Apple’s iPhone has completely destroyed the status quo that existed in the mobile operating system world before the iPhone arrived on the scene. The iPhone made it easier for people to get on the web while on the go, and despite ridicule before it was even released, it has revolutionised the industry, forcing other manufacturers to get a move on.
The iPhone has changed the mobile market rather aggressively, with companies scrambling toemulate the functionality of Apple’s phone. iPhone contenders came and went, but some attempts were better received than others.
Android is still around, and despite it being in flux, it has the massive advantage of being open and free. WebOS is far more closed, but does benefit from a slick interface and a well-implemented multitasking environment. Hardware-wise, the Pre leaves things to be desired, however. RIM is also still at it, of course, and it’s also doing relatively well. RIM is kind of doing its own thing, focusing on the markets it’s good at.
Microsoft, however, having been more or less absent in this whole thing. Windows Mobile was never exactly love at first sight, and even today it still ships with an interface based on a desktop experience with tiny menus and scrollbars – stylus-oriented instead of finger-oriented. Microsoft is now finally trying to address the issues in Windows Mobile, but its strategy seems a bit… Counterproductive.
DigiTimes has found out that Microsoft is planning to adopt a dual-platform strategy in the mobile business, bringing its often-reviled multi-version strategy from the desktop to the mobile world. Windows Mobile 6.5 will be released in October this year, bringing some finger-oriented touch features to Windows Mobile 6.5, followed by an update in the first half of next year carrying a “touch interface”.
However, a completely finger-oriented system won’t arrive until the end of 2010, with Windows Mobile 7. Even then, Microsoft will keep Windows Mobile 6.5 around alongside the then-new version 7. The idea is to use version 6.5 to compete with Android, and version 7 to compete with the iPhone.
I guess the big question will be if developers will be able to target both operating systems without having to make changes to the code or the interface in order to get them to work. I don’t think developers will like a fractured platform where they have to take the specific of each version into account. However, if developers don’t have to worry about that, and applications will run unaltered on both platforms – how will Microsoft differentiate between the two?
To me, this seems like a confusing strategy that won’t do consumers any good. Time will tell how it pans out, but I have a suspicion the market will be brutal to sch a strategy.
End of 2010?
That is the sound of lying in a grave and the mud being shoveled in over you.
Indeed, that’s a lot of time if you’re playing catch-up. It’s incredible how MS manages to be so successful while being extremely slow to react to market changes at the same time. It took them forever to finally update their browser, and now they finally woke up from their mobile space nap. It always amazes me.
In their defense, they did make it easy to port desktop apps to mobile. The bad news is that they look and feel like desktop apps. I’ve been looking for a pda like device for 8 years or so. Windows mobile’s sucky interface is the reason its been so long. I’m seriously considering the next nokia tablet.
They still have a long, long way to catch up when it comes to their browser.
On this site:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/working-with-theora
Links to this demo:
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/pl…
… which works with the functionality that comes embedded within Firefox 3.5, no need for plugins.
Microsoft’s IE8 browser is a still long, long way short of this type of capability.
Indeed it did take Microsoft “forever” to update their browser, and even when they did so, they only made up a small part of the large gap to their opposition.
Given the pace of open source development (witness the Thusnelda encoder for Theora), and given the pace of Microsoft (and indeed the many retrograde steps they take, such as Vista), it is already abundantly clear that Microsoft will never catch up.
Well yes if you read that article, but given few facts it doesn’t sound that bad. Article is highly miss leading, already we seen “cooked” versions 6.5 that has touch friendly interface. What I believe is that the update will most likely bring Windows Mobile 7 gesture system and multi-touch to all 6.5 phones that support it (some phones will have HW support but SW side isn’t included in release of 6.5).
Since WM 7 is huge mystery it is still unclear how Microsoft will deal with non-touch phones, most likely by offering 6.5, this would make sense in technical and marketing point of WM7 (get rid stupid standard and professional).
Then again article might be totally right and if so I honestly think(even if I’m bit fan of WM phones) that it will be end of Windows Mobile or atleast end of Robbie Bach. This might actually save WM platform, Bach been really crappy leader without much success.
However, a completely finger-oriented system won’t arrive until the end of 2010, with Windows Mobile 7. Even then, Microsoft will keep Windows Mobile 6.5 around alongside the then-new version 7. The idea is to use version 6.5 to compete with Android, and version 7 to compete with the iPhone.
