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I recently read many skeptical posts about google’s announcement about Google Chrome OS. That was not a big news in itself since, for those that occasionally ended up on www.thinkgos.com page in the last few months, an official announcement of a google service proposition optimized OS for thin clients was obvious.
Most common complaints about the potential success of Chrome OS are related to Google OS strategy (claimed to be conflicting and confused) and potential (Android considered not such good) and Google OS business proposition (seeming a pure anti-MS move).
Let’s take a bunch of those complaints and try to give a view.
Android and chrome os will be conflicting AKA it means that android doesn’t work (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21004)
Apart from the neverending list of names used to identify the new devices that, actually, are taking their place in the consumer electronic market (mids, netbooks, nettops, touchbooks, smartbooks…and counting) there is one thing to keep in mind about that: they’re different from a phone.
Those differences are mainly based on the concept of a phone itself: portable, small, lightweight, handy. You’ll newer see a smartphone with a 13 inches display since it doesn’t fit in your pocket, as well as you’ll newer use a mouse on your smartphone and while you can use touch input on both, your fingertips meet differenlty with so different (in size) screens. At the end smartphones are for mobile users while *books are for nomadic users. This end up in very different usage patterns, that surely may intersect sometimes, but are not overlapped (while you can think to wrote a document snippet on a smartphone – i’m doing this right now – you probably won’t write a presentation or write code on it)
Furtherly mobile services are context sensible,,,
Android is an hi-quality os for smartphones, the result of a long term google strategy (started in xxxx with google’s android company acquisition) that is expected to perform well in terms of numbers in 2h09 an 2010, is highly appreciated from telco industry insiders.
On the other hand, nobody prevents chrome os to be able to run dalvik jvm based applications. We’ve heard of ubuntu thinking to support android market so while chrome os won’t?
At the end i think that android and chrome os will not conflict
It’s an anti-microsoft move (http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-chrome-os-opening-vein-in.html) (no ms is follower)
I read much commenters sayng that this simply will not work since it’s a clear anti microsoft move with the only aim of cutting market shares from the redmond guys. Apart that MS market share is falling without any help from Google guys (http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/business_money/microsoft+sales+slump++the+fall+of+a+tech+giant/3282457) that’s simply not true.
Ms Windows has been a consumer desktop\laptop market leader mostly due a couple of things (other than the abuse of market position that has been punishedd by antitrusts VERIFICA): it’s competitors have been a conscious niche vendor (Apple) and not comparable, in terms of r&d investments, players such as linux distributors like mandriva or canonical. Furthermore, we’ve been used, on the desktop market, to see the os-linux community struggling to replicate the windows experience and applicatione suite (see openoffice or gimp story).
Now the landscape is definitively different: Google has a new vision and goes towards a real innovation brand new concept of os, targeted for an emerging market, cheaper, more in line with the exploding user base of the internet native. Someone can say: “hey it’s just the thin client we’re talking about from years”, yes but, now, there’s Google and a clear productization and market strategy: free software, preloaded thanks to OEM/ODM agreements, backed by many big Computer firms, targeted to customers (BigG2C).
Jason Hiner at ZDNEt says that It’s too late (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21004) since Windows 7 will be out and will be rocking hard at the time of Google Chrome OS release. Windows 7 is a retreat, is a simplified version of an heavyweight OS, doesn’t introduce any new high level visions.
Chrome OS has been targeted to an emerging market share (*book) that needs a web centered and cheaper os (why call a windows xp equipped small notebook a netbook???). Is a result of a long term vision introduced by Google since years (Google has been pioneering the consumer cloud service market, remember gmail) and, seems to me, – thinking to gos – is the final result of long term studies and efforts.
To me this means only one thing: Microsoft is now a follower in the thin client *book optimized market. Google is a web native company (someone thinks Google IS the web)
To be true I think that Ms should start worry because, apart from the Google thing threat on the consumer oriented thin client market, on the heavyweight/expensiveHW OS market there is an angry competitor, with a fantastic brand, sales going well http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_sales_surged_25_in_June_says_NPD?taxonomyId=15 (surely better than MS), and , not to be underestimated, sharing a board member with BigG (Eric Schmidt).
