The Economist is running a cover article on the next great battle of the computing age, and one that may be even more far-reaching than the PC war: the truly personal computer, the so-called smart phone.According to the article, there are some important differences between the PC industry and the mobile phone industry that have dictated that Microsoft change the approach that gave it such dominance of the personal computer space. One of the main differences is that handset makers have learned from the mistakes of the PC manufacturers, which saw their lucrative business eroded into a commodity business in which only Microsoft made any money. That’s a major reason why they banded together to promote their own OS, Symbian. As always, the Economist’s coverage is thorough and insightful, and if the trends suggested in the article follow, OS News will be covering this next great OS battle with all the fervor of the Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac one.
There’s an article at Salon, too:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/21/microsoft_cellphone/in…
just a few points here
1) what about palm?
2) Stop the GSM is open craziness. Its not. GSM allows openess on the chip level and the phone levels but keeps the infrastructure segment and control of the technology as closed as qualcomm or MS. The same applies for UMTS and its a big part of why we are in this mess now. Nokia is not the kind standard follower either. witness the nonsense they pulled with messaging initially.
all in all it will be a fun fight to watch. I think MS might have to resort to pushing their PC friends into the phone market, which i doubt will go well.
I also believe that we’ll see a lot more competition in the future from innovative players like danger, etc. building a phone is getting easier and will continue to thanks to the joys of outsourcing, ODMs, and chip set makers
We’ve selected Microsoft as the official supplier of the USAPhone operating systems. This is the only phone system that Americans will be allowed to use. It has full Homeland Citizen Biometric Identification, MSDOJ Voice Supervision, SuperCallTracking 9.0, TIA-GPS, and Palladium 4.0.
It is our weapon against terrorism. It will also remind you when you need a smallpox vaccine booster shot.
— Royal Viceroy Jonn Poynedextter
Another factor that will make this battle between Microsoft and Nokia very interesting to watch is that they are very well matched in terms of their corporate structures. Both of them have very flat reporting hierarchies (only two layers of management between the “lowliest” employee and the CEO, maximum) designed to emphasize agility and harness the risk-taking, innovation and initiative of each corporate division. Microsoft has never faced a large competitor structured the same way as itself like this before (semi-anarchistic minimal management), IIRC, and this autonomy-promoting corporate philosophy is probably the main reason why both of these companies are the dominant players in their markets.
the main reason why both of these companies are the dominant players in their markets.
The above sentence is wrong in that Nokia is the bigger player among the mobile phone companies, where Nokia, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson are slugging it out quite badly (but to the happiness of the consumers), Microsoft is completely alone in it’s market, undeterred and untouchable, with a war chest of 40 fungick Billion Dollars!
And anyway, the reason why these companies did so well in their respective markets has very little to do with organisational structure. I’d say they both got lucky :o)
I bet Nokia and Microsoft don’t believe in “dumb luck”.
Nokia is the best mobile phone company out there. Ericsson was the pioneer in this mobile phone business, but Nokia took over them by introducing very innovative products. Now Ericsson is struggling to survive. Nokia is a company whic I admire.
However when it comes to software Microsoft is the number one. Their development tools do not have any match anywhere. Their documentation, their techniques. Overall Microsoft has a better chance of winning this war if this war comes down to software. If it is hardware, Nokia has a better chance.
Personally I believe it will be a software war because mobile phones became commodity as like PCs. Sooner or later people will not care much about whether they are using Nokia or some another phone. At that point Microsoft will win.
Just the numbers of mobile phones is staggering.
if i remember correctly, a few years past, microsoft approached cellphone manufacturers (or some form of cellphone makers association/organization) and offered a microsoft smartphone “operating system” for them to use. and if i remember correctly (this detail i’m pretty sure about), microsoft’s offer was “rejected” because the cellphone makers didn’t want microsoft to control the scene. this was around 1999. so now look at them. nokia is leading everyone. samsung is the fastest growing in mobile phones, ericsson is now very behind but is the one that came up with bluetooth (with others of course). and microsoft almost had it with sendo this year. then sendo scrapped ms in favor of nokia. so it seems microsoft will have trouble unless maybe they build their own hardware here.
am i wrong? let me know.
Personally I believe it will be a software war because mobile phones became commodity as like PCs.
