Future of Mobile 08: What's so Smart about Smartphone OSs

Panel discussion chaired by Simon Rockman — Sony Ericsson

This was a rather boring panel discussion: despite Simon’s best attempts to make the panellists squirm, they stayed very tame and non-committal. The best bits was the thinly veiled spatting between Microsoft and Google — but again, this was nothing new…

Panel

• David Wood: Research @ Symbian
• Olivier Bartholot: Purple Labs
• Andy Bush: LiMo
• Rich Miner: Google Mobile
• James McCarthy: Mobile Comms Business @ Microsoft

Why is your OS the best?

• Symbian:
  • Paul Otellini’s demo was based on a big server behind the couch + user experience was a bit rubbish
  • More to be done in terms of cooperation & collaboration
  • Defragmenting: removing all UIs but Series60 (UIQ officially dead)
• Purple Labs:
  • Created in 2001
  • Used to make phones and software, now just software
  • Specialist of Linux on low-tier device — Purple Magic handset
  • Acquired embedded software of OpenWave — including browser, messaging & widget platform
  • Platform is LiMo compliant
  • Acquiring engineers from Sagem + s/w for 2G & 3G phones from TI
  • Hoping to fight fragmentation
• LiMo:
  • gave a good description of how LiMo works as an organisation, but not how it would be better as an OS
• Android:
  • Hardware available, but software not available to make it easy to use for customer
  • Software being designed by hardware engineers
  • So Apple was able to embarrass the industry by coming from a software perspective
  • Google has struggled with building MIDP apps that work on lots of devices
  • Decided to build their own OS — led Android as chief design architects
    • Not as a committee
• Windows Mobile:
  • Started in B2B, syncing PDAs to PCs, then added radio
  • “4 out of 5 top global OEMs signed to run Windows Mobile”
    • though they don’t necessarily run them on their major devices…
  • Of the people on this panel, we’re the only ones with a single entity controlling the architecture
    • spreading FUD as usual… Symbian now totally controlled by Nokia

How does your business model work?

• Android:
  • Google has no direct business model with platform
  • Also have 4 out of 5 top OEMs working on Android handsets :-)
  • Believe that it’s fundamentally important to industry that no one company owns the platform
  • Don’t mind playing on a level playing field, but don’t like someone else owning the platform and having an advantage
    • Want to have powerful devices connected over broadband
  • Focussed on delight & delivering value to consumer
    • Then give useful ads based on understanding of context
    • Not rushing to integrate ads right now
  • Other platforms manage to bloat themselves…
    • Android designed to go downmarket quite easily
    • Runs fine on 200MHz (used this speed chips in design process)
  • Within in next 18mths most devices will be able to support Android
    • Simon Rockman disagrees — still going to be b&w, low end devices in sub $50 market
    • Rich Miner thinks that in developing economies with phone as first screen, there will be big advantages and incentives to have higher feature phones pushed into market
    • I tend to agree with Rich — it’s worth the while of the operators to subsidise handsets in developing countries, so that they get the revenue of usage. Vodafone seems to be going this way already.
• Purple:
  • Latin America buying handsets at $25 but voice only
  • Is a space for low $100 handset
• LiMo:
  • Companies pay for membership fees
  • Can share patents within IP Safe Harbour

Are you disappointed that people just rebadging HTC devices? (to Microsoft)

• Now seeing a lot of success with Samsung too
• Sony Ericsson X1 also made by HTC
• Also lots of ruggedized PDAs
• James not unsettled that HTC adopting Android
  • I think he should be!

Why can Google bring in developers better than Microsoft?

• Always an advantage to start with a clean slate…
• Android also based on a lot of existing pieces

Motorola stopping Symbian and going to Android…

• David Wood: manufacturers currently hedging their bets

What about runtime environments?

• Google: 3rd party dev based on managed code
  • Also browser in the core — can make AJAXy apps using this
  • No reason why there can’t be other runtime environments
  • Believe that native code is best way to write apps
• Microsoft: Also believe that native is best
  • If we need other runtime environments to support customers then will provide them
• Symbian:
  • Development often needs to get to native, so need to solve this problem anyway

What makes a smartphone smart?

• Symbian: Smartphone is programmable
  • Featurephone has features, smartphone open to new features
• Microsoft: Want to provide
  • “Featurephones only support voice calls and text” — what!
• Google (Rich Miner): smartphones haven’t been very smart
  • first smartphones at Orange, could barely make phone calls on them
  • hey, guess what — they ran Windows Mobile :-)