On this topic it’s also worth to read this Matt Asay (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10293058-16.html) reflecting on a potential Cold War between BigG and MS hypotized by the WSJ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574302324157763970.html. The hypo is fascinating (anyone noticed the not so strange Bing->ChromeOS timeline?) but anyway, I don’t believe to it. At this stage I see a future proof company that is leading the ideas landscape (who’s not eager to see Google Wave? wich, to quote M. Asay, ”…promises to put Google, not Microsoft, in control of the future “office productivity” market.”) and, on the other side, a follower company, that spent the last 2 years rebuilding an unefficient OS and in, literally, copiyng and reprending a search engine.
I recently read many skeptical posts re Google’s announcement about Google Chrome OS. That was not a big news in itself since, for those that occasionally ended up on www.thinkgos.com page in the last few months, an official announcement of a Google service proposition optimized OS for thin clients was quite obvious.
Most common complaints about the potential success of Chrome OS are related to Google OS strategy (claimed to be conflicting and confused) and potential (Android considered not such good) and to Google business proposition for the OS market (claimed to be a pure anti-Microsoft move).
I’ll try to give my views about this couple of topics:
- Android and Chrome OS will be conflicting or it means that Android doesn’t work
Apart from the never ending list of names used to identify the new devices that are finding their place in the consumer electronic market (MIDs, netbooks, nettops, touchbooks, smartbooks…and counting) there is one thing to keep in mind about that: they’re different from a phone (even the smarter phone on earth).
Those differences are mainly based on the concept of a phone itself: portable, small, lightweight, handy.
You’ll newer see a smartphone with a 13 inches display since it doesn’t fit in your pocket, as well as you’ll newer use a mouse on your smartphone and while you can use touch input on both, your fingertips meet differently with so different (in size) screens.
At the end smartphones are for mobile users while *books (let’s call it like that) are for nomadic users. This end up in very different usage patterns, that may intersect sometimes, but are not overlapped (while you can think to wrote a document snippet on a smartphone – I’m doing this right now – you probably won’t write a presentation or code on it)
Every industry insider can tell you that Android is an hi-quality OS for smartphones, the result of a long term Google strategy (started in2005 with Google’s Android company acquisition) that is expected to perform well in terms of numbers in 2H09 an 2010.
On the other hand, nobody prevents Chrome OS to be able to run dalvik jvm based applications. We’ve heard of Ubuntu running android applications so why Chrome OS won’t?
At the end I think that Android and Chrome OS will not conflict.
- It’s an anti-Microsoft move
There’s someone saying that Chrome OS will not work since it’s a clear anti microsoft move with the only aim of cutting market shares from the Redmond guys. Michael Mace from Mobile Opportunity says:
If you’re really serious about running a logical OS program in its own right, you’d try to rationalize those two things. But if your top priority is to commoditize Microsoft, then you don’t mind pushing out a couple of overlapping initiatives.
First, it should be noticed that Ms market share is falling without any help from Google guys. Apart from the well known US vs Microsoft antitrust case, see here for details, that certainly shows how, in some ways, Microsoft managed to keep its market dominance; Windows is now the consumer desktop\laptop market leader mostly due a couple of reasons. Ms competitors have formerly been:
- a consciously niche vendor (Apple)
- few players not comparable in terms of r&d investments: Linux distributors like mandriva or canonical.
Furthermore, we’ve been used, over the desktop market, to see the Linux community struggling to replicate the windows experience and applications suites (see Openoffice or Gimp story).
Now the landscape is definitively different: Google has a new vision and goes towards a brand new concept of OS, targeted for an emerging market, cheaper, more in line with the exploding user base of the Internet natives.
Someone can say: “…hey it’s just the thin client we’re talking about since years!”; yes but now there’s Google and a clear productization and market strategy: free software, preloaded and backed by many big Computer firms, targeted directly to customers (BigG2C).
Jason Hiner at ZDNEt says that it’s too late since Windows 7 will be out and will be rocking hard at the time when Google Chrome OS will be released. It should be noted that Windows 7 is a retreat, is a simplified version of an ugly and heavyweight (fat?) OS wich many decided to downgrade from, that didn’t introduce any new high level views and concepts.
Chrome OS has been targeted to an emerging market (and user base) share, the *books, needing a web centered and cheaper OS (why call a windows xp equipped small notebook a netbook???). Is a result of a long term vision introduced by Google since years (Google has been pioneering the consumer cloud service market, remember gmail was born years ago) and, seems to me – thinking to gos - the final result of long term strategies and efforts.