I agree with this 100%. It seems likely that the hardware side will become commoditized before the software side does, if ever. Also, both Nokia+Texas Instruments and Microsoft+Texas Instruments have been creating ‘standardized’ reference chipsets and handset designs to make it much easier for virtually any hardware company (like Dell, for example) to design and build their own mobile phone. For instance, Texas Instruments has even produced its own line of phones using this reference.
Here is another really good article on Nokia vs Microsoft at Infosync (follerec, read this):
http://www.infosync.no/show.php?id=1509
[Yikes! Eugenia, take a look at this – the Infosync author posts a reference to an OSNews article in his article that I am linking to above. OSNews referencing Infosync referencing OSNews, all on the same topic…small world (wide web), isn’t it? Damn, hypertext is cool!]
>Yikes! Eugenia, take a look at this
The author you are reffering to is not other than the ex-BeNews CEO and a very good friend of mine.
After the dissolvement of BeNews, Oliver started working for InfoSync, and in fact, he has already published two articles on OSNews as a contributor editor. Infosync is as “friend” site for OSNews.
> the Infosync author posts a reference to an OSNews article in his article that I am linking to above. OSNews referencing Infosync referencing OSNews, all on the same topic…small world (wide web)
>> Infosync is as “friend” site for OSNews
Is this a News Monopoly? 😉
I hope MS gets pushed out of the market, even IF they have a superior product, then they will know how it feels, if they complain i don’t care. Plus i want opera to be used more widespread, anything but IE.
ANYWAY MS phones need that killer function, Ctrl + Alt and Delete.
There are any smart phone running Linux or another alterative operating system?
Why choose operating systems from m$crosoft? To start a battle from them against you, and you almost loose… don’t forget they have the monopoly in pc computer area, and have lots of money:) look at SUN, Netscape and AOL?
whois IT that gives a fud about fuddle’s urge to .controll the “market” with some obsolete bugwear liesenses? gate’s scam is just more bad history.
“thanks” for all those annoying jump-you ads eug.. eye gas you couldn’t bring US the “news” without ADopting that disgusting practice.
Microsoft on my Cellphone? Great, a cellphone with a reboot button.
I remember last year everyboby was saying that the winner in the smartphone arena will be Java. It seems that it take the same path than Java in the desktop area.
Nokia is the best mobile phone company out there. Ericsson was the pioneer in this mobile phone business, but Nokia took over them by introducing very innovative products. Now Ericsson is struggling to survive. Nokia is a company whic I admire.
Ericsson are much bigger on the infrastructure side, they have something like 50% of the market for 3G.
However when it comes to software Microsoft is the number one. Their development tools do not have any match anywhere. Their documentation, their techniques. Overall Microsoft has a better chance of winning this war if this war comes down to software.
Microsoft were in at the beginning of a new market and thats why the took over the PC. Their products may be feature rich but have never been what I would call good quality. In the phone world quality is very, very important and it’s where Simbian rule. Nokias first WAP browser was a complete piece of rubbish (thats being kind) and crashed frequently but their phones as a general rule don’t crash much if at all – I can’t say the same for *any* Microsoft product.
If it is hardware, Nokia has a better chance.
If anything Nokia are like Microsoft here, there are other phone companies with better hardware then Nokia.
Personally I believe it will be a software war because mobile phones became commodity as like PCs. Sooner or later people will not care much about whether they are using Nokia or some another phone. At that point Microsoft will win.
Phones sell in vastly higher numbers than PCs already yet are not commodities and are unlikely to become such. Making a phone is a vasty complex and expensive business, even if the phone was to be commoditised the components inside would always come from the same big companies who make the phones now.
However you are talking about the consumer goods market where branding is king.
If anything Nokia are like Microsoft here, there are other phone companies with better hardware then Nokia.
Whether there is better hardware than Nokia’s may or may not be true, but why would you say that “Nokia are like Microsoft”? I mean, what kind of logic is that, because they don’t have the best hardware they therefore are like Microsoft? You lost me there…
by most expectations cell shipments will climb to say 600 million to 700 million by 2007 with roughly 2 billion subscribers.
That is a big market, and i think this article discounts the obvious. MS vs. Nokia yes but it will become increasingly difficult for nokia to hold on to their lead. That market is about personization. in fact, careful cost monitoring and personalization of phones is why nokia has succeeded but that will be a enemy in the future.
