Tech Roundup – Smart Phone Platforms (Contd)

The Mobile World Congress has ended and general feeling among analysts is that of mild disappointment. But for Microsoft’s fiesty introduction of Windows Mobile 7, the MWC would have fallen flat. During my last post, I deliberately stopped short of commenting on M$ as I still had to understand Windows Mobile 7 better. Now lets go…

1. Microsoft & WinMob 7.0: MS impressed mobile enthusiasts with their offering @ MWC’10. WinMob 7.0 has a slick Zune like interface which is both quick and err User friendly. In any case, its evident that MS has laid a lot of emphasis on User Experience. Also, the WinMob application store is up and running but the patronage by developers and consumers is well below par. To improve this MS is offering goodies to developers and start-ups developing Mobile Apps. Another major concern for MS is it lacks solid OEM backing. Nokia and Motorola are out straight away, Samsung, though making Windows phones, is pushing its BADA platform,  LGE makes commitments to all kinds of platform vendors but ends up making very few with each of them and the last major OEM Sony-Ericsson too makes smart phones with various platforms  and WinMob is just one of them. That leaves MS with tier 2 OEMs like Acer, HTC and Asus which have very little market share and this explains MS’s reduced standing in the mobile market. With a good offering now in the form of Windows Mobile 7.0 we have to wait and watch how MS takes upon the likes of iPhone & Android.
2. RIM Blackberry: With a 20% share in the smart-phone segment RIM is another major player with very good grip on an exclusive & premium market. With a great internet ecosystem consisting of services such as Messenger and the usual app-store coupled with a QWERTY keyboard, Blackberry devices are a major hit with executives, managers and other high ranking professionals. The support for Flash and OpenGLES with Blackberry devices is yet another step to market consolidation. These features also clearly distinguish Blackberry devices from iPhone. However the aggressive push by Android is what RIM needs to be wary about. Would like to see how this battle pans out.
3. Samsung BADA: Its very brave of Samsung to introduce a platform to rival others with much more strong backing in the consumer and developer markets. Even if BADA is on par with Android or iPhone OS, where will Samsung get the developers from? Apart from Samsung will any other OEM adopt BADA on a reasonable scale? I think we should know more about this platform by the end of this year and I reserve my comments until then.
4. LiMO & MeeGo: LiMO has released a developer SDK and a few devices in Japan and Korea. But with Android sweeping away the Linux for Mobile paradigm prospects are appearing bleak for LiMO and as of now no Tier 1 OEM is looking to them in a big way. MeeGo is the result of Intel-Nokia partnership and is a consolidation of Moblin and Maemo – both Linux based platforms. MeeGo is being touted as a good bet in the tablet market. IMO, on one side there seems to be consolidation in the smart phone platform arena but on the other side is a desire for product differentiation which is leading to the creation of newer platforms. These are turbulent times and we have to wait and watch who rides the wave.

I am not discussing WebOS as I have not sufficiently studied it, but with plummeting market share and popularity, it will be a marginal player at best.

Tablets were a talking point at MWC 2010. NVIDIA among others displayed their tablet hardware – Tegra in the case of NVIDIA – running Android OS. This market needs to crystallize on the use cases better and would probably gain momentum in the next 1-2 years. Among other interesting demos were low power consuming LCDs and high performance Mobile GPUs from Imagination and Qualcomm Adreno.

That’s it for now and looking forward to a much more happening MWC next year. Cheers!

Tech Roundup – Smart Phone Platforms

The Mobile World Congress begins today in Barcelona an over the next 3 days leading players in Mobile space would be showcasing and crowing about their offerings. This year the talk would be centered on Mobile platforms, operating systems and delivery eco-systems on a larger level. So, I thought this would be a good time to visit the subject and provide my perspective in the capacity of a Mobile Application Developer.

1. The iPhone eco-system: Though I haven’t developed for iPhone, I am very uncomfortable with the pseudo multi-tasking of the platform which has been carried forward to the iPad and this fact has been well documented. BUT, the fact remains that this is the platform that has set the bar for the lesser mortals. The success of its app-store, the huge contingent of iPhone developers, the seamless eco-system and the device’s extra-ordinary reception in the market make it a very formidable proposition. The dominance will continue primarily because competitors like Nokia’s Symbian and Google’s Android are still warming up. What about this for a stat: Apple sold nearly 8.5 mil iPhones in Q4 while Nokia shipped 21 mil Symbian based Smart-phones. So it’s that close now, Apple’s spectacular rise has co-incided with Nokia’s rapid fall from grace.
2. The Android eco-system: I’m currently developing on Android and you can take my word, this is the best platform to develop on for a mobile developer. The tool-chains and the IDE support are top notch and the tasks we can perform are unbelievable. But that’s for the developer. For the consumer, we need not look beyond than Google’s Nexus One. This phone really shows the capability of Android 2.0  and purely with its power, capabilities and features it leaves iPhone far behind. Unlike many who feel that Google has interfered in the market by making this phone and in the process pissing off some OEMs making Android phones, I tend to think that Google has just set the bar and soon Motorola will follow with a comparable phone. ST-Ericsson have announced that they will be building US$150 Android based smart phones. LG Mobile has confirmed that it will be releasing a slew of Android mobile devices and HTC is already in the game. With a constantly improving app-store and a very powerful platform evolving quickly under the hawkish glare of Google, things are looking up for Android. This year is critical – Android needs market winners. Moto sold about 2 mil Droid devices in Q4 ’09, but Android needs some devices in the 30mil units/year category.
3. Nokia: Symbian & Maemo: Just what is Nokia doing. Their stock in the Mobile market has plummeted from the dizzying heights of N-Series heyday of 2005 and 2006. They have bought Trolltech and integrated Qt into the Symbian platform. Symbian has finally released it source until the last line, about 10 days back and they  have partnered  with Microsoft to port their Office software on to Symbian devices. Nokia also released some Communicator devices based on the Maemo platform. Even a pretty good N97 could not stem the rot in 2009. Now, they have split their businesses with the smart phone unit, where all the problems are, headed by a new CEO. Their first priority would be to stop bleeding smart phone market share to iPhone and Android. The UI of Symbian has improved leaps and bounds but there are far too many missing links in the eco-system to compete against Apple and Google. India and China are major markets for Nokia and the bad news is that Nokia is sliding there too. The interesting thing about India is that there are local mobile OEMs (Karbonn, Micromax, Videocon, Orion) picking up market share with sophisticated mobile phones at affordable prices. IMO, Nokia needs some inspirational leadership, aggressive Application Development strategy and a great MMI very urgently lest they might become irrelevant in the smart phone segment or may even fallback on developing Android phone as some people had quipped

(To be continued)