With the LiMo Foundation and the Open Handset Alliance forging ahead with Linux, and Motorola signing up new Windows Mobile licencees, as well as acquiring Danger, the battle for control of mobilephone OS is far from over, says Keith Dyer
With mobile OS a hot topic at the moment, evidenced by Sony Ericsson's licensing of Windows Mobile and Arun Sarin's call for consolidation in the area during his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress, The LiMo Foundation was in bullish mood as it announced that Orange and Access had joined the group during MWC '08.
Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation, said there were now 18 "LiMO" mobile phones, with 15 of them commercial, two being reference designs and one a prototye.
The company also announced Release 1 of its platform, and had published all its APIs for public access on its website, Willis said, proving that the Foundation is about producing actual code for real phones."We are not a standards body," Willis said.
Access joining the group, which already includes Motorola, means that the two biggest investors in the development of Linux based mobile OS are now under the LiMo umbrella. Both companies are estimated to have invested upwards of a billion dollars in platform development, and will be looking for a business model that offers them some return on that investment.
One operator member of the LiMo Foundation we spoke to said he was OK with that idea.
"We're in this because we want to see open standards and access at the application layer, to drive innovation and make development easier, and reduce our own platform support demands," he said. "If companies can differentiate and add value around their own IP, then that's fine too," he said.
Willis said that he was sure Access would want to contribute elements of its ALP development to LiMo code and future releases.
Although LiMo talks about a consolidated, de-fragmented, mobile Linux platform, in fact phones can be called LiMo phones at the moment if they have included some element of the LiMo code. Full compatibility, with certified applications that can be developed once and deployed across the whole platform, will probably only arrive with Release 2, Mahesh Veerina, chief executive officer of Azingo, which makes Linux based platforms for mobile phones, said.
Veerina said that the goal of LiMo was to arrive at a consolidated mobile Linux platform, but that the landscape was still currently quite fragmented. He admitted that there would also be a Linux flavour under Android and the Open Handset Alliance but he contrasted the approach of the two groups.
"We have a management board, a set of rules and policies which all the players agree to. Where is the control in the OHA? It sits with Google – member of the OHA sign a three page document agreeing to Google's terms and they are members. But the two approaches are very different."
Although many portray Linux development as a direct rival to Symbian -S60 and Windows Mobile, as well as Android, Veerina thinks that the real game lies in the mass middle market of phones, nearly all of which are developed on vendor specific, proprietary OS's.
"The bottom billion phones, which are essentially voice devices, will stay as they are, and the top 10% will stay with the likes of Symbian, Windows Mobile and some Linux, as well as Apple. But the two to three billion phones that sit in the middle, that's the opportunity for Linux, because it opens the mass market up to the sorts of applications that at the moment are only available at the top tier."
Veerina's argument is that it is the cost of developing and porting applications to so many different proprietary OS that is limiting the market, as well as placing strains on operators to support multiple OS.
The LiMo Platform itself has a goal of building on industry standards and open-source software – and includes a secure run-time environment for downloaded applications. The OS has a modular design supporting core functions extended with plug-ins. The architecture is intended to be hardware independent, with hardware-specific modules used to make the same basic software work with any hardware.
Meanwhile, the other OS developers would not accept the portrayal of their market as being merely the elite top ten percent of the market.
Symbian's ceo Nigel Clifford, Symbian CEO, announcing a revenue increase of 17% during 2007,Said that_Symbian "aims to grow its share of the mobile phone market by increasingly driving Symbian OS into mid-range phone segments". Analysts are predicting 1 billion mobile phones based on an advanced open operating system will be in the market by end of 2011, Symbian claims.
"Symbian's share of the market grew from five percent in 2006, to seven percent in 2007._Since the first shipment of a Symbian phone in 2000 the world's leading handset manufacturers have shipped a total of 188 million phones based on Symbian OS. They are also benefiting from the scalability of Symbian OS, deploying it in mass market phones to help differentiate their devices and deliver faster shipment times-to-market," Clifford said.
Microsoft too is expanding the range of its phone business. Its mobile communications business international marketing director John Starkweather, speaking about Sony Ericsson's launch of the X1, the first of several Windows Mobile devices (previously Ericsson smartphones have been built around Symbian OS and UIQ software), he said that even the remaining company holding out against Microsoft might as well take the who step and license Microsoft.
"Nokia has so much Microsoft technology in there it would be cheaper for them to license Windows Mobile – and I'm looking forward to the day we can make that official," he said.
It's not the only hint Microsoft has dropped that it might be close to getting its software platform onto Nokia phones, although it's not impossible Starkweather was being slightly mischievous.
So is Nokia going to license to Windows Mobile?" "We speak to them about it all the time," Starkweather said. Which isn't quite the same thing. And Nokia has flatly denied it too. But as Starkweather pointed out, they've had a fair few Microsoft licenses for a while now.
Another Microsoft announcement was the acquisition of Danger, the company that makes the software for T-Mobile's Sidekicks. Microsoft is being less than forthcoming about what it will do with the company. but has a number of options. Certainly, it can leave Sidekick alone and add the revenue from the Sidekick relationship and possibly license the Danger OS, its "service delivery engine" and other features to other interested mobile device manufacturers. But if you consider Microsoft's efforts on behalf of Windows mobile, this makes little sense. Technology is another matter. Perhaps Microsoft sees an opportunity in Danger's wares to subsume the massive power of the Windows Mobile 6 client under a much happier, simpler interface that could appeal to a whole new market for Microsoft: the teen market. A new killer form factor and touch screen could extend the brand.
And then there is Android, Google's Linux OS which still managed to be the talk of Mobile World Congress, despite barely being there in an official capacity. Google launched Android, an open development platform in November. Phones sporting the Android software are expected out later this year. Google also announced the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 handset manufacturers, carriers and chipmakers that have said they plan to support Android products and services.
Vistors to the processor designer ARM Holdings stand though did get a look at a private demonstration of Android.
ARM showed Android based software running on a prototype device using ARM9 processor technology, with a mocked up handset resembling something like a QWERTY keyboard smartphone. Interestingly, Bob Morris, director of platform solutions for ARM, said the ARM9 technology used on the demonstration prototype is now used on mass market phones, meaning the functionality being demonstrated could be extended beyond the smartphone market.
Expanding on that theme, James Bruce, North American mobile manager for marketing at ARM, said that it's not so much what Android allows cell phone users to do, but rather what it doesn't require handset chip and device makers to do.
"Android provides a complete application framework, which can be put on chipsets with a lot less work," he said. Android should simplify the process of getting a new phone and new applications to market, its supportes claim.
There's no doubt that today, the cell phone market is extremely fragmented – and that's what caused Sarin to make his plea at Mobile World Congress. Every manufacturer has its own operating system for phones, making it difficult for everyone involved in the hardware and software manufacturing to develop products quickly – because they have to design functionality for each software iteration.
Google's claim for Android is that it alleviates this problem, because it provides a common operating system and development platform that has all the basic functionality baked in. But the software, which is based on a version of Linux, is also open enough to allow application developers to design new applications and services for the device.
But there's that one recurring snag – this is pretty much what Symbian says, what Microsoft says, and indeed what other Linux based OS developers, especially the LiMo Foundation, say, about their own platforms.
The truth may be that, despite the concerns of operators, the handset market is plenty big enough to support multiple OS. The challenge may yet come in defining interoperability and functionality at the application layer, work that has been undertaken by the OMTP, amongst others. If that could be achieved, then value could be created for all players, right up to the operator.