A warm and fuzzy-toned embrace of an open source, mobile Linux operating system sought by an alliance led by Motorola Inc. and Vodafone Group plc, among others, and announced last week drew both optimism and skepticism among analysts, who await further details-and results.
Motorola acknowledged that the alliance had a competitive element to it, while alliance participants NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Panasonic Mobile Communications declined to comment on the strategic nature of the alliance’s work, perhaps mindful that they will continue to use the Symbian OS, largely controlled by Nokia Corp., and the Windows Mobile platform by Microsoft Corp. for certain products and market segments. One underlying theme here: hedge your bets.
Today the Symbian OS holds nearly a 70-percent market share for smart-phone operating systems and Windows Mobile has 12 percent, according to Canalys Ltd., the United Kingdom-based market analysis firm.
Observers largely hailed the alliance’s goals while pointing to the difficulties inherent in such ventures, pointing to the history of the Symbian OS, which had broad participation but ended up in Nokia’s hands. Linux also has a history of open standards work, which have not yet borne the fruit sought by the new alliance.
According to Christy Wyatt, vice president for ecosystem development at Motorola, “We want a complete platform. There are many components of that that are already open source. And there will be components contributed by our partners that will remain proprietary.”
The alliance’s goals focus on developing application programming interfaces specification and architecture. APIs are a layer of software that application developers write to enable applications, making a handset’s functions useful. With Linux, if no universal standard is established, then there would essentially remain multiple flavors of operating systems. A universal standard-this alliance’s goal-would enable developers to “write once, run everywhere,” thus growing the pool of innovation available to the handset vendors and network operators.
“When we’re working with someone else’s proprietary operating system and we have a great idea for a product, we’re dependent on someone else’s technology roadmap to bring the idea to fruition,” Wyatt said. “In an open source world, there’s really no limit to innovation. The vision, obviously, is that an alliance will accelerate innovation.”
How is this effort different from past alliances? Others have been too specification-focused, Wyatt said. “It’s much easier in those environments to sign up and sit in the room,” she said. “In a development-based alliance, one’s influence comes from how much you’re actually contributing.” Motorola participates in other Linux-based alliances, but those alliances have not been perfectly aligned with Motorola’s specific needs. “Our focus is on the reference implementation effort,” Wyatt said.”The product of this alliance is not going to be a simple specification that everyone will implement on their own. It’s going to be a pool of source code that people can go build products with. Our model is more of an open, licensable reference implementation that’s available to the entire industry.”
While Wyatt pointed to the high-profile nature of other alliance members-Vodafone is one of the world’s largest operator and NTT DoCoMo one of the most innovative, while Samsung is the third-largest handset vendor, nipping at Motorola’s heels-the unspoken message appeared to be that Motorola is determined to ensure that this alliance gets practical results in the timeframe it has set for itself. The platform should be ready next year for vendors to run with.
“The high-level message is: you’ve got six global leaders in the wireless space coming to the table with existing investments and focused on delivering a product to the industry,” Wyatt said. “As a manufacturer, we’re going to benefit from lower costs and faster time-to-market. Operators will be able to deliver branded services on a consistent platform. Developers will get the benefit of an open ecosystem across manufacturers and operators.”
Dave Linsalata, an analyst with IDC, shared his view of the announcement.
“Given that Motorola has been utilizing a Linux/Java software combination on its feature phones for more than a year, and Nokia has been pushing the Symbian OS down through its product line, this alliance looks poised to counter-balance Symbian in the marketplace,” Linsalata said.
“This alliance dovetails nicely with Motorola’s own internal focus on improved handset software. Of course, one of the alliance’s challenges will be producing a platform that meets and balances the needs of each party.”
How will the players use the alliance’s results?
“It’s conceivable that some alliance members may be looking to Linux to target certain [market] segments, while still relying on other operating systems for different segments,” Linsalata said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Linux is initially leveraged for the mid-range feature phone market, while Microsoft [Windows Mobile], for instance-with its brand strength and established presence in the enterprise-continues to be deployed in phones targeted at mobile professionals.”
Tuong Nguyen, an analyst with Gartner, cautioned that hard results would make the new alliance a stand-out, based on history.
“It’s really hard for the big guns to work together,” Nguyen said. “That’s a classic problem in the mobile industry. Look back at the Symbian OS. A lot of folks had a stake in it, but Motorola sold its share and Symbian ended up with Nokia. This alliance sounds like a good idea, but who knows? We have a lot of questions and we’re meeting with the players to determine Gartner’s take on this.”
Open platforms don’t necessarily resolve the issue of fragmentation, Nguyen added. And proprietary technology, in that sense, isn’t necessarily a bad thing-you pay royalties, sure, but a proprietary technology also provides a uniform environment in which to develop applications.
