The Battle of Mobile OS is about to begin…
Carlos Icaza, Ansca Mobile
A few weeks back, Walter, my co-founder, wrote about the fate of Android. Today, I will expand on that with my view of things.
There has been a lot said about Android and Apple iDevices lately. Not a day goes by where we don’t learn about a new study that shows that Apple users have installed far more apps on their iPhone than Android users, or that Android devices have surpassed the number of Apple devices, that the number of ad impressions on Android devices have surpassed iAds impressions, and so forth.
At some point the data becomes useless, biased, inaccurate, and misinterpreted. All this oftentimes leaves a sour taste with developers trying to develop for either one of the platforms. This information overload is hindering developers’ perspective on which manufacturer they should be developing for. And for Android, fragmentation is another one of those issues that has truly become a nightmare. Just ask several of our users targeting the 1.6 type class of devices — performance is a huge issue! Some of our developers are even asking us to stop work on the lower-end Android OS because of customers leaving one-star ratings for poor performance.
I can go on and on about this topic for quite a while, but there is something else I want to share. Looking at the future of mobile operating systems, I think that the real battle is just about to begin. Really.
Android vs. iOS? That is just the tip of the iceberg.
Let’s look at the rest of the playing field…
- RIM: They have their own OS. The Playbook seems to be a hybrid of QNX and Adobe Air (don’t know why they chose Air, but I’m am not running the company!). I have to wonder what type of performance and battery issues they must be going through. QNX is an OS made for low voltage devices; combine that with a CPU hog like Adobe Air, and — oh wait, I’m diverging.
. - Samsung: For as much as they tout their Galaxy series to be Android-based, bada is actually the real OS behind Samsung. bada (apparently, not capitalized!) is very well-known outside of the U.S. but I think Samsung chose Android just to get their devices introduced in the U.S.Outside of the States, Samsung is pushing really strong for developers to use bada. So far in the U.S., programmers I talk to have never heard of bada, but it will be not long before they’re all very much aware of it.
- HP recently bought Palm, and just announced the TouchPad. The new Palm devices are running — guess what? Their own OS! Also, with 85% market penetration and shelf space all over Best Buy, Staples, and Office Depot, HP may prove a worthy competitor to Apple. Also, from a personal perspective, looking a their developer website compared to Android’s, well, just saying! (Android’s website looks like it was last updated in 1996) Of course, site aesthetics should not be the basis for judgment — so I’ll just reiterate that HP/Palm chose to develop their own mobile OS from scratch instead of using Android.
- Motorola: They are introducing the XOOM tablet, which is based on Honeycomb (a.k.a. Android 3.0). So, we should leave them out of the picture, right?
.
No. Wrong.Motorola is working on their own OS, that is my hypothesis. It doesn’t take a genius to look at colleagues’ profiles and see quite a number of them moving to Motorola (like the former Senior Manager of Flash Engineering at Adobe, who is now Director of Engineering for Motorola mobile — and no, I won’t link to him). Why? To make Flash suck less? No, they won’t even bother with that. After taking half the Adobe Flash Pro authoring team with him to Motorola, I surmise that they are up to something. Specifically, my prediction is that they soon will come out with their own OS not too far ahead in the future.
- Nokia: R.I.P. Stephen and Steve, love made in Seattle. Soon, Microsoft will either buy Nokia or shaft it as it previously did to all the PC manufacturers during the PC Era. It’s safe to say that, now under Microsoft’s wing, Nokia is not choosing Android.
The reality is that Microsoft needed a manufacturer and Nokia was “burning,” so Steve and Stephen got together and both realized that they needed each other. Nokia needed something other than Symbian as it was deader than dead five years ago, and Microsoft needed a device company. I can go on and on…
So, that’s how I see the playing field. The battle lines are drawn and all guns are against Android. Some one of these manufacturers “love” Android, but the reality is that the owner and implementor of the stack (the OS) is the real winner in these cases — so why not own it yourself?
