On Technology and the Future: Education, IoT, AI, Mobility, Games

Tag: Motorola

The Others: Where Android, Symbian & LiMo are

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On 27/04/2009

In OEM

The title of this post is not meant in any way derogatory but with all the hype about the iPhone it is sometimes easy to forget that we are talking about a niche product that will probably remain a niche product (albeit a powerful and cool one!). In the rest of the world (feature phones aside), a few consortia are fighting for the open-source market, which is – let’s face it – a considerably larger piece than the small premium segment served by Apple.

So, where were we? There is the LiMo Foundation, which is onto establishing a mobile Linux standard. There is the Symbian Foundation and there is Android, a Linux-based OS from the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. One by one then:
LiMo Foundation

LiMo boasts a membership based comprised of the Who’s Who in mobile. Powerhouses from around the world like Vodafone, Orange,
Verizon Wireless, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica, SFR, TIM and SK Telecom, Samsung, NEC, LG, Panasonic, Huawei, Motorola, and ZTE (and quite a few more) are all in there. LiMo has released an SDK a while ago. Now though, they decided that enough is enough and that the world should know that their OS was actually making headway. In 2009, there will be new handsets based on LiMo’s s
tandards released by Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom and Verizon Wireless. Now, that’s a statement. Non-phone devices are in the works, they say…
There are already more than 20 LiMo phones out there (without very many people having realized it). They include such mundane devices like Motorola’s U9, ROKR EM30, ROKR Z6 and ROKR E8 as well as the RAZR2. Panasonic and NEC pboth produced a whole raft of devices for NTT DoCoMo. See here for a list of available phones.
Symbian

Symbian of course is coming from a differen
t mould: having been (co-)owned by Nokia for, like, ever, there are already over 200m devices running on its OS. After going open-source, they are working on consolidating the sister formats S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) now into one. Membership-wise, they’re not doing badly either: they target to having more than 100 members by year-end. Membership with them is only $1,500 p.a. It remains to be seen to what extent they will extend their handset footprint beyond Nokia though. Little has been heard so far…
Android

Both foundations felt compelled to state their cause, also in response to Eric Schmidt’s continued mantra that 2009 will be very, very strong for Android. The Open Handset Alliance had gone off to a well-publicized start with the T-Mobile G1. They recently announced that it had sold 1m devices (regarding which some people pointed out that Apple shipped as many iPhones on the first weekend), and are now gearing up more devices for launch (Vodafone got its hands on the HTC Magic). Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony Ericsson have all announced Android devices this year, and the first Samsung (I7500) has just been officially confirmed.
Multiple Membership
Wait a minute? Samsung? Weren’t they part of the LiMo foundation? Well, yes, and that is part of the problem: a lot of the big players have their fingers in all the pies (and why should they not?). This is favouring Apple since they are a single organization producing hardware and software. It could also be argued that it is favouring Android because Google throws so much marketing and PR behind it. However, maybe not. The big OEMs and the big carriers all work according to their own agenda. And this might very well be a very different one to Eric Schmidt’s: to an OEM, production cost, stability and versatility without impacting standardization are key. To a carrier, a lot will (also) ride on the ability to customize the handset so as to give it a distinct branded feel. Less PR from someone like Google makes it easier to them to focus on their own brand.
So: rock-solid, clean code, transparent and clear SDKs, no hidden hooks will mean that a lot of the feature phones that create the vast majority of handset sales (even if sales of the “classic” J2ME ones had been declining in 2008 when compared to smartphones) will quite possibly see a larger and larger move towards the open platforms. It makes it cheaper to produce and, with Apple having given the world the app store idea, content should flow in sooner or later. They “only” need to keep the standards, well, standard!
The iPhone is of course looming large, and it is the one device that has shown the old school of the telco world how 21-st-century marketing can impact market perception and sales. They have also all realized that this might actually be a very good thing, hence the eager discussions many are purported to be having on getting their hands on the next generation. However, last time I looked, the streets were not full of Porsche Boxsters either. Quite a few Hyundais, Fiats, Peugeots, BMWs, Volvos, well, you get it…

Games Pulsating Through One Platform?

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On 12/03/2009

Here’s one that nearly slipped through the (well, at least my) net: according to a recent press release, the Eclipse Foundation is set to unveil a unified development platform. It is said that some major players, including Nokia, RIM, Sony Ericsson, IBM and Motorola have joined this initiative already though Android and – predictably – Microsoft and Apple are notable in their absence.