Are they going to make a third version to compete with the Palm Pre? Why stop there? I still do not understand why Microsoft feels the need to compete on all fronts. Why don’t they just make the best mobile OS they can and not worry about how it lines up against every single competitor?
Maybe they should start treating market share as a result rather than a goal.
They are Microsoft.
Creating the best OS ever is out of reach for them
Just a joke, just a joke.
There’s a question that has been bothering me for some time. In smartphone-related stories coming up on OS News, the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android-based devices get a lot of attention, while BlackBerry devices are often either not mentioned, or only given some minor reference. I don’t know how the situation is in other parts of the world, but in North America, BlackBerry devices account for more than 50% of the smartphone market. So what’s the deal?
(I am really curious, and looking for a good answer, rather than a good-device-bad-device shoot-out.)
It’s a reasonable question, but in some ways I don’t think Blackberry warrants a direct comparison to the others. Blackberries are almost a de facto standard-issue PDA in many organizations; these decisions are being driven by the organizations for various reasons, including manageability and security. RIM’s dominance there is not necessarily being driven by actual user demand.
It would be more interesting to see some statistics on Blackberry usage in terms of BES vs BIS. I would suspect that users with BIS are more likely representative of consumers that have purchased the phone based on personal preference, where BES users are probably just using the phone that was given to them by their employer.
I think the other relevant thing is that, whereas Blackberry and Symbian devices were smart phones that people *could* extend by installing third-party apps, Apple became the smart phone that people *did* extend by installing third-party apps, because frankly it was made both easy and desirable. Palm and Google are following this route.
I have no hard data to back this up, it’s pure speculation, but I suspect that when looking at the “first generation” of smart phones, whether Palm, WinMob, RIM or Symbian, the number of users that actually sought out and installed third-party apps was probably a niche within the overall user base. I’ve known many people with Blackberries or Nokia smart phones, but I’m the only one I know that ever went to the trouble to use something beyond the default app set.
Now, even my mother downloads farting apps on her iphone. For that reason, I would say that Apple jumped the chasm in the smart phone market by making that technology easily accessible. None of the smart phone platforms prior to that really seized that opportunity, with the possible exception of Palm.
Apple, Palm and Google now represent the direction that smart phone platforms are heading, which is why they attract all the attention. They’re driving sales at the consumer level and turning wireless data connectivity from a luxury feature to a commodity standard.
RIM and Nokia have the most to lose, but they also have the experience and expertise, so they shouldn’t be discounted. They just don’t have anything very sexy to talk about right now, and the media likes bling.
As for Microsoft, their performance to date in the mobile space represents somewhat of an epic failure. Their enterprise dominance alone should have given them a stronger footing to challenge RIM. I suspect their biggest failing was simply treating the PDA (and subsequent smart phones) as an extension of the desktop, rather than a platform in its own right.
The lines are blurring, now, so things are getting interesting. RIM is pushing hard for consumer market share, Apple is finding their way into enterprises. Our own company started permitting them once the bean counters realized how much cheaper it was to allow us to use our own personal phones rather than pay for Blackberries and the susequent backend licensing and support.
I guess this is my roundabout way of saying that I don’t think anyone is really ignoring RIM or Symbian, just that there isn’t anything to report right now…
I don’t think this is true. People did and do install J2ME apps. Maybe just not in the US. In the rest of the world, J2ME application repositories are usually provided by the phone service provider and many people install them. In my country (France), my phone service provider (SFR) spams me with adverts to install J2ME apps. If you say ‘yes’, they automatically add that to your phone bill at the end of the month. I also have an icon right in the main menu that says ‘get more apps’. This has been like that for more than 5 years.
Or maybe they just don’t have a marketing budget that high. There are a lot of things happening with Symbian, but this site is just ignoring it. Even when there are no news about the iPhone, they manage to talk about it. I don’t know the reasons. Maybe this site is more computer oriented and they check news from Apple first, or maybe they receive money from Apple, or maybe they just love pinching.
