What will it take for Mobile Computing to become reality? Imagine a world where mobile phone users everywhere intuitively know what their mobile handset has to offer and how to use all the new power at their fingertips. A reality where applications, that simplify a consumer’s daily life, will be the primary reason for buying a new mobile phone – and the aesthetic sex appeal of the mobile handset takes a distant second. A reality where there would be fewer, more uniform mobile operating systems, just like the PC. Needless to say, many things have to come in play for Mobile Computing to take hold and be embraced by masses. I will devote some of my next few blogs to this topic. Let’s begin with the issue of the Mobile OS.
The Mobile OS is one of the few topic where the metaphor "variety is the spice of life" does not apply. While there are enough claims by "industry experts" for each new OS launch that it will become the unifying factor, much like MS DOS, there are an equal number of claims, if not more, that such universal integration will not occur. Since the beginning of 2008 alone, at least three new mobile operating systems, including iPhone, LiMo, and Google's Android, have been released. As if the existing plethora of proprietary operating systems (Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia’s recent purchase Symbian, J2ME and its various incompatible cousins, Qualcomm BREW and Mobile Linux) were not enough.
Theoretically, in the worldwide mobile industry, where four to five hundred new handsets are launched every year, the market would weed out less common or less popular operating systems in favor of moving towards a somewhat unified platform. The results are just the opposite, as new ones keep coming out of the woodwork while the old ones continue to linger, thereby forcing application developers to support several operating systems in order to become marketable. Can you imagine the plight of mobile application developers who have to support all these environments? The test matrix for supporting a single application across most of these operating systems is almost cost prohibitive.
The only beneficiaries of this rapid and rampant deployment of new mobile operating systems are the OS developers and the press, who gains yet another product subject to write about. However, this situation leaves virtually everyone else on the losing side. It’s time for all mobile software developers and users to rise together and begin boycotting new Mobile OSs rather than embracing them. It’s time for every mobile phone consumer out there to be aware of the operating system their phone uses – and its limitations – and demand a unified platform so that the era of Mobile Computing can become a stabilized evolution for new applications.
R. Paul Singh
CEO, PixSense, Inc.
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4 comments:
At the end of the day, why does the consumer need to know which OS they have on their handset? Indeed, why would they even care? No-one asks what OS they have running on their set-top box (for example, Linux), because it is not important. What is important is that it does what it needs to do when the consumer asks it to.
For the vast majority of consumers, so long as their handset makes/receives calls, surfs the web, can access email, play games etc, then they are all happy. Even if you told them which OS they had, it would be meaningless information to them. If I told my mother she was running Symbian on her handset, she's ask me what Symbian was.
I think the argument to consolidate mobile OS to a more manageable number is much more relevant to apps developers (as you state). But, to be honest, many problems faced by apps developers are not due to the OS, but due to discrepancies between firmware releases, and the many in-built apps that come as part of most handsets today.
You make some interesting points. However, I do think that OS matters and as Apps become the new mantra it won't. I still remember many of the proprietary DOS clones like Wang DOS and other computers that became boat anchors due to their OS. Granted, cell phones change more often and so may be many more will rather replace than complain.
Regarding the old grandma argument, she is not likely to buy any apps either and so why bother discussing this because she may still prefer to use the old POTS phone after all.
Yes I agree that app developers face problems of having too many firmwares releases. I do think that too many OS also increase cost of development without adding much in revenue.
A different perspective - couple of points:
1) These niche and new OS's like iPhone give the small players a chance to showcase their product to a wide audience, which wasn't available to them before iPhone and Androids. If they make 'a' product which works very well on 'a' platform, this can serve as launch pad for other platforms via improved funding, etc.
2) For an application like PixSense, out of 100 SEK650 (j2me, basic) owners, maybe 20% are potential users. But 100% of iPhone and Android users are target market due to faster phones, bigger screen, easier navigation, touch options, data savvy users, easy to buy applications, etc.
Your comments are spot on. We just published a very similar article on Iphone Dev Journal that agrees that fragmentation is stifling innovation. And personally I DO think that the consumer cares, not because grandma knows what OS she is running, because she doesn't, but she does expect the app to work consistently across OS but also she just flat out wants it available on her phone. What if her phone was one of the platforms that was deemed a too-small market share, or perhaps OS limitations means it couldn’t functionally work? In this scenario, everyone looses. Furthermore, as mobile and embedded worlds converge, I would extend the OS market even further to all embedded OSs. We’ve positioned our Voyager platform to abstract the OS so the same APIs work universally across Android, .NET, Symbian, and 15+ embedded operating systems. It’s refreshing to finally see the mobile intelligentsia beginning to speak the language of PERVASIVE development.
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