The concept is oh so simple: a developer goes to the site, downloads the platform and is ready to rumble. The platform (called Pulsar) would pull together vendor-specific SDKs and off you go. It is clearly geared to tackle the fragmentation of the many, many handsets to be addressed when publishing to “mainstream” mobile phones.
At present, it’s an initiative (as there have been so many) and the presence of industry heavyweights does not always guarantee their success. I am (cynicism coming with age…) cautious over black box approaches (remember Tira Wireless?). I would love to see this succeed but let’s see what it comes to…
Image credit: digitalvish.com

Light-Green Moto

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On 06/01/2009

In OEM


Motorola has recently been struggling a little to get the Koolaid out; it wasn’t often the pinnacle of cool recently. However, today they unveiled a new phone, the “W233 Renew” (catchy name, huh?), and that phone is made of recycled plastic bottles. Now people might jump to the fineprint to see what the percentage of re-used components is, etc but, hey, let’s just acknowledge that the concept is pretty cool, don’t you think? 

However, from their press release, there are little bits that do annoy me a little. They say that:

“When designing the packaging, Motorola was able to reduce its size by 22 percent and the box and all of the materials inside are printed on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper.”

Now, why on earth can’t you do this with all your phones? It surely is not that big a thing, is it? And that would give Moto also a big 2l PET bottle of KoolAid: imagine the headline telling everyone that Motorola embarked on a company-wide strategy to go green. Woah!  

Verizon's group hug: now it also supports Android

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On 04/12/2007

Verizon‘s U-turn continues: the carrier now announced that they would support the Android OS promoted by the Google-led Open Handset Alliance. This comes only days after Verizon was met with a lot of raised eyebrows after it declared it would open up to handset manufacturers, service and application providers. Upon the launch of Android, Verizon was amongst a select few that were visibly reluctant to support the initiative, reportedly for fear of impinging on their customer base by not being able to control the user experience.

This move may well be an attempt to prevent Google from bidding in the 700 MHz spectrum, the auction for which goes ahead tonight: Google may not see the necessity to bid just as aggressively if it can basically fall back on an OS-agnostic carrier as it can then continue doing what it does best, namely sell ads. The proximity of the dates may indeed point into that direction.

Verizon Wireless had created the most profitable U.S. cellular business by tightly restricting the devices and applications allowed to run on its network. However, its management apparently now came to conclude that it was time for a radical shift: this will have been out of fear to be isolated in a niche when the rest of the market was overrun by new, more powerful devices as well as media empires old and new both of which would bring a richness of offerings mid-term that Verizon could not have supported within the constraints of its tightly-controlled environment.

It may also have thought that opening up would help them to keep growing while containing costs; probably a bit of everything. That last bit is of course one of the reasons that led many partners to throw their weight behind the various OS campaigns that recently appeared to have picked up pace: the LiMo Foundation, C-based Nokia-owned OS Symbian and the Sony Ericsson and Motorola-owned UIQ (in which Motorola had just acquired a 50% stake; see here) will also be driven by the OEM’s attempt to contain cost. Unified OS make mass production much cheaper (and the famously robust Linux kernel also will allow stability whilst being flexible enough to allow enough flavours to keep every marketing and UI expert happy, too).

Everyone coming to their senses? Oh, brave new world.

Vodafone Germany envious of T-Mobile's iPhone deal?

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On 20/11/2007

German news reports say that Vodafone Germany has sued T-Mobile over its exclusive iPhone arrangement with Apple. Vodafone challenges the “combo” of iPhone and a 2-year-contract and asserts that this might be contrary to fair competition laws. Vodafone Germany’s chief describes the iPhone as the “fall of man”, which is pretty funny, come to think of it. The manager says they would fear that the likes of Nokia and Motorola would follow the example and do the same, which would heavily distort the market. Hmm. Who had this thing with its logos on handsets again? Who was the only carrier distributing Sharp handsets? Ah… Given Vodafone’s approach with the rather successful Sharp GX series, which was exclusively (sic!) available to, yes, Vodafone customers, the suit does not feel entirely sincere. One might plead that Vodafone fails on the “clean-hands” doctrine (which, alas, is unknown to German law).

This is of course also noteworthy as Vodafone Global CEO Arun Sarin went on record saying that the iPhone makes for a “pretty poor experience” (unless you are in a WiFi area) and all.

Why then do they insist this is such a bad thing? Do we take it as a sign that the lost iPhone deal might after all have a certain sting to the mighty carrier? This is in spite of it still possibly proving to have been the right decision, with Apple’s share in user fees and all. It may well all come down to branding: Vodafone is thought to have spent hundreds of millions on trying to build its Vodafone Live! brand, which it all but abandoned recently. It was the first big carrier to partner with Nokia on the latter’s Ovi initiative (see here), which in itself may be seen as an admission of failure of its own service.

Whilst I understand Vodafone’s move from the view of the German lawyer I (also) am, the overall approach has something of a child envious of another one’s toy.

