed to successfully enter North-American market.

As to developing software for mobile platforms, it's worth noting that it's becoming more and more popular to rely on a thin client software responsible mainly for the User Interface, while storing data and implementing heavy business logic on a remote server. So often, the thin client is a browser or an application capable of providing "browser-like" behavior. This is something iPhone, the latest Nokia S60 phones, Windows Mobile are (and the newcomer Android will be) good at. And lots of people say that this architecture is the most suitable solution for cross-(mobile)platform software.

In my opinion, it's too early to talk about the dethronement of Nokia by Apple and RIM. Just count the number of phones sold, how many models various manufacturers have on market, how long has a manufacturer been on market, etc. and we'll have just the right amount of information ... to be silent. The author of the article fails to see that global market is not equal to American market, over-emphasizes the importance of Silicon Valley and can't think of the possibility that these platforms, devices, manufacturers can co-exist with one another.

Otherwise the article was good,

Tote :)
mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Brief status report about smartphone market, mid-2008

2008-08-07T23:21:06+02:00

Having followed the news of mobile industry in the past week, I thought it would be worth collecting some articles in a single post to see things from a bird's view, thus having a better overview on what's been going on lately on smartphone market.

RIM has been getting stronger in US market and Palm is unhappy with that. Although Palm's popularity had started to fall even before Apple entered mobile phone market, the new iPhone has just "helped" to boost the process. As to Apple, new countries have confirmed August launch enabling iPhone (3G) to gain bigger popularity and increasing its market share in other countries than US. In addition, the name of iPhone Nano has appeared again whispering words about the introduction of this device still this year. Apple is on its way to become stronger and stronger, but they're still in the "Other" segment of mobile devices according to ABI Research. And if Apple is making tsunami "from the bottom", Nokia is doing the same from the top with their price cut - I wouldn't like to be the stuffing in this sandwich.

It seems that we're living the time of foundations: this time it's LiMo that has picked up 11 new members to become stronger in the fight against Google OHA and Symbian Foundation. With the first LiMo handsets out, I wonder how they can catch up with industry leader Symbian, the also very powerful Windows Mobile and the likes. I did not mention Android deliberately, because to me it still exists only on "paper".

As to the creator of Windows Mobile, it's already well-known that Microsoft's Silverlight will come to S60. What is rumoured now, though, that Zune would also be available on Nokia devices. Zune clearly a competitor to Nokia's Ovi - will M$ and Nokia ever join their forces to fight against their newest pretender? I bet Apple will never open MobileMe to non-Mac device owners.

A new feature has been introduced on Ovi.com, namely file sharing, a fee-based storage option. Files on Ovi is a similar service to MobileMe's iDisk. As to MobileMe, the transition from .Mac to MobileMe was not as smooth as Apple had hoped. As Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, said "It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store". Well, although lots of people already think that Apple can only teach things to other players in mobile arena, I stronly believe that the opposite is also true.

Finally, let me recommend an article that well-deserved the title of post of the week at Carnival of Mobilists. The great post written by Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile was definitely a very useful foundation of this article.

Interesting times we're living,

Tote
mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Collection of great materials on Symbian going open-source

2008-07-01T14:15:26+02:00

My regular readers may wonder why I've been silent on the great news of the mobile industry: Symbian is going open-source. The reason is simple: I was so shocked to hear it in the news that I just sat back watching the flood of new blogs and comments trying to digest this new information. But I've been digesting it, too. Other people whom I respect and think knowledgeable in this area have written their opinion and I'm now about to collect some of them in a blog and share it with you.

Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile was one of the fastests in commenting the news. He concluded that it was a logical move from Nokia (and Symbian, etc.) both from technical and business point of view:

" ... [Symbian] was crippled without control of the UI, application stack and the core OS under the same entity"
Eclipse (EPL) license is a weak one, which will make it desirable for OEMs to choose it.

He was also the first to point out that this move would cause lay-offs and some hard times for the following industry players:

SonyEricsson and Motorola: they will eventually have to give up with UIQ, since S60 will be the dominant UI and ecosystem and S60 will basically swallow both UIQ and MOAP(S).
Android's royalty-free, open source business model is not the only compelling alternative for OEMs, operators, etc. On the contrary, Symbian has already proved whereas Android has not yet.

Simon Judge over at Mobile Phone Development comments that " ... full access to the platform code allows for much more innovative applications using facilities that are currently hidden" and all this "only" for $1.500 is definitely a step forward.
He also cleverly notes that "Nokia and Symbian now see licensing the OS as a dead end" - I wonder what Microsoft will comment on it?
Finally, he raises his concerns on a technical question, backward compatibility: "... [the announcement] doesn’t explain whether this is source code, binary or application compatibility" - we wouldn't like to face with such a big break as what we did with the introduction of Platform Security, would we?