To me this means only one thing: Microsoft is now a follower in the thin client *book optimized market. Furthermore Google is a web native company, someone thinks Google IS the web.
To be true I think that Microsoft should start worrying because, apart from the Google thing threat on the consumer oriented thin client market, also in the heavyweight/expensiveHW OS market there is an angry competitor, with a fantastic brand, sales going well (surely better than MS), and , not to be underestimated, sharing a board member with BigG (Eric Schmidt).
On this topic it’s also worth to read this from Matt Asay that recalls a WSJ article about a potential Cold War between BigG and Ms. Althought the hypothesis is fascinating (anyone noticed the not so strange Bing->ChromeOS timeline?) I don’t believe to it.
At this stage I see a future proof company that is leading the ideas landscape (who’s not eager to see Google Wave? which, to quote M. Asay, ”…promises to put Google, not Microsoft, in control of the future “office productivity” market.”) and, on the other side, a follower company, that spent the last 2 years rebuilding an inefficient OS and literally copying and re-branding a search engine.
If there’s a war between Ms and BigG, maybe someone should realize that this war is over.
Modified from the original "dance until the war is over" - © Paulo Renato Souza Cunha
Penguins party - credits to mkrigsman
According to the quite recent joint announcement, Intel and Nokia are starting a long term partnership with the aim of integrating Moblin, Maemo and oFono projects to eventually build an Intel based, Linux empowered MID/Smartphone (the difference is not so much evident at today) device.
The evidence to me is that, in the mid-long term, the domination of ARM based architectures is not to be seen as acquired.
There’s an evident demand of more powerful CPU’s and chipsets in general but, on the other hand, the demand for low drain on batteries is as well a priority. Therefore a little more competition in the Mobile device CPU market is appreciable.
Other rumours confirm that the upcoming Dell MID device will be likely equipped with Android (I’ll be very surprised it this will not happen).
As I mentioned very early on this blog in the “Nokia secret love for linux” post, I’m not convinced of Nokia’s Symbian aquisition move from the very beginning. I’m not surprised that Nokia is considering Linux the best suitable platform for empowering the next generation connected devices and smartphones.
But, if you read this story from Eric Brown on LinuxForDevices you’ll see him quoting Gigaom’s Stacey Higginbotham
[...Lazard Capital Markets analyst Daniel Amir claims Nokia is preparing an ARM-based Android netbook for release by wireless carriers in 2010. ...]
Hey, that would be surprising!
In the meanwhile it seems to me that, behind the virtual headcount’s, Symbian is really becoming an “open” project.
I seriously want to ack the Symbian community and the job that people like Lee Williams and David Wood are doing to change Symbian OS from the 2008 condemned product (guilty of lacking innovation) to a new tool, a new framework in the hand of the developer community.
My idea is that SF is moving in the right direction althought I’m not sure they will finally suceed, my impression is that, anyway, the only way this could happen is via a strong support for community standards like BONDI.
Looking to the situation from a wider point of view last rumours only confirm the definitive penetration of OSS in Mobile Industry and the role that OSS is playing: a technological competitive innovation facilitator.
I’ld not be surprised by hearing of Google moving towards the acquisition of Canonical doing the same that they did with Android and Mobile industry in the Laptop and Server industry.
But this is another story, maybe worth a post 
.
addon: just thinking that following link was worth to add: also the Guardian claiming an Android Nokia handset in autumn
I’ve recently red a very interesting post about Kindle interpreted as a disrupting innovation in Mobile Industry then, today, accidentally I came up reading this topic on ZDNET citing the WSJ:
Who prevent Dell to produce a sort of only SIP enabled device, with a:
- 3G + Wi fi
- with a 1st citizen integrated and Cloud enabled phonebook and dialer (Android?)
- bundled with a start-up service token with something like 20€ from a leading SIP provider (e.g.: Wengo)
- with a full access to a SaaS Office automation suite (why to not use Android, since that’s Google Docs is built in)
- Synchronized with SyncML and enabled for Offline work
- full qwerty, Full touch, + tablet/pen
- thin and sexy
and most important
- to be commercialized with a built-in lifetime data access for handset to SIP gateway traffic and browsing (even subject to a decent QoS/protocol restriction agreement)
Dell is a market leading personal computer firm, it has an excellent appeal at IT professionals and has an optimal customer support system. The device would have definitively an appeal to the market. Especially if well advertised.
