Tag: android Page 10 of 11

Finally: a new Palm

On 09/01/2009

After bloody ages (and 425m Elevation dollars later) Palm came out with a bang yesterday at CES by unveiling the Pre and its new WebOS. Palm’s shareholders will be chuffed as the stock surged in the hours afterwards. Now, what is it? And does it have legs? One of the first reports (even containing a minute-by-minute live-blog of the presentation) notes that

‘its form factor is a blend of the HTC Touch and the iPhone. The software looks an awful, awful lot like that of the iPhone — multitouch, gestures and so on. Many of the apps also have a very strong likeness to the iPhone […].”

That in itself is of course not a bad thing. And other reports confirm high hardware quality and nice UI. However… Aren’t they a bit late? And where will the content come from? Palm used to have a faithful following on his Tungsten and Treo product lines but this is a while ago now and there have been some awesome devices in the interim, some of which – most notably the iPhone and the G1 as well as RIM‘s Blackberries and the higher-end Nokia devices – have amalgamated a great device with a great UI and commercial environment into a huge following. Apple AppStore, Android Market, N-Gage and Ovi, Blackberry Application Center, etc, are all there or there about. And Palm will be up against that. The fact that it has – at least initially – tied itself to Sprint only will not be much help there.

WebOS is said to be easy to develop for. Allegedly HTML, CSS and some other stuff known from the web would be enough to develop for it. But will anyone do it unless there is a device base large enough to make it a compelling commercial case (which even seems to hit platforms like Nokia’s N-Gage; THQ has just apparently dropped its “Worms World Party” development for this).

It’s nice to see they’re back but I think that the jury is still out on the success of this.

RIM eats Chalk

By Volker

On 11/12/2008

In OEM

Blackberry maker Research in Motion is acquiring mobile content deployment solutions provider (quite a mouthful!) Chalk Media for $18.7m in cash. Chalk to what they call “pushcasts”, which – if I understand it correctly – is basically pushing podcasts to smartphones. The Vancouver-based company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, so it still requires shareholder approval, and the deal is therefore not closed yet.

The move is a neat one: podcasts are increasingly used in the corporate environment for staff communications of all sorts, and the enterprise being the stronghold for RIM, it makes a lot of sense to strengthen its service offering by adding such a tool.

RIM has of course got under fire by Apple‘s iPhone and this will presumably continue being the case also by the higher-end Android-based phones who have been nibbling away (see here and here) on the Blackberry’s pedestal as the businessman’s (and woman’s) favourite gadget. A lot to defend then, and the price would therefore not seem to be excessive at all… Stringent rationale, me thinks…

AT&T to go all Symbian

By Volker

On 08/12/2008

An article tells us that AT&T Wireless intends to run all their phones on one platform as soon as 2014, namely on Symbian. Is this odd? I mean: the iPhone isn’t Symbian, is it?

It is of course not odd. The carrier wants to avoid platform fragmentation (see also here and here) which has made it hard to develop mobile applications (and one might well now think that they indeed had a very powerful showcase paraded past them over the last 5 months: see here), and their Director of Next Generation Services, Data Product Realization (can’t they have shorter job titles?), Roger Smith called Symbian “a very credible and likely candidate” to be “the One”.

AT&T intends to

provide an own-branded smartphones and they reckon – rightly! – that it would be a “support nightmare” would they run this on various platforms.

Mr Smith also came up with some damning verdicts about J2ME: it failed to deliver a simplification for application developers and, moreover, doesn’t allow developers to get deeply enough into a phone’s OS to deliver the kind of experiences consumers want (what are these, I ask? Not having to put up with clunky and unintuitive restrictions? Ah, now I get it).

Symbian, Android (see here) or another one: the path is, I reckon, the right one. And it is a milestone for Symbian (and one probably only possible because of the decision to go open source with it) as it would wrap up one of the largest carriers in the world under its wings.

Google to be a force in mobile, too

By Volker

On 02/12/2008

In OEM

More research predicting world domination for Google! Well, somehow anyway. According to a new report, Google will succeed with its expansion into mobile. Now, I thought they were there already and had been doing a bit of business there for a while: they’re the search engine of choice for quite a number of network operators already (although the jury is still out if this works: see e.g. here), and besides keep adding nifty apps to the mix (their mobile versions of Google Maps and Google Mail apps, well or at least for the Blackberry are pure bliss!). The latter are – for the time being – only an extension to their web apps without, notably, the ads; but this is only a question of time, I think: screen resolutions make AdWord a little awkward these days but higher resolution phone screens (such as for the new Blackberry Bold, which has widescreen QVGA) will likely change that. Google does offer AdSense for mobile already although there, too, no data on uptake or revenue is available (cf. press release).