Mobile Opportunity's Michael Mace hails Nokia for their courage. He suspects, though, that "... the announcement is actually half cleanup and half power move: ... The power move is that it challenges Android ... The cleanup is that the ownership situation of Symbian was unstable and had to be changed eventually, and SonyEricsson clearly wanted to get out of the UIQ business".
He also asks what will drive Symbian developers after this change? While he believes that developers "respond to user excitement and the chance to make lots of money", he fails to see how the new Symbian strategy drives either one.
Finally, Michael points out that the longer it will take for Symbian Foundation to kick off, the bigger the advantage for Apple and Android. What about Microsoft? "This is Microsoft's ultimate open source nightmare, becoming real.

Rafe Blanford from AllAboutSymbian has written about Symbian Foundation unwrapped. He says that the tranformation of Symbian OS to a royalty-free, open-source system is according to today's industry philosophy and whilst it's a logical move forward it would not have been possible 10 years ago, since "...companies would have been unwilling to let Nokia or anyone else have such a dominant position". The new Symbian OS will challenge LiMo, Android and the likes on their own strength and "negates their key advantage". Apple's iPhone might be not affected, according to Rafe, since "it is difficult to see how Apple will expand to become a significant overall player in mobile space (rather than an individual niche player with lots of press attention)".

The hypothetical ("10 years old") problem Rafe was referring to is supported by The Register, too. They say, "the most damaging problem is that Symbian's licensees may have no desire to make Nokia stronger now that it owns the operation 100 per cent".
They also worry about that "the 'Foundation' may also prove to be an expensive liability for Nokia".
Finally they write that "it's largely Nokia that must be blamed for failing to make Symbian phones remotely 'enchanting' ..." and "... today it's the iPhone which has the enchantment factor. ... Symbian has done everything its original designers asked of it - a twenty year lifespan is not bad at all. But it's now Apple's business to lose."

Apple and world dominance. What about Microsoft? They're still bigger than Apple at least in terms of mobile OS market share, aren't they? Well, we've already got used to the style Microsoft comments similar announcements, thus it must not have come as a surprise that they have welcomed this move. To be more accurate, they have "welcomed the transformation of the Symbian mobile-phone platform into an open source project, because the software giant contends the change will create a host of new problems for the Symbian community." Sweet, isn't it? They use FUD referring mainly to the big 'F', fragmentation, saying that "there are more Linux consortiums that come and go than there are Linux phones".

Which might be true, actually. But don't lump Symbian and mobile Linux together. David Wood, EVP of Research at Symbian, has written a lengthy article about how he (and Symbian) sees this problem. He argues that 1: fragmentation really is a problem, 2: Symbian has the experience and ability to handle it. As opposed to Google, for example, says the side-note. :)

Finally, it's worth paying attention to Ajit Jaokar's article, who warns that "it is not possible to compare Symbian vs. Android; or Symbian vs. iPhone .. because it is not possible to mix operating systems with ecosystems". These are like "apples and oranges" in terms of "iPhone, Ovi and Android are ecosystems. In contrast, Symbian and Limo are operating systems or Operating system consortia". It's another lengthy article that is worth reading.

So I've been silent and haven't commented this news yet. Why? Because there are so many people to listen to ...

What about you?

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Browser as an application platform

2008-06-19T01:10:10+02:00

I've read the following analysis from ARCchart with great interest. I'm already familiar with the idea of writing applications for mobile browsers and that it can be considered as a real alternative for mobile software development. WidSets and Widgets are all around us, not to mention Flash Lite, Silverlight, two cross-platform solutions used for delivering (multimedia) content to more and more people.

The main point of ARCchart's article was to point out that the whole problem of fragmented mobile development could be solved by developing to a single run-time environment: the browser. The browser, which is today's most widely used applications on desktop and mobile computing devices alike.

What is this fragmentation thing, one could ask? Well, let's have a quick look at various mobile platforms, development environments:

It's a known fact that Symbian/C++ opens the door to the wide variety of native features of S60 and UIQ devices, however, it still has a steep learning curve and its programming environment is not too developer-friendly, either, compared to e.g. Java. The vast majority of smartphones are running on Symbian operating system (whether iPhone-fans admit it or not), however, development is often more (cost-)efficient for other platforms. Portability is a serious issue in Symbian.
Windows Mobile devices are very popular in North-America, especially among business users. However, its popularity is way behind Symbian phones' anywhere else in the world and don't forget the fact that there are much more consumers than prosumers. On this platform, you can write native applications in Win32/MFC/.Net, however, these applications are rarely portable across other platforms.
Java? Hell, it's the king of fragmentation in terms of supported (or rather unsupported) features, so-called JSRs. Even though it was supposed to bring the Paradise to mobile software developers, it's still suffering from severe problems.
What else? Linux? Show me some popular Linux-powered phones first and how people are making cross-platform, backward compatible programs for them.
iPhone? Mac OS X with its Objective C just increases variation. Even though C++ can also be used for programming and there are, for example, attempts to port JME programs to Obj-C, as I said: it just increases variation, which is the nightmare of programers.
Android? Although the whole system is based on mobile Linux, the primary development language will be Java. But which Java? Google's own. And although it's said to be a solid foundation for Google OHA members, it's still only a recommendation for them to choose whether various features will be supported in their devices or not. You can imagine how it affects fragmentation in the Java world - it will just make it even more complex.