It would not cost much, I’m quite sure.
Would it be disruptive? I’m sure Yes.
The question is: would it be easily commercialized by Dell? What the operators would do?
It has been more than a while since we have been waiting for MIDP 3.0 specs to get closed.
Now that it seems the process is going to complete, we face a java runtime distribution across the mobile world with more shades than lights: terrible fragmentation problems (that have been one of midp 3 and MSA drivers) with hundreds of different jvms across thousands of handset models and java being discouraged or, sometimes seeming to be ostracized by and emerging tech firms and platforms (apple, windows mobile, android).
At today, JME is almost the unique dev runtime for a number of important platforms like SonyEricsson, LG and Samsung RTOS, Nokia s40, Rim (with extensions): unfortunately those platforms are niche ones or, at least, candidates to be superseded by more powerful, emerging ones (like Android, Symbian or Limo based) when the chipsets families those I’ve been built for will decrease in price and consequently being adopted on low tier models.
From a strictly technical point of view, current leading JME platforms only partially suffered of MIDP3 being so late: this mainly thanks to MSA recommendations (decreasing fragmentation partially) and jsr 211 (enabling midlet2midlet and, sometimes, midlet2native interaction).
It remains a question mark about the root reason: was MIDP 3 being late forcing java developers to be not too much visionary or ambitious or, on the contrary, there was actually no particular demand, across the developers, for such a powerful solution like MIDP3 is?
The slowness of MIDP3 development have been experienced as a problem at first but soon the mobile developers moved to alternatives where possible. Probably, the hard times that Moto experienced as a company that, at the end, impacted terribly MIDP3 schedule (being Motorola the lead) led to less interest for java as a platform and, eventually, to Apple and Google to create alternatives for their compelling platforms. Despite Apple choice could be explained with the need of a closed environment, Google choice is clearly dictated by JME technology limitations since they embraced totally the Java development community and the Java language itself despite creating a sort of new profile, a mix of JSE/CDC and novel concepts (eg. Activities).
Now the question is:
- is there still space for java to be a protagonist on Mobile Internet services?
The situation is really complex.
User demands are rapidly ramping up: now users want smartphones to give access to web contents and web services, tomorrow, the access in itself will not be enough: advanced features like phonebook presence integration, integrated conversation management, contacts syncing, user context access, content management, etc… will be considered as important features to be listed in the small labels describing specs at shops.
Is Java, with it’s bytecode-VM approach not suited to integrate with “native apps” by design? Google “all apps are equal” approach will ever be applicable to a PURE java MIDP runtime? It seems acquired that the “write once, run everywhere” promise of java has not ever been true in the mobile world until now, but anyway, as said before on this blog, thanks to the evident trend pointing out that the number of platforms is decreasing and restricting to few open OSes, java has now a new chance.
Sun and oracle must now cowork with the ecosystem, bet again on open source and, in parallel, invest to create first class JVMs for open OSes an publish it on Markets. How to monetize the effort? The application store is something making more sense to me from day to day, and JavaOne recently hold at Moscone center crearly demonstrated that Java is not dead. The Mobility general session from JavaOne has been full of news, vision, hopes and last but not least has been full of explicit endorsement (Vodafone, Verizon, SonyEriccson, Google, etc…). And Larry has been there live to state that Oracle bets on Java. At the end, something that very few days ago seemed a concept and led me to some speculations, it’s now reality: take a look at the Java Store! …and Warehouse! …there’s also a beta program, even if US only 
Ah, forgot to mention that JavaFX is definitively out the “buzz-world”.
2009-2010 will be a very crucial period for JME: win or die. No niche option for java.
This post is the first that I’ve written on an android phone…Thanks G1 for existing!
I often read Jonathan Schwartz blog posts with big interest, at least since they’re as rarest than mine and, at the end, I always enjoy to see his smiling face
Jon
I’m sure that Jon has lot more to do than me now that the new boss, that strange Larry with the sailing hobby, is on board.
On May the 18th Jon wrote this interesting post on his blog where he advocates java being the ideal candidate to become “the” application store of the next generation.
Now, I’m a bit confused. After reading the blog post a couple of times, I eventually came up to few conclusions and lots of questions that I’ll try to summarize, also encouraging you to share your views.