On the carrier deck search side, I understand that this as well is more a question of land grab rather than actual revenues so far but the above applies, too. That is hearsay more than confirmed fact though.

Now, the aforementioned report thinks that Android-powered phones will grab 3% market share for smartphones in 2009 (corresponding to 8m devices). This is respectable. However, Apple’s iPhone is said to hold 17% of the global smartphone market and it is predicted to ship 45m iPhones in 2009. Shouldn’t Android phones be able to do more? I mean: Android is not only Google, it is also a gazillion other molochs of the mobile telecoms world (see e.g. here and here). Even if those numbers were right, they wouldn’t give Google world domination (remember Nokia? They hold some 40% of the world market…).

Then, say see local search being key, with which I agree. In their own words:

Local search will be key to market growth: innovations in mobile search and advertising will allow for improved local search, directly competing with ‘yellow pages’ type proximity marketing services. The challenge for Google is to encourage consumers to start performing functions on their mobile browser that they would previously have done on their PC in already established markets.

So: opportunity = local search and connecting this to Google’s fantastic capabilities in “normal” search. Threat = no uptake. I would add: getting local relevance and context right is not as easy as one should think (when I walk through London’s SoHo, do you think I am looking for media companies (Fox, Sony, etc.) or for Agent Provocateur?

I do think though that Google is indeed best positioned to get this one right: they solved the tough bit of the puzzle, and that is to sift through the vast arrays of the Internet to rank the “right” pages. To limit these to local relevant ones only, is surely “only” a question of adding another condition to your algorithms…

Also: the whole Android idea makes a lot of sense, and Google clearly has the lead in the Open Handset Alliance. So they “just” have to keep up with the innovative speed of the markets then…

Note: I do not get paid by either Google or RIM (unfortunately) but I do use their services…

Fragmented?

By Volker

On 11/09/2008

In OEM

Funny. Sometimes a theme somewhat haunts you… After I have posted about the demise of Tira Wireless (and added some alternative views on the labyrinth that is platforms and handset fragmentation; also go and revisit my posts on the same topic here and here), today we can read that it will all get worse (or maybe not). I bet they read my recent post on the issue… 😉

The article only mentions somewhat curtly two new platforms, namely iPhone and Android (both of which I have covered before, namely here, here and here – amongst others), and then goes on to report on a panel at CTIA where a panel sponsored by the “Symbian stakeholders” apparently dismissed the whole notion, stating that the market would solve it. Now, it will have to, I guess. However, it is not all that bleak: Symbian, UIQ, Linux, BREW, Win ME and ultimately the iPhone OS are all C-based. Most of them (with the notable exception of the iPhone) also run Java Virtual Machines (JVM), so you can either code in J2ME (which is arguably the most widely supported language) or go native and code native in C+/C++ with then much easier ports to the varying iterations.

The challenge naturally remains (and, yes, I have voiced this previously) with a view to supporting all those odd handsets here and there and everywhere but, let’s face it, a lot of them are being imposed on publishers by the carriers who want to make sure that even that last customer that hangs on to his SE T-610 will be served with content (even though he won’t ever download a piece). Wouldn’t it be so much better marketing if they would simply return a message telling that poor customer:

“Hey, we noticed you tried downloading content to your T-610. You may not have realized that this phone is utterly outdated and will give you no joy when playing games. We would like to offer you a discounted upgrade to the brand-spanking new N76/ W880i/ Pearl/ iPhone/ Viewty/… and your life would be so much cooler. We are confident that you would then also have more luck with the girls/boys… Best. Your carrier”

What I am trying to say is that a lot of the fragmentation issues are (nowadays) artificially imposed, not technologically warranted. Any carriers reading this? Think about it, folks. It won’t harm you, I bet!

Mobile Games: Platform Standards!?