Now how does a browser come into play? I'm sure that most readers of this blog have already heard of WebKit, an open source browser engine enabling mobile browsers to show and handle full-web content. It is used in Mac OS X's Safari (iPhone browser), Nokia's S60 browser, the built-in browser of Google's Android will also be WebKit-based, not to mention Digia's @Web, a recently announced port of WebKit for UIQ phones. Although there are other good browsers, too, such as Opera Mobile and IE in Windows Mobile, WebKit seems to be becoming the de facto standard in mobile devices (which is not necessarily a bad thing). It's also worth mentioning Opera Mini and TeaShark at this point, two Java-based browsers, both using remote back-end servers for pre-processing full-web content and showing only the digested content formatted for resource-constrained devices. Side-note: it's also WebKit that is running on TeaShark's back-end servers. :)

So is ARCchart right or not? Is the browser the ultimate solution for mobile software development? In my opinion yes and no. They're right that mobile browsers and complementing technologies (such as Flash Lite) are becoming more and more powerful, capable of rendering extremely complex web pages, performing surprisingly smart functions, letting the user interact with active content, exchanging data with remote servers, etc. However, whilst "older" web technologies (e.g. JavaScript) are not powerful enough to compete with the power of real programming languages, newer ones (e.g. Flash Lite) have not been widely adopted yet. For example, for a quick and very brief reference as to what the different versions of Flash Lite can and cannot do, visit this link. And even though there's not too much variation here yet, there will be: newer versions of Flash Lite will require developers to keep track of which mobile phone supports which version, how to distinguish between Silverlight and Flash Lite applications, etc. I'm afraid it won't be any different in the end.

In my opinion, web-based technologies will open up new alternatives (they've already done so, actually) for mobile software: not necessarily too complex ones, but at least enjoyable. And this is exactly what most people are looking for: they'd like to enjoy using these programs. These new kind of programs that complete the whole picture, add to it, but will NOT replace yet older but still powerful technologies.

Can hardly wait for your comments,

Tote

Nokia stirs water with mobile Linux

2008-05-22T10:37:02+02:00

It seems it's time for another round to discuss about whether Nokia will abandon Symbian OS in favour of (mobile) Linux. All About Symbian has reported that "Nokia's Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones". This information is confirmed by Unwired View as well, although in a slightly different tone: they say "Nokia sees increasing role of Linux in handsets". Finally, El Reg is saying that "Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux".

Who to believe? Having read the comments carefully, people seems to have the following opinions/see the following options:

The biggest haters of Symbian say that it's natural that Linux will take over and this is exactly what they've always claimed.
According to a bit more careful opinion, these two mobile operating systems will co-exist. There are couple of arguments for this scenario:
- Symbian/S60 is undoubtedly the leader in smartphone market
- There's room for both OSes: Symbian excels in high-performance mobile phones, whereas Linux could be successful in mid-range feature phones.
- Nokia has already heavily invested in the development of a mobile OS and is a nearly 50% shareholder of Symbian these days - why would they ruin all this?
- The development of a smartphone running on Linux still takes a LOT of time.
Some more paranoid commenters say that "Linux is not really a threat for Symbian, but rather a motivation" to work & perform even better in today's extremely competing environment (i.e. mobile OSes and smartphone market). They believe that Nokia wants to make pressure on Symbian by announcing new Linux-powered devices from time to time.
Finally, there are those who don't give a sh.t to what OS is running on a phone, they "just" want their Flash/Python/Java/etc. applications (whether they wrote them or not) to run smoothly in the future, too. Some of these people also mention that it's the same if the OS gets replaced, the UI (i.e. S60) is what's important - and if it remains, nothing will change actually.

Personally, I think that Nokia is still making experiments with Linux. Don't forget that they already have mobile Linux devices (Internet tablets running on Maemo platform), though, those are not mobile phones, just sort of PDAs. In today's fragmented mobile Linux market, no one mobile manufacturers dare to commit themselves to take Linux as the leading operating system for their products - it would simply be way too risky. It's been also said numerous times that there are lots of factors that manufacturers must consider when selecting a mobile OS and Linux is definitely NOT the ultimate solution today. Nokia might abandon Symbian in the future, however, it's not time for that. Yet.

Original from mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com.

Any thoughts?

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