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Same-Day Analysis
Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, and Nokia Reveal Operating System Strategies
Published: 2/16/2010
IHS Global Insight Perspective | |
Significance | Window Phone Series 7 has been well received and signals a shift in strategy, with Microsoft beginning to dictate hardware specifications to limit device fragmentation. |
Implications | Nokia and Intel have merged their Linux platforms in recognition that there is limited room for the number of smartphone operating systems—something that Samsung has not recognized with the first Bada-based handset. |
Outlook | Microsoft appears to have upped its game and now has a chance to re-enter the smartphone market. However, Android will retain some advantages as, being open source, it is more customisable and free to use. |
The first day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Spain) has seen several major announcements for the next generation of operating systems from Microsoft and Samsung, and convergence of Intel and Nokia's Linux platforms as they attempt to hit back at the Apple iPhone and Google Android platform.
Microsoft has announced the long awaited launch of its Windows Mobile 7 operating system, showing the "Windows Phone 7 Series" OS on a development handsets. Hardware partners are now building handsets and are due to launch to market by "holiday 2010", which would mean before the end of the fourth quarter of 2010. The operating system has been re-built and the user interface—Metro—is based on the PC media centre and Zune HD interfaces. It features a start screen using "live tiles"—essentially widgets with content that is updated in real time. This can include tiles for contacts that are updated with pictures and posts from social networks. The start screen can be scrolled up and down, extending the number of widgets available.
The tiles also provide access to the six "hubs", which contain applications and services, and as with Palm's WebOS, also pull content from the web (see World: 9 January 2009: Palm Launches New Device and Operating System). The hubs include "People", which combines social-networking data and photos from sites including Facebook and Windows Live; "Pictures", which aggregates pictures and videos, and integrates with web- and PC-based resources; "Games", which integrates with the Xbox live experience, providing Xbox live games' "spotlight" feed and gamers' avatars and profiles; and "Music+Video", which uses the Zune media player as its basis and includes content from users' PCs, online music services and built-in FM radio. It also features the "Zune social" media recommendation capability; the "Marketplace" application store; and "Office", which naturally contains the office suite of Outlook, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace.
Microsoft notes that it has carrier partners lined up, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. Handset manufacturers include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm Inc.
However, the relationship with vendors and carriers has changed quite fundamentally. Andy Lees, the senior vice-president of Microsoft's Mobile Communications business, noted that Microsoft is set to be more prescriptive towards its vendor partners on hardware, while there will also be less room to alter the interface. He said, "We’ve jointly defined a set of common hardware specifications across Windows Phone 7 Series. This will bring innovation in software and hardware together to deliver a new wave of better and more consistent experiences for our customers … so phone makers, independent software vendors and mobile operators can innovate. We want innovation without fragmentation. We want a balance that strikes harmony where hardware, software and services can work together in a much richer way.” This includes options for hard keyboards for some differentiation, but requires inclusion of a "large" capacitive multi-touchscreen, GPS, start and Bing search keys.
While this was the most awaited announcement, Samsung also unveiled its first handset, the S8500 "Wave" using the familiar TouchWiz UI, but also the "Bada" (meaning "ocean" in Korean) smartphone operating system. This was originally announced in November 2009 and is intended to compete against other operating systems, including Android, by being wholly open. Hands-on reviews were fairly scathing, noting that while the hardware was typically Samsung attractive, the software driving the highly specified handset felt largely unfinished, with a number of errors experienced by Engadget.
Also making a significant announcement in the mobile operating system space at the MWC were Intel and Nokia, who are set to merge their Linux operating systems—the Maemo platform, used in the Nokia N900 phone, and Intel's Moblin. The new platform will be called "MeeGo" and will be used in Nokia's high-end smartphones, which now look likely to use Intel chipsets. Nokia and Intel first announced a partnership back in July 2009, which set the stage for this announcement (see World: 24 June 2009: Intel, Nokia in Strategic Partnership on Mobile Computing Devices). This will help limit the fragmentation to the number of Linux-based smartphone operating systems.
Outlook and Implications
The Windows 7 launch appears to have been worth the wait, garnering a positive reaction for its simplicity and smoothness, the integration with online services and the obvious step away from the legacy of previous Windows Mobile iterations. It creates another viable player in the smartphone operating system market, which, as the other announcements show, is becoming increasingly fragmented. This fragmentation can be a serious problem in terms of significant development costs for application developers as they need to re-code to meet the requirements of the different platforms. There will only really be room for three Smartphone operating systems in the long term and currently Apple, Android and Microsoft seem to have the lead in terms of marketing momentum and industry buzz. However, Android will retain some advantages as, being open source, it is more customisable and—as with Bada, Symbian, and MeeGo—free to use. Palm's WebOS has been highly acclaimed, but remains proprietary and lacks significant scale in terms of unit sales to make development of applications wholly worthwhile, although Palm has helped to push out a core set of applications. Nokia's Symbian has a long legacy of development that provides a base of applications and services, but may now focus on MeeGo for higher-end devices. However, the differentiation on applications availability could be squashed as the carriers have notably started pushing for enhancing application interoperability (see World: 15 February 2010: Operators Join to Create Wholesale Applications Community). With the range of choices available to vendors, Samsung is likely to struggle to find other hardware vendors willing to use Bada, which will likely remain essentially a proprietary operating system despite its open nature—with the range of smartphone platforms now available as open source, the rationale for developing Bada is notably hazy.Most Viewed Articles
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