UPDATE: Further reports shed more light onto this. T-Mobile may be forced to sell unlocked phones and also give up the 2-year tie-in, i.e. offer consumers to buy the iPhone without a contract. This would be a major blow to the Apple business model and one that might force others to open up, too: MoCoNews reports that French laws have similar provisions.

Most importantly perhaps, European laws on the freedom of goods and services would prevent anyone stopping grey imports into other EU member states where Apple struck other exclusivity deals (e.g. with O2 in the UK), which might become a real threat to Apple’s business model altogether.

The G-System: Google's mobile OS aka Android arrives

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On 05/11/2007

So, no GPhone — yet. Google, with quite a number of partners, today announced the already much-rumoured “Open Handset Alliance” under which a Linux-based OS, nicknamed Android has been launched (the SDK will allegedly be available in a week’s time). Here’s a video explaining the deep thoughts of the creators (be quick: YouTube has removed it already…).

The whole industry had been waiting for this, and Google seems to have come up with a black-white thing: it goes back to its roots in open source but overlays it with Java, which has caused the content community a lot of headaches (every mobile phone translates it slightly differently, so one needs a gazillion ports). However, Google has teamed up with no less than 34 partners for the launch alone, including such giants as China Mobile, KDDI, Sprint Nextel, TIM, T-Mobile, Motorola (who seem to be dancing on a lot of weddings recently: UIQ and Linux Mobile are also on their plates), Samsung, HTC, Intel and eBay.

So what does it all mean? According to the members of the alliance, it will be better, bigger, faster for everyone: open source means more applications, less bugs and less cost. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it is “a fresh approach to fostering innovation in the mobile industry will help shape a new computing environment that will change the way people access and share information in the future.” Commentators note that there is apparently one caveat: you’ll have to use Google for navigation. Now: does that bother anyone? Give me Internet on my phone on broadband speed and I happily surf with whoever gives it to me, I’d say. To enact a platform, supported by a lot of sector muscle, that makes the developers’ life easier should be good for everyone indeed as it will undoubtedly bring more usage. Traditionally, carriers feared for the consistency of the user experience. Apparently, Verizon and AT&T have already voiced such concerns also here although the explanation sounds defensive at best: they fear too much advertising. Would it be safe to say they rather fear loss of control?

Quite a few companies have tried to take on mobile as the next frontier and quite a few fared rather miserably on the complexities of the environment presented by the sector (Disney’s MVNO attempts, Infospace and a few others spring to mind). With Google’s might this might be about to change though. A fresh breeze and a unified development platform would, in any event, be a good thing.

Interesting though that, as in recent releases on OS-driven initiatives, Nokia is again absent. This is not promising any good in terms of unifying the landscape, it seems. However, both Linux Mobile (on which Android is apparently based) and Symbian (in which Nokia holds a huge stake and which it intends to make its platform of choice) are C++-based. And that would be easing development pains after all: much easier to deal with than the Java layers, which until now were statutory but might only be optional going forth.

UPDATE 7 Nov 2007: Nokia has said its participation in Android is “not ruled out at all”. It would work with it if it would see sense. Now, a convincing statement sounds differently but it IS noteworthy that the Finnish giant felt the need to comment on it so quickly.

Motorola loves UIQ

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On 16/10/2007

US handset maker Motorola acquired half the shares in UIQ, the smartphone software unit, from Sony Ericsson. Sony Ericsson had bought UIQ from handset OS maker Symbian last year. UIQ is essentially a graphic interface adding components to the Symbian OS. Symbian in turn is 47.9% owned by Nokia. Under UIQ, native programming can be made in C++ although the software does support the – in the mobile games space – ubiquitous J2ME standard. Motorola’s new flagship Z8 (nicknamed “MotoRzr” as in “riser”) is running on it already. The battle of the OS giants begins…

It is an interesting move since Moto has been the most active OEM for the use of Linux Mobile: it has released a whole range of phones for the open source OS featuring the penguin. It is also one of the founding fathers of the LiMo Foundation, an initiative it embarked on together with industry heavyweights NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Samsung, NEC and Panasonic (and which was recently joined by LG, McAfee, Broadcom, Ericsson and others). Now, I understand that Linux and C++ work together but must admit that my knowledge is more than limited here. It is in any event noteworthy that Motorola goes with a UI based on Symbian rather than straight-forward Linux. Motorola was quick to state that UIQ would only be “one of the actions to support [a] strategy” adding more investment in multimedia product segments.

With hundreds of millions in development cost at stake, it is probably too early to tell but it certainly is a new twist in the quest to uproot Nokia‘s top position with the Symbian s60 platform. So, what’s next?

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