The application store hype comes from the mobile devices market where it was created, by a visionary like Steve Jobs, mostly due to two reasons: design a new value chain while controlling totally the product. With time passing and new mindsets facing the app store phenom, we’ ve seen lots of different ideas and, recently, with Nokia debuting as well as Google and others, we’ve a clear idea of what a mobile app store could be.
On the other hand, Mobile app store have introduced new concepts in application delivery that simply makes sense. Things like crowdsourcing application quality review, a crucial feature for every app market, or quality certification programs (like Apple does) make sense also for a desktop and notebook market, but, more important, make sense for netbooks and MIDs. Canonical working to enable Dalvik VM and Android Market for ubuntu make me think that we should give a try to Sun and Oracle for this strange idea of the world-domination-dream-java-app-market.
Anyway, the step from successful co-marketing initiatives like the ones with the toolbars, to a promise of the killer application (store) and the perfect software delivery and distribution environment is a giant size step.
But, Jon, I’ve many question from the very beginning: will this Java-Store deliver only Java apps? Will be Windows centered? or at least Desktop Centered? will embrace or be embraced by mobile platform vendors in you plans?
Is this finally the “all screen of your life” java that we are expecting since the very beginning of the Java dream?
A successful java market should exploit java pervasivity, java ease of use and outstanding adoption rate to become the central and preferred point of sales and distribution of java resources, from client applications to server components and, in general, enterprise resources.
The Java app store should be the ideal channel:
- to access cloud provided services and monitor IaaS performances
- to buy support and acquisition licenses from the commercial software providers
- to provide update and patch management services
- for open source projects to provide access to software releases
The Java app store should be accompanied with:
- an app engine/libraries set to embed Sun/Oracle IaaS in Java environment
- new partnership programs to ease the adoption and porting across different platforms (for Desktops, MIDs, Mobiles and Server technology providers)
- revenue share programs for developers
- optional software quality certifications programs
Finally I tried to manage to wrote down the following schema to help myself to figure out what the new Java market idea could be, at the end:
the java app store as it could be (click to enlarge)
Unfortunately, if you look to Runtime Bob’s latest post on Symbian Foundation blog, it seems that neither at Symbian, where Java was meant to be a first class citizen, they’ve a clear idea of what “the future of java” will be. Today Symbian dev portal has gone beta and is available for you at https://developer.symbian.org/.
Looking at the JME section it seems they are serious about Java.
Hopefully at Sun tomeone has a clearest idea of the future of java. At least at Oracle they’ve, I’m sure
Unfortunately mine is different from the one that the latest statement at Sun, i.e. that the new Java Garbace collector (G1) will be available only for support license subscribers, advocates.
Let’s see. JavaOne will probably give us some new food for thoughts.
We were expecting a sparkling 2009 year for Smartphones and generally Mobile platforms industry and 2009 is effectively reserving to us some interesting trends and dynamics. My personal views have been clearly detailed in this blog in few occasions in the past (thoughts you can find here ).
2008 convinced me of few following statements:
- Proprietary RTOS are going to disappear (and that’s more or less confirmed)
- General purpose OEM oriented proprietary OSes are in danger (e.g.: Microsoft Windows Mobile or Qualcomm’s BREW/BMP) – to be true I was expecting more exciting news from M$
- Full vertical brands like RIM and Apple were likely to keep a limited but strong market niche
- Linux based platforms market shares are likely to consolidate around one leader initiative. To me, this initiative would have been Android (consequently LIMO, OpenMoko, Maemo, etc… to loose interest)
- We’re going to face a even higher runtime fragmentation (Java, Dalvik, QT, browser/widget based runtimes, etc…)
finally, now that first 2009 quarter is ending, is time to come back on these ideas and, make some reflections.
Almost all of you should be familiar with the concept of Realpolitik:
“Realpolitik (German: real “realistic”, “practical” or “actual”; and Politik “politics”) refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions. ”
In the last few days I’ve come back to my late 2008 and early 2009 considerations about the mobile platforms industry and suddenly I noticed that, maybe, there’s something I’ve underestimated. This something is the various players capability to be “really” on market and to manage market dynamics with a deep understanding of everyone’s needs and position in the value chain.