How can Samsung and Motorola differentiate themselves amongst all the other Android devices out there? XOOM is expected to cost somewhere around $800. How can they compete against the onslaught of Android devices shown at both CES and MWC? From Lenovo to Velocity, which is coming in at $199.00 at Amazon and is running Android 2.0? Or even the iRobot $127.99 tablet.
You may be able to discern between the Motorola XOOM and the iRobot, but outside of Silicon Valley? Really? Where most non-tech consumers exist — can they discern? If all they need is access to the web, e-mail, eBooks, and a few games, they won’t fret too hard between devices.
It makes perfect sense for all of these manufacturers to have their own OS. Again, how can Samsung and Motorola differentiate themselves even at the $800 price point? Even with the newly revamped Android Market? Well, they can’t! But you are now aware of Samsung as a tablet and device player. It will be just a matter of time before they switch entirely to bada, and the only one left in this list supporting Android will be Motorola — and yet I bet you, their own OS will be out before you know it.
So, what will happen to Android? Well, that’s part 2… 
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Nice analysis, Carlos. Out of the above bunch, I’d say that HP might be the one to watch. But that just might be a carryover from my Palm-loving days.
Jay
Nice to see you did not even think about mentioning the Seattle Bloatware in your blog entry
Freudian slip par chance, or not. I’m sure you are not as biased as I am…
Interesting observations. Personally I think RIM is in trouble. If it were not for corporate IT, they would be in deep trouble. And I think it is only a matter of time till other competitors go after that market. I know HP is planning to go that way, and they have good enterprise credentials. And of course, lots of IT folks looking at iPhone.
Good advantage for Apple and HP in that they control the hardware. And, no weird unpleasant surprises for developers in this space, ending up on hardware they never tested on.
Android has the advantage of being the “Open Platform”, and that is a big plus with a segment of the prospective customer base. But, numerous hardware configs make life interesting for propellor heads
Glad I use Corona to build my software! It saves me from a lot of these headaches.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bryan Rieger and Ty Hatch, dread71. dread71 said: RT @bryanrieger: The Battle of the Mobile OS is about to begin… – http://is.gd/LJnisS by @carlosicaza …intriguing viewpoint, but web … [...]
Thank you Carlos. You are obviously well read and in touch (of course).
I would like to suggest that a forum area be created for this sort of discussion and knowledge sharing. Perhaps subscriber only?
Keeping up with these sort of market movements is difficult to do for a full time developer, but it is definitely something we all need to do.
Why oh why Carlos? Why do I feel that Ansca is already not pushing Android further anymore? Maybe to many neagtive posts about Androids future from your side?
@mikehart: we are not dropping Android support at all. We will be dropping support for 2.1 and below. Android 2.2 is now on 52% of the Android handsets out there.
Well, it sure is an exciting market.
After many years in computer space, I think the smart money is now in mobile devices. It is where the future demand is, IMHO.
Glad I found good tools for my company to bet on. Thanks Anscamobile, and all the 3rd party tool developers that are supporting the cause.
Great analysis, Carlos, thanks! Looking forward to part 2.
I agree that HP is looking pretty good; as you mentioned, their developer site is very impressive, as are their tools (like their browser-based development system).
I’ll be renewing my subscription very shortly, as I still think Corona is the way to go.
Hi Carlos, a great article and some interesting developments are afoot, for sure.
Right now, for good or ill, it’s primarily an iOS, Android, and WP7 marketplace. I’ve been doing WP7 conversions of iPhone apps under contract, so I know MSFT is serious about pushing money in that direction. MSFT is really good at playing catch-up. It would be a mistake, I think, to discount them or their determination to compete in the marketplace.
I think Ansca is in a really good position to capitalize on all of this market splintering. But it’s a balancing act…it will become a nightmare to support the bulk of the API on all OS’s.