By Volker

On 02/09/2008

In OEM

Mobile games blogger extraordinaire, Arjan Olsder, provided for a great guest post by Qualcomm games guru Mike Yuen, and it’s well worth a read! Mike addresses this most horrible of issues to mobile game developers that is called fragmentation or, in his words, “[t]he lack of platform and hardware standards continues to be a major inhibitor to mobile game growth in the United States [and elsewhere; ed.]. This diversity in development platforms (Android, BREW, Flash Lite, iPhone, Java, Linux, Symbian, WAP, Windows Mobile) and hardware configurations (display resolutions, RAM/heap memory size, processing and graphics power, audio formats, keypad and other input modes.”

Mike rightly points out that, “[i]n many cases, the costs associated with individualizing software builds to the particularities of each handset, operator and language account for more than half of the overall development budget for new game titles. It’s a simple, but important concept. If fewer resources were diverted to porting a title from handset to handset, operator to operator, more resources could be dedicated to advancing the development of new and innovative gaming concepts.”

He goes on to draw an interesting comparison to the Korean and Japanese markets where there are not as many handsets (and platforms) around and where consumers are more than twice as likely to download mobile games. He then goes on to look at market disruptors like Apple (iPhone anyone?) and others only to conclude, sadly, that “[m]obile gaming is in a state of flux – platform and hardware fragmentation has clouded the once blue sky of gaming’s future and positive disruptive products such as Apple’s iPhone have changed industry perception and consumer expectations about the future of the mobile gaming device. I’m not expecting us to reach consensus anytime soon. Fragmentation is an inherent element of the mobile industry and perhaps always will be.”

Now, is that really so? He is of course right in his analysis of the current environment. But does this really have to be like this? The mobile space suffers from too many very large companies with very large markets. And if this wasn’t enough, there’s two different groups of them, with diverging interests, namely operators (carriers) and handset manufacturers: the former want everyone to be on their network, the latter to be on their handsets. Both are more often than not big old molochs of companies with a lot of market power in their segments. However… the markets seem to gravitate (under consumer demand) towards a more open set-up: operators seem to be accepting the fact that they cannot reign their users into walled gardens forever (more and more resign to flat-rate data and open the mobile web to users) and OEMs seem to realize that they need awesome numbers of users to have a real impact and so most of them gravitate to more open platforms (or, in the case of Nokia, create them).

As most of the newer platforms appear to be based on C++ or siblings thereof (Symbian, UIQ, Linux, Android [yes, I know that they us a JVM], BREW, Win ME, etc), it would appear that a reduced complexity might be nigh. Not as easy as online, mind you, but light at the end of the tunnel nonetheless. And it makes sense as the current fragmentation isn’t really helping anyone: consumers grow frustrated with ever-changing platforms. They want cool content, not a proprietary operator-variant of cool content. Hope, my friends, there is hope!

Linux Mobile on track

By Volker

On 05/02/2008

After delays on the part of the much awaited Android (see my original take on that here), one of the “other” Linux Mobile initiatives, namely the LiMo Foundation announced the release of its first version (“R1”) on schedule for March. The beta version of the respective APIs is available on their website immediately. They also said there would be sneak previews of all the good things at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and I will be sure to check it out!

The LiMo Foundation, which is backed by an impressive number of industry heavyweights (quite a few of which are also members of the Open Handset Alliance, the maker of Android), seems to be moving swiftly ahead, and their platform is, in their own words, basically the following:

“The LiMo Platform—leveraging standards and open-source projects—is a modular, plug-in-based, hardware-independent architecture built around an open operating system, with a secure run-time environment for support of downloaded applications. Linux was selected as the core technology for the LiMo Platform for its acceptability by the whole mobile industry, its rich functionality and scalability, its record of success in embedded systems and mobile phones and its potential to easily “cross-platformize” with other product categories.” Middleware components for the platform can apparently be implemented in either C or C++ programming languages.

What seems noteworthy is that the good folks at the foundation seem to have managed to leverage the substantial resource of its members. Its chairman praised “the transparent, balanced and harmonious contribution process […].”

Just before Christmas, the third consortium, LiPS, had announced that its first release was now complete.

However, it would appear of not so much being a race of who is first but of who manages to deploy on most devices. Given the membership of the three consortia comprises most of the big players (with the notable absence of Nokia although its recently acquired Trolltech is a member of the LiMo Foundation; read the excellent analysis on that deal here), one might ask if would not be perhaps the best idea to merge the whole thing, and deploy one common platform. Wouldn’t that have real impact?