You’ll see more and more of that personization coming from other phone makers, perhaps swatch or apple, palm, or more danger like firms. I think we’ll see a far more competitiev market in the future in which it will be nearly impossible for nokia to hold onto 37% share. with that nokia’s dominance will slip.
But in the meantime look for handheld and phone makers and operators to play nokia/symbian off against palm and MS. No one wants to see another MS even if their name is nokia and they come from Europe.
Anyone care to tell me?
Obviously, cellular is looking like it may overtake wire land based lines and whoever is the dominant player by the time land lines become irrellevant will be the Pre-break-up Bell Telephone of the new world (cellular).
I know several people who don’t even use normal phones any more because it’s more flexible (wherever you want to be) and is less expensive in the long run (long distance use, for example).
I guess this will be another one of those “let the market decide” situations, where “the market” will NOT decide, but will be forced into whatever format the biggest gorilla wants them to use.
You probably know I wouldn’t say Microsoft is just lucky, their success took a lot of marketing work. And Nokia especially didn’t get their dominant position as the no. 1 player just by luck. They fought for it. They are good in business, and I don’t think it is fair you just placing it all on luck. Because it has nothing to do with it.
They didn’t get to their positions because of some chance. Though matter how much you hate Microsoft and pressumebly their business ethic, they wouldn’t be at the top if they just depended on luck. The same for Nokia.
Having a good product wouldn’t mean their product would succeed. That’s how Microsoft succeeded over many other stuff (to the extend for you calling it anti-competitive). However, they have entered markets before. And they have been quite succeeful after many tries. But I think this market is very different. Nokia is excelent in marketing, and would be a good match against Microsoft. They already know the threat MS poses, like Palm years ago when Windows CE first came out. And companies like Sony Ericson, Motorola, etc. who have interests in Symbian would stand behind Nokia simply to protect its interest.
It would be a interesting fight.
Microsoft’s market share in PDAs is ailing with PalmOS still ruling together with its main ally Sony. At the same time, Linux PDAs have already gotten a good 5% market share with very nice prospects for 2003. Furthermore, mobile phone manufacturers are pushing into the same market with their smartphones. In Europe, Nokia’s new 7650 sold this autumn as much as all PDAs combined.
Microsoft’s prospects in the mobile phone sector are even worse. It has been pushed into situation where the only possible way out is through operators. What will MS benefit from that? Nothing – all profits, if any, will definetely go to its operator allies that can dump MS any time they want.
With desktop market finally threatened by Linux, server market share steadily shrinking and other businesses (like Xbox and MSN) making major losses, future does not look bright for Redmond.
The problem with Microsoft’s push into this market is that, companies who are already in this market will loose their profit margins if Microsoft wins. I think without manufacturer support Microsoft will definitely loose, even microsoft offers a better OS for those platforms.
The first really smart post today (except for mine, of course :op )
That’s the whole point, guys, the battle in the mobile phone segment is bloody as it is, phone producers don’t want to pay the Microsoft tax.
And just to disclose about my personal preferences: I kinda like the Philips phones.
The MS model won’t work in the cellular industry for another reason…. personalization. Phones, as nokia frequently says, are personal devices. Looks count and so does differentation via other means. Moreover, operators still have lots of control over which phones are sold.
The pc and pocket PC model are really about clone makers who just compete on price. That won’t translate to the phone industry. MS and intel are the focus of teh PC model. Phones are the focus of the Phone market as opposed to the operating system or the pentium as is the case in the pc world. MS just doen’t get it. And the phone makers also simply do not trust MS enough to jump in bed with them. So my guess, is that the MS’s phone thrust will really be a wireless pocket PC thrust and it will be the result of existing pocket PC builders and devices that are made by ODMs for operators and maybe even mS. An H-paq phone is a lot more probable than a Siemens or ericsson phone that runs windblows anything.
Symbian was set up to provide a common, open operating system. The idea was that with an open OS companies can quickly build new phones on a standard, and create a healthy competitive market. Symbian was formed in 1998. It’s now owned by Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Siemens, Panasonic… The OS has now been licensed by 80% of the market. So it’s not just Nokia against MS – it’s all the phone guys, really.
Another thought – building a PC isn’t like building a phone. The wireless radio aspects are v complex. MS is late too this field. Probably too late now that one of its high profile phone projects has been cancelled, and the maker switched to Symbian (and Nokia Series 60).