If you give a look to Gartner’s Worldwide Smartphone Sales you’ll notice that q408 sales actually gave us quite different and interesting trends. More in details there are two clear trends deserving a little analysis:
- Linux share decreased in 2008
- Proprietary OS sales increased strongly
It seems to me that the hype provoked by the Android debut on Market was so promising that most of the industry players (except from Nokia) actually slowed down or cancelled any other Linux related effort. Do you remember that, in second half of the year, we were ready to state the upcoming death of Limo as an initiavive?
In the meanwhile the demand for compelling UX and web intensive products coupled with the debut on the market of new products (e.g.: iPhone 2.0, BlackBerry Storm) led to a strong market share from the vertical proprietary product makers.
When facing reality, most of the industry players encountered some “productization” problems when working on Android based project. Andreas from Vision Mobile pointed out that, the difficulties when moving from “concepts” to “products” was mainly derived by the success and the endorsement that the platform received in 2008. In Andreas views this ended up in a increasing support request to Android team at Google that was evidently not ready to support all of these initiatives:
“Android is a victim of its success
To the surprise of most industry observers, the industry (including operators and handset OEMs) have shifted from criticising Android in late 2007 to adopting Android in late 2008.
So what does this mean for Google?
It means that up to 2008, Google was working with one OEM (HTC) and one operator (T-Mobile). And since 2009 it has to work with nearly 10 OEMs (Motorola, Huawei, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC, Acer, Lenovo, Archos, Garmin, Toshiba) and several operators (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile China Mobile, ..).
You would think that Google’s mighty 20,000+ workforce can easily cope. But the 100-strong Android team that Google acquired isn’t showing signs of scaling to match the demand; at least the roadmap seems to lack the pace of development, let alone innovation that is expected from Google.”
Anyway, I’m not sure that this is the real problem. More in general, apart from “productization” effort needed to create fully working products that hopefully will not cost the hell in post-sales support, there is an even harder “productization” problem that is related to the product value chain and involves, mostly, operators.
In fact, in the short time Android is still a demanding platform in terms of hardware (e.g.: requires Qualcomm’s 7*** chipsets to work) and forced OEM’s to make significant investments over the last year (build teams for development, QA, customers support, contribute code, etc… on a brand new platform): therefore the BOM lessening that we were expecting thanks to the royalties free OS still isn’t tangible up to now.
Ooperators and third parties (e.g. : service providers/client providers) are still not 100% operative on the platform and this is ending up in service discontinuity when it comes to Android powered devices.
In the meanwhile Symbian Foundation obtained strong investments from Nokia, a new management and an endorsements avalanche (this probably means that the NEW Management is working well and hard and is madee by handshake champions) and will likely reach 100 endorsements soon. Even Qualcomm joined and they’re all happy to work together as it seems…something you could expect after Nokia and Qualcomm closed their patent dispute. At the end Symbian is not that dead OS walking some of us were thinking about it at the end of 2008.
With this lacking effectiveness from Android, and few practical problems showing up, seems that Limo foundation itself received a last slice of time to come back to work on its credibility. This article (again from vision mobile) is quite interesting and gives a quite clear idea of the LIMO situation.
Actually LIMO foundation is still largely founded, provides a “real” commodity (as it provides the middleware only) and in the meanwhile is slowly moving towards more openness and more democracy (release more code, lessen participation fees especially for third parties…) finally building, or trying to, an ecosystem. I can’t say if this is going to work… I still do not believe in LIMO as a successful initiative if we look in the long period.
Looking to things from an higher view all this competition is bringing quality and innovation and, in some cases, standardization: think about WebKit.
As said we still have a big question mark on runtimes fragmentation: it seems that the situation is worsening instead of going better, but this is another story (maybe deserving a reflection in future posts).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul-w-locke/
It’s something like one month I haven’t posted on meedabyte.This doesn’t mean that nothing deserving to be on the blog was happening . Actually I’ve been quite absorbed from writing an interesting (fully open source powered) architecture for a Business Process Management and Business Activity Monitoring facility for a client. This activity and others eventually made some thoughts come up to my mind.