Edited 2009-08-20 20:59 UTC
The lesson here was learned a long time ago from the video / dvd market. The consumer will buy a DVD player for $50 once every few years. They don’t really care that the quality is crap because it only cost them $50 so they can afford to replace it every few years. In that few years however that consumer will spend (in most cases) hundreds of dollars on content to stick in the thing. If you can have a finger in the pie of both the device and the content, and you can simplify access to that content, you will be much more profitable. Apple understood this from the iPod – it was just a natural progression for them. This is where the real catch-up game is being played, the devices are quite irrelevant…
100% agree, and Symbian, too.
For me, there is no question, this site is getting money from Apple to promote the iPhone. 1% of the market and there isn’t an article about PDA or phones that doesn’t talk about it, but they don’t even mention Symbian.
This article is not about Windows Mobile, it is only a praise for the iPhone.
I literally did laugh out loud when I read this. OS News – being paid to promote Apple?! Man go read any single day’s articles from any time over the past few months to see how laughable that statement is. There have been many more critical articles on here about the iPhone and Apple in general than articles promoting it / them – some of them were even relevant
And exactly where does this article promote Apple or the iPhone anyway? Granted it doesn’t specifically talk about the Blackberry – which it maybe should – but it talks just as much about the Pre and Symbian devices as it does about iPhone – but in each case they’re comparative statements anyway.
I don’t necessarily agree with the whole article either – I think one thing Microsoft do very well is provide legacy support for their stuff – however I think on the smartphone front it is maybe not really that necessary because people replace their phones more often than their desktop PC (or their underwear in some cases). As long as they have support in place to help transition apps to a newer platform – and we’ve heard lots about how Microsoft support their developer community so we can expect they would – they needn’t keep the old stuff around really.
All this does is prove that the nonsense about us being anti-Apple is just that – nonsense. It all depends on whose products you prefer, and then OSNews will always be anti-your-products.
I’ve been called the following, on a regular basis, over the past few years:
Anti Apple
Pro Apple
Anti Microsoft
Pro Microsoft
Anti Linux
Pro Linux
Anti OSS
Pro OSS
Anti Mac
Pro Mac
Anti iPhone
Pro iPhone
And now we can add a new one to the list:
Anti Blackberry.
A brand which I have never before seen in my entire life. I’ve never seen a Blackberry in any shop, nor do I know any person who has one. But apparently, I’m anti Blackberry.
Whatever.
Just to help you expand the list: in your post you seem to be insinuating that you are really pro Blackberry.(*)
But it’s safe to say you are pro BeOS, right?
(*) – I know, I know, not really: it’s more like Blackberry-indifferent ATM. But that would not fit in the list!
Don’t be so defensive, Thom. I (at least) did not accuse you of anything. I was just wondering why it is that BlackBerry and Symbian devices are rarely mentioned in smartphone-related stories, even though these are the clear market leaders in North America and Europe, respectively.
This is by no means an OS News-specific question, by the way. I have seen that on other websites. I am also not trying to suggest that these devices should be mentioned for any reason – I was just genuinely curious as to the lack of reference.
RIM really target the business market, and their phones are generally seen as boring business devices that lack features consumers would want.
Most blackberry devices are still gprs/edge based, in a world where everything else is 3g and wifi…
They are also based around an obsolete architecture, in that they don’t use the standard 3g/gprs data plan, they require explicit operator support and a specific blackberry data plan, and all the data is routed through a third party.
All other phones use the standard gprs/3g data offered by virtually every operator, so you can swap the simcard and carry on.
A blackberry will also need to be reactivated if you change the device, since each device has a unique identifier, if you lose your phone you can’t just restore a backup and carry on.
Also on the architecture front, you have BES which aside from being expensive, requires you to run your own windows server (more cost) and a proprietary groupware setup too (further increasing cost)…
Or you can use BIS, the consumer oriented service which is intentionally crippled… It will support IMAP/POP3, but you have to hand over your passwords to RIM because it is their servers that download your mail and forward it to the device (contrast with all other phones which can do imap/pop3 over ssl or vpn).
It also polls imap servers every 15 minutes, it doesn’t maintain a connection and use IDLE mode.
The BIS service also (at least when i’ve seen it in use) restricts your data connectivity, so if you install third party apps like midpssh they can’t route out… If you want to be able to route out, you need to buy a separate data plan on top of the blackberry specific data plan you already bought.