I’d personally like to see WP7 and Flash added to the target platforms. These OS’s definitely inspire many evangelical discussions, but the hard business question is, would adding these targets generate significantly more demand for your product? I believe it would.
Having said that, we all know on which side our bread is buttered, and iOS is still king, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
-John
What about Oracle ADF? I think they are focusing on the enterprise platforms while you have coverage on consumer-gaming platforms? I see a business opportunity in merging the two, esp. with a tablet-centric approach.
RIM is pretty much toast in this whole setup. They’ll have some hype up and until the playbook… but once Nokia and MSFT start rolling, it eliminates the need for what RIM once was.
Whether or not RIM will realize that further ahead in the death cycle (unlike Palm), we’ll have to see.
Meant to include this link to Flurry new app stats:
http://blog.flurry.com/bid/56660/App-Developers-Endorse-Nokia-Microsoft-Partnership
That’s pretty funny Anonymous. Oracle ADF. Ha ha ha, ho ho ho, LOL.
Yep, what a great combo – Oracle who will extract every penny from customers, and a nice bureaucratic overweight Jave EE Framework. YIKES – think I will pass on that idea!
@anonymous: sadly, Oracle ADF does not count in this list because it is not a hardware manufacter. I was specifically targeting device manufacturers. Besides, ADF is based on Java EE. Which in my opinion, Java is more dead than Symbian. It won’t be long before Android is purely C++ based. Java might continue to be the choice for “feature” $49.00 phones but that is changing fast.
Thanks for sharing the insights!
Nice blog post, Carlos. If you’re right it’s gonna be hell for us developers….and especially for you guys:)
Supporting 3, 4 or even more major mobile platforms will make it even worse for all developers than it is already…and in my opinion for the customers, as well. The whole market is fragmenting more and more….soon we’ll have dozens of app stores on mobile phones, tablets and also on TVs…. I can’t imagine that the customers appreciate that amount of platform-fragmentation…
on the other hand it’s an exciting time and will be interesting to see where the market is going.
@ben
I think the issue will be if the new platforms do not have the same level of outreach as Apple. A good example would be the Ovi store from Nokia. That was and has been a total disaster. If the aforementioned platforms have the level of an app store that closely mimics the Apple eco-system that is totally integrated as Apple, then we may be hope that the barrier to entry will be reduced as well as the barrier to monetize. I hope I make sense. Basically what am trying to say, is that if the creation/distribution/monetization is all managed by the one authority (be one of the above platforms mentioned) then the level of success increases. I hope I make some sort of sense. Obviously, each platform has to be able to “control/own” from a to z. Otherwise, it will end up like Nokia and then another disaster.
C
Good post Carlos. While platforms appear to be consolidating (Nokia + MSFT), there is no end in sight to fragmentation as your article points out. And chances are that even after industry consolidation runs its course, we will end up with many more platforms than we saw on the PC (with just Windows and Mac). This makes the appeal for Corona much greater.
Interesting. Reminds me of the early days of micro computer. Eventually it settled into MS, Linux and IOs. As Carlos puts it: Its just the beginning. I am wondering if the tools/SDK’s in the Mobile industry will have a sort of similar route of fate- say towards HTML5, JS,CSS etc…. Making is simpler for the masses? Having to learn how to support all those platforms , OS’es will be a nightmare:)
Wow, I agree with Mike.
I was so wanting to subscribe to Corona for windows as soon as it was available. However, I now get a feeling from your post that you are not going to be supporting Android development.
So so sad. I must stick to flash and java now.
all,
see my follow up to Android support in our forums.
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/02/24/battle-mobile-os-about-begin
the readers digest version: We put a lot of effort to bring Corona SDK on Windows for Android. Why would we want to discard the work if we didn’t think Android still has a place in the Mobile lanscape.
C
Informationweek article confirms my hypothesis, Motorola building own OS. Read http://bit.ly/hWP21P.