I’m starting to think that we need new tools, both theoretical and practical, to manage the process of develop “solutions” at today. I use the word solution, and not something like architecture or software, infrastructure or service. This because, from an ISV, SI, or consulting point of view., is not more a software or a service that customers are demanding. Customers demands solutions for their problems:
- that can deliver value in short terms
- needing very low upfront costs
- able to scale and adapt to hopefully growing businesses
First of all we all need to change our mindset about requirements. With less to spend you need to focus on your real requirements. From one hand it means that customers are no more willing to pay for requirements that are shared globally since such requirements, almost surely, have generated in time one or more open source communities providing an open source solution. This trend is really clear if we think about software industry: former market leaders are loosing market shares because of open source newcomers. Look to mobile OS market with Android and Symbian, or to notebooks with linux. Most often, as the last effect, the original product gets commoditized.
From the other hand, the need for less up-front costs will unavoidably lead to more exploitation of cloud services. I’ve recently found an article from Mike Brittain that was -really- like a sort of new bible to me: clearness, vision, value. The guys there actually built a service from scratch with no (or little, since at least the infrastructure management isn’t hosted by the cloud) up-front investments ending up with a “twenty minutes” service start up time Web hosting infrastructure. WOW amazing.
Think about managing more of one of this services in a complex service infrastructure. Think about managing two, three… ten. At this point we will need clouds to inter-operate. And i don’t think that the only solution is to rely on integration efforts made by cloud providers themselves. Just in case they are not going to comply we will create distributed middlewares, built with federations paradigms, and we’ll deploy them on cloud, possibly :).
At the end, I’m quite sure that a transactional based models will become more and more adopted and things like ACID, given that me made some efforts to adapt it in a distributed fashion, will be dusted out rapidly.
If we couple this with a new awareness of what are the core requirements. I we succeed to made our:
“…huge step to recognize that it’s time to get over the bias of applying so called “infrastructure 1.0″ requirements to the rules of engagement in the cloud by recognizing that many of these capabilities don’t exist in the enterprise, either…”
- thanks Chris hoff for this concept I’ve stole on RationalSecurity - we can achieve sensible results in terms of delivered value and Time To Market.
A few days ago, when I was commenting on vision mobile I started thinking out to blog some thoughts about open source projects governance in mobile industry.
The question could be, more or less:
Is democracy any useful in mobile open source software?
despite being dated quite much back in the past the paradigm of democracy (openness and sharing in the decision process) have been controversial in terms of achieved results.
Sun’s JCP contributed to mobile software industry development in early years but, quite suddenly, shown limits and general slowness. Sun has been repeatedly claimed to be trying to control the java innovation process. But why also completely open source JVM projects like phoneME collected so far a little success?
And also, the open source choice of Motorola didn’t gave us the MIDP 3 in time.
LIMO initiative has been indubitably successful since produced dozens of actual phones, coming from different vendors, and moved the business interest back on linux on mobile platforms after pioneer initiatives like sharp zaurus saga.
Anyway LIMO lacked of guidance and vision and very early reached the significant but limited level of innovation that could ever grant, since most of the participants were probably afraid of disclosing too many requirements and design concepts to each other.
Android project was just another open source linux platform facing the industry in 2005 when, Sergei and Larry put their careful and business visionary hands on it.
Now that we have at least 10 products announced in 2009 it’s quite sure that Android will sort out a significant level of success.
Google leadership in Android project is indubitable: the OS concept is widely modelled around google business, google media exposure has been total for the G1 (do you remember the guys with rollerblades at the presentation?) and generally Google left little or no freedom to HTC and T-Mobile in productizing the G1 since, being the first product, it must embody the “GooglePhone” concept.
I’m beginning to think that Google dominance over Android concepts (despite the overall very high code and concept disclosure level) is being the actual success factor for the project. It seems to me that most of the mobile industry manufacturers acknowledged Google to have appealing ideas and left BigG to deeply “guide” the design.
Furthermore, BigG core business is not competing with handset manufacturers business at least until they don’t think about becoming all rounders, focusing on services and softwares instead of focusing on the devices.
Symbian Foundation project is even more democratic respect to Android but this doesn’t seem to contribute much on the hype. Furthermore, being the initiative inspired by a relevant competitor, seems that the other manufacturers involved in the project are slowing down interest and contribution.
I’m quite sure that former Symbian Inc. shareholders have been extremely happy to sell Nokia their shares since , without the foundation move, Symbian in itself as a company was going to face relevant revenues decreasing due to the enhanced competition on the OS market.
