+44 (0)20 7930 4158POPULAR TOOLS
FEATURE: The mobile OS battleground
The battle to dominate the mobile operating system is intensifying. Driven by the growth in smartphone use and the mobile app boom, various high-profile players are fighting it out in an increasingly crowded market, with very different approaches.
Several strategies currently exist in the mobile OS market. Apple, Palm and Research In Motion (RIM) build their own handsets and the operating systems that exclusively power them (the ‘vertical model'). Other firms such as Nokia build their own handsets, while sponsoring open-source platforms such as the firm's new MeeGo system, made in partnership with Intel. Google's Android is also open source and the firm seems to be moving towards hardware too, having recently released its first branded handset. Others are focused on software only, led by Microsoft with its newly launched Windows Phone 7 Series.
The open-source Symbian system is the biggest OS, capturing between about 50% and 70% of the world market, according to differing estimates. RIM has about a fifth of the global market, according to Gartner, followed by Apple with 14% and Microsoft with 9%. The situation is different in the US, where Symbian has a low presence and Apple and RIM dominate.
The challenge for all these companies is to provide the most compelling user experience. Firms must also think about attracting developers to their platform, as mobile apps are playing an increasingly important part in the mobile experience. Finally, firms must ensure their OS runs on the most capable and desirable handsets, where their software has the chance to shine.
Dealing with fragmentation
The key challenge for mobile OS makers is ensuring a consistent and satisfactory user experience in a fragmented mobile environment. Vertical players have it easy as they only develop for their hardware. Others struggle to ensure a smooth user experience across devices made by different manufacturers. Controlling fragmentation is an acute problem for an open source OS, as NPD analyst Ross Rubin explains:
"Google seems to have struggled a bit with having an OS out there that everyone is free to customise and yet wanting to control more of the experience and produce as polished an experience as we've seen with say the iPhone or the Palm devices."
OS builders are responding to fragmentation in various ways. As Rubin explains Google has had "heavy involvement with handsets such as the Motorola Droid and of course the Nexus One, which it's also selling". Nokia is also attempting to fight fragmentation, but is wary of sacrificing the open-source ideals of its MeeGo project.
"We want to keep [MeeGo] open, anybody can use MeeGo and fragment it as much as they want," explains Nokia's Ari Jaaksi. "But, if you want to use the MeeGo brand and in your marketing, then we have a compatibility test, hosted by the Linux Foundation, and that is how we want to fight fragmentation."
Microsoft lies somewhere in between the open-source OS makers and the vertical players. It provides its mobile software to a variety of handset makers, but on a licensing basis, keeping the software closed source. This makes it much easier to retain the firm's intellectual property and also provides the firm with a revenue stream from software licensing deals. Oded Ran, Microsoft's head of consumer marketing for its Windows Phone OS, says this means Microsoft avoids entangling itself with operators.
"We don't try to compete with phone manufacturers by producing an operating system and then putting our own phone out there with the best version. We're not trying to compete with mobile operators by selling our phones direct."
Ran's comments refer to Google, which is reported to have upset many mobile partners with its decision to launch its own phone, the Nexus One. However, although Microsoft's strategy gives the firm a source of income, there is evidence that some manufacturers are put off by licensing costs. Samsung, which has released a number of phones running Windows Mobile, has recently developed its own OS, Bada.
Rubin says Bada "could in some cases be a cost-saving opportunity because [Samsung] may not need to invest so much in say customising Android or licensing new Windows phones or software".
Attracting developers
Although Microsoft's model gives it a high degree of control, the open-source advocates claim it limits what developers can do with the platform.
"If you have the hard line where your innovation freedom stops and then you need to totally rely on something that comes from the platform, that is limiting," explains Jaaksi. "There are people who have integrated their software to be part of the [MeeGo] operating system so that from the end user's point of view, it is not an application, it is integrated into the platform. Those kind of integrations would be more difficult to make with a closed platform, and limiting to innovation."
As app developers make an ever more important contribution to the mobile industry, it is important to give them what they want. However, there is tension between the two things they most look for in an OS - "high market share and a relatively stable platform," according to Rubin. By spreading an OS across more handsets to gain market share, fragmentation problems multiply, threatening platform stability.
Interestingly, the device most credited with driving the explosive growth of mobile apps is the product of a vertical player, the iPhone. This suggests developers are currently weighing platform stability over market share. However, developers also need a platform for selling their apps, or in Rubin's words "a robust marketplace in which consumers are actually accessing the net and accessing a store". Apple has skilfully provided such a platform with its successful App Store. It may be that this is as important as the OS in attracting developers. Finally, the hype and excitement around the iPhone in certain regions such as the US is just as compelling for developers as it is for consumers.
Are there too many mobile platforms?
Are the growing number of mobile operating systems sustainable? Verticals may prove fairly resilient in the short term because they are guaranteed a hardware platform as long as consumers buy the handsets. Among the horizontal platforms, the situation seems more precarious. Manufacturers can quite easily vote with their feet and abandon unpopular platforms. Past technology trends indicate OS numbers will decline.
"We've been there when the PC started and when you had lots of very vertical [platforms]," says Microsoft's Ran. He expects a range of platforms to persist for at least the next year, but predicts the dynamics of the market will eventually push the number down. However, there are weaknesses in the analogy of the mobile space with the PC market. Rubin says the mobile space "is a larger market than the PC market. And also unlike the PC market, you don't have IT driving that force for standardisation that led to Windows being dominant."
Lee Williams, head of the Symbian Foundation, is more strident: "I think it's a completely flawed assumption that it will emulate the PC market of the 90s." He says the mobile sector "is tenfold and growing the size of any market that existed in that IT space. It is also a global marketplace unlike that IT and PC-era of the 90s and, more than that, I don't think any one dominant player from a technology perspective like a Microsoft can exist."
Nevertheless, even if the conditions differ from those of the early PC market a shake-out is likely. Although network operators welcome healthy competition in the OS market, as Rubin says: "They don't want to see so many operating systems proliferate that it makes support cumbersome and costly."
The shake-out
It's unlikely all the mobile operating systems available today will survive the next few years. Developers don't want to build for platforms used by comparatively few people and network operators don't want the hassle of supporting more than a handful of operating systems. Some vertical players could persist for longer despite declining market share, although they will become niche products. If current trends continue, Palm could be a test case.
However, the OS market seems strong and large enough to support a much greater diversity of platforms than seen in the PC market. Mobile is a truly global sector and an OS that is unpopular in one country may find a large and contented user base elsewhere. Firms and analysts should be aware that data from the US is not necessarily useful for drawing global assumptions. It may understate the significance of certain platforms which have a low penetration there, but are very common elsewhere, such as Symbian.
Apple's iPhone OS has set the standard for a smooth and polished user experience, but it is only available on a small number of expensive handsets and this will limit its growth outside the wealthy US and European markets. There is, therefore, a huge market opportunity for an open-source system that can overcome fragmentation issues to offer as intuitive an interface as the iPhone. Google, Nokia and Symbian are all chasing this goal. If they succeed, users and developers will follow.