Another annoying feature of blackberry phones compared to others, you cannot charge them by plugging them in to a usb port unless you have the drivers installed, the drivers suck badly (especially on mac, where the installer kills all your other apps and forces you to reboot afterwards) and aren’t available for linux.
For consumers, blackberry isn’t really a good choice… For businesses they used to be the only option, so they keep them because all the infrastructure is already there.
I’m sorry, but you are wrong on almost every point. Bell, Rogers and Telus (in Canada) and AT&T and Verizon (in the US) sell consumer-oriented BlackBerry smartphones with 3G (Bold, Tour) and Wifi (Bold, Curve, Pearl). BES is for the enterprise market only and provides services that companies require, but it is certainly not used for the consumer phones sold by the carriers.
MS’s is probably banking on the .net framework to make this work. This is the problem it was supposed to fix, or smooth over, after all.
Blackberries are a hardcore industrial tools compared to everything else. MS should be where RIM is at, but they’re not which is very puzzling. Usually MS is the “enterprise” focused company in the race.
Maybe project pink will inject some life into them.
I never had a mobile phone with one of those firmwares, yet I’ve known of some FOSS ones like Google’s Android and OpenMoko.
I think it’s pretty stupid from MS that battling with separate phone enviorments (iPhone’s, Android) instead of trying the best to recover and keep up-to-date the actual one. Adding some features that users request.
Without any doubt, if I ever had to get one mobile with a specific enviorment, it’d be openMoko, as Google owns Android, and I kinda prefer using something that is not owned by one corporation.
Do they really? I was under the impression that Android was owned by the open handset alliance:
http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/
Of course, it might be heavily influenced by Google, but it doesn’t look like Google “owns” Android.
Much of the time when I see Nokia Smart phones mentioned, they are NOT referring to the N770, N800, N880 or N900 (new this month) which run Mameo. A distro of Linux that will let you install other applications and run them on the platform.
Considering that the Nokia N770 came out in November of 2005 and to my knowledge has been the ONLY platform to allow you to install Linux until Android (have not looked at its Linux distro capability yet); smart phones have only been around since 2005.
Personally I like the Nokia N800 as it has the FM chip unlike the N880. And once you have a full web browser on a platform this size, you will not be happy with some hardware vendor’s botched idea of what a browser (limited of course) should allow.
For a platform to be “smart” it must allow you to install Linux, any distro, if it will not, than it just is not smart.
You do not have to run Linux, but it should be an option.
It does not hurt that the Nokias come with Micro SSD USB slots (N800 has two); built in webcam, H.264 graphic capability, still the standard today to beat; built in WiFi; microphone and speaker for phone conversations, VoIP of course.
For heavy duty PIM users that need to customize the use, this platform allows you to do just that. I know you can not customize apps for other so called “smart†(I call them dumb) phones like the iPhone, etc…
If you have a WiFi router at work and at home, you have WiFi access to about 80% of where you live your life, why waste cellular minutes when you do not need too. How is that smart? And if you have a teen who likes to chat, you would have to be crazy not to give them a Linux based Wifi enabled hand held let them log into some chat / mail server that their friends with cellular phones can also log into (via WiFi) and that way they can save their cellular minutes for when they are not in a WiFi hot zone. Ideally you should have WiFi or Cellular capability in one hand held, something that no one allows today, not yet anyway. No more thousand dollar bills paying for chat messages when we all know it costs pennies for the cellular companies to serve them, what a rip off. (Why was this ever considered acceptable by anyone?)
Smart phones, Linux enabled, such as the Nokia N770, N800, N880 and now the N900 set the bar for what constitutes a “smart” phone. The others, perhaps with the exception of Android, are still play catch up. Even the iPhone. Can you say tethering. Can you say no freedom to load apps you want. What do you mean the company can remove the app I paid for off my phone at their will and whim…how is that fair and superior? Its not, how dare they censor you.
Smart phones will allow you to install Linux if you want to, not that you have to.
No Linux, it’s just not smart.
That’s because N900 is the first Maemo device that is a phone (i.e. has cellular support).
Wait a minute. The Nokia E-series support both WiFi and cellular IP gateways (subject to the availabiluty of your carrier). I’ve never used the latter on my E-series unit because of my prepaid plan, but I use the former while roaming without a netbook. Doesn’t that count?