To me, It’s like they’re saying: “well, now that you’ve all the shares… Symbian it’s your problem”
My suggestion to Nokia to grant some success to Symbian Foundation initiative would be to:
- focus on operators instead of manufacturers: increasing operator partnership models and optimizing SF for the operators requirements. Nokia should spend some time thinking jointly with them about a Win-Win business model and about how to guarantee operators a relevant freedom in customizing and adapting Symbian to their requirements and value-add services.
- rethink it’s service offering to be less competitive with operators offering or, at least, promote and disclose operator brandization and revenue sharing programs on Nokia services (like OVI or Xpress Music proposition)
I had the chance to exchange some ideas on a very relevant post made by Michael Mace on Mobile Opportunity about Symbian situation, commented also by (and on) David Wood’s blog. Take a look.
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As reported by Paul Miller on engadget:
not quite everyone that matters, but pretty darn close
for someone like Vodafone could seem just a simpaty but let’s keep in mind that Vf is, probably, the most important Operator in Nokia and Symbian Foundation ecosystem, and this look to Android seems really teasing.
SonyEricsson joining the Android mates is impressive in itself: everyone working in the industry since more than a while knows the quality and the overall performance of SEM platforms. SEM recently canceled Symbian based handsets for H208 and moved to Windows Mobile on its multiply delayed XPeria X1. Android now has one opportunity to become the elected plaftorm for internet oriented smartphones for the Scandinavian manufacturer.
Going more in deep, OHA now has onboard also ARM and EMP.
ARM is now developing the MPCore technology that will be one of the most important news in the future of Mobile handsets. Will grant a raising level of performances limiting battery consumption. And this is going to be more and more important on almost always connected devices.
Apple and every I-Phone user knows what I’m saying about battery life problems. Having ARM in the Symbian Foundation initiative in an exclusive way would have be a fantastic advantage for Symbian Foundation. Probably good for Nokia but not affordable for ARM in itself strategically speaking.
For what regards Ericsson Mobile Platform I really think they made a good move: could improve radically the penetration of EMP on Asian and American markets.
Don’t forget that EMP recently signed a significant joint venture with STM that, in the meanwhile, has supported Nokia providing chipset for some important models like N96, anyway showing some performance problems (give a look at this quite discussed post on engadget about N97 coming back to a Texas chipset).
At the end, I think we should not underestimate new joins to OHA. They’re actually new cornerstones in Android race to credibility that, week by week, Google is facing.
Something like one week ago, reuters reported a Ukko Lappalainen quote, collected during “Nokia world” in Barcelona stating that Nokia is considering linux as an OS alternative (to symbian/S60) in high end mobiles.
During the same week Nokia completed the acquisition of Symbian Limited.
Ok.
When I was in Symbian smartphone show in London, at the end of Andrew Cloke’s presentation, , I asked directly if we should expect big architectural changes in Symbian during the migration period from SFL (Symbian Foundation License) to EPL and code disclosure.
I was meaning kernel changes or big changes regarding User Experience concepts and, actually, the answer was: no.
Lots of talks I had, both virtually and f2f, with other mobile tech. experts, seem to confirm my impression that thinking about a port of symbian on top of a linux kernel seems impossible.
I can see three reason to prevent this merge:
- the kernel is one of two important parts of a quality mobile os: kernel manages to run the phone consuming less resources as possible and depending on kernel code quality will be more easy to integrate different HWs.
- UE concepts are the other foundamental part of a mobile OS: they define how user interacts with applications and how the applications interact among themselves.
and both of them are way too different if you look at Symbian and, for example, as the optimal linux powered OS, Android.
Moreover, Nokia’s ecosystem is roughly based on SymbianC++ and MIDP java developers, both unsupported on Android.
Some months ago, Nokia was not invited to participate to OHA-Android initiative being this initiative clearly hostile, at least, to Nokia’s dreams of being the mobile market allrounder leader, from manufactoring to services.
Nokia, now that Symbian acquisition has been closed, must face a very hard situation: with an asset like symbian that is loosing value as the time passes and aggressive competitors like korean Samsung backed by the most revolutionary mobile project in years.
Creating a competitive, open source, OS was one of the possible moves one year ago, but now is time to understand what to save about Symbian.
In Nokia’s war against the Others, Symbian (the code, the company, the ecosystem) must be an assett, not the injured soldier to be carried on top of your shoulders.
