LIRNEasia » Android

Mobile operating systems will shape the future of computing, says Wired

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:44:16 +0000

Our world is still overwhelmingly populated by feature phones, but it won’t be long before smartphones take over (only question is when). Just yesterday we were discussing how GPS enabled smartphones, if given to government officials or even private sector people, can overcome the problem of them actually going to the places they’re supposed to go to (the example was the agriculture extension officer who does not go to the actual place where the plants are, but gives instructions from the office or the road).

So here’s an update on the smartphone wars:

The competition is only going to grow more heated. Android doesn’t just use different carriers, different manufacturers, and different software than the iPhone; it represents a different vision for the entire mobile industry. Apple exerts complete control over the iPhone. It builds the hardware. It designs the operating system. It runs the marketing campaigns. And it curates and polices its App Store, refusing programs it deems potentially offensive or a threat to its own business. (A quick sampling of apps that Apple has rejected, at least temporarily: Google Voice, iBoobs, and a political cartoon app from Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore.)

Android, by contrast, prides itself on its lack of control. It gives away its operating system for free to anyone who wants it—though manufacturers must submit their phones for testing if they want to access its app market or run optimized versions of Google apps. Android doesn’t review apps before they’re added to its marketplace, pulling them only if users complain, and manufacturers can and do modify the look and feel of the OS on their phones.

This is not just about phones. Mobile devices are quickly becoming our primary computers. In the fourth quarter of last year, sales of smartphones topped sales of PCs and laptops. And tablets—such as the iPad and new Android devices like the Motorola Xoom—are widely seen as potentially replacing the personal computer. The split is reminiscent of the PC platform wars back in the 1980s and ’90s, only now Apple is competing with Google instead of with Microsoft. Customers are squaring off into separate camps, identifying themselves as iPhone or Android users much as desktop users declare themselves Mac or PC people. And just as in the formative days of the PC industry, the result of this showdown will ultimately shape the future of computing.

Trying to claw back control from Google and Apple

Rohan Samarajiva — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:00:56 +0000

Part of an ongoing discussion at LIRNEasia is the tipping point from the operator-centric world of feature phones (intelligence in the center) to the operating-system-centric world of smartphones (intelligence at the edges). In the developed economies, lots of people assume the tipping point has been crossed. But the operators have not seen their “obituaries,” and seem to be working on immortality pills, in the shape of Blackberries:

While the carriers do not openly talk about the threat of Apple and Google, analysts say the two companies have fostered a system that could make carriers slow-growing utilities selling little more than generic network access. The revenue from apps, which provide entertainment, news and other services, do not flow to the carriers.

In an apparent bid to exploit those concerns, RIM has repeatedly told carriers that, unlike Apple, it believes that they deserve a portion of revenues from its apps store and as well as future services. Although given the relative paucity of BlackBerry apps, the offer has relatively little financial value as of now.

Full story.

Operating system wars in the mobile space

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:38:31 +0000

Many are aware that Android, the open source operating system that open for anyone to use, is now the leading smartphone OS. Two search engine providers in Korea appear to think this has shut them out of the exploding smartphone market.

In its complaint, NHN said that Google, “through a marketing partnership with major smartphone producers,” had unfairly created “a new ecosystem” by offering the Android system free as a way to control the market.

Google denied the accusations, saying in a statement that “carrier partners are free to decide which applications and services to include on their Android phones.”

South Korean consumers are famous as early adopters, and most new phone buyers here are opting for smartphones. About two-thirds of all smartphones sold in South Korea last year were Android-based.

The Korea Communications Commission said last month that more than 10 million smartphones were registered in South Korea. In December 2009, 800,000 smartphones were in use.

Full story. I am sure we will hear more on this topic.

More time spent on apps than on talk; not all smartphones are equally friendly to apps

Rohan Samarajiva — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:32:49 +0000

For a number of reasons, including our conclusion that for most of the BOP the path to the Internet runs through a mobile handset, LIRNEasia is interested in how people use smartphones. Here is a report summarizing research findings:

The average smartphone owner spends 667 minutes a month using apps. That is more time spent with apps than spent talking on a smartphone or using it to browse the Web. But not all smartphones are equally friendly to apps.

Programmers have an easier time designing apps for iPhones and Android phones, giving these devices a much broader pool to draw from. Users of those devices fire up twice as many apps a month as BlackBerry users do, according to Zokem, a research firm. Zokem tracked the behavior of 2,100 British and American smartphone users in January using software installed on their phones.

Nokia goes with Windows on smartphones

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 08:49:12 +0000

Nokia is big in emerging markets, very big. But marginalized in the smartphone segment. Now the long shot to change that: abandonment of Symbian and adoption of Windows. Why not an open system, one wonders.

Microsoft’s operating system software dominates the PC industry. But mobile devices like smartphones are expected to surpass desktop and laptop computers this year as the main way to gain access to the Internet. Microsoft has only 2 percent of the global market for phone software.

At least at the outset, the alliance may “Microsoft will have the rationale to really double down with its investment in the smartphone platform and ecosystem,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC.

One measure, in addition to market share, of how far Microsoft trails in building that ecosystem is the number of software applications developers have created for the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system. The Microsoft applications store, though growing rapidly in recent months, has about 8,000 applications, Mr. Hilwa said. By contrast, more than 350,000 applications have been developed for Apple’s iPhone.

Smartphone news: Nokia adopting Windows and abandoning Symbian?

Rohan Samarajiva — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:30:29 +0000

The NYT reports a possible alliance that appears to be a reaction to the rise of Android.

Shares of Nokia, the mobile phone market leader, climbed for a fourth day on Thursday amid speculation that the company may be poised to announce a software alliance with Microsoft designed to revive its struggling U.S. smartphone business.

Nokia’s shares have risen more than 4 percent since Monday when an analyst, Adnaan Ahmad of Berenberg Bank in Hamburg, urged the Nokia chief executive — and former Microsoft executive — Stephen Elop, to form an alliance that would put Microsoft’s Phone operating system on Nokia’s advanced smartphones.

Such a move would be a break for Nokia, which historically has avoided ceding key parts of its business, like software, to outsiders.

What is the bigger news? Android overtaking Symbian or mobile becoming the principal path to the Internet?

Rohan Samarajiva — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:02:39 +0000

As the owner of a G1, I can afford a little smirk about the ascendancy of Android. But really, the bigger story from the perspective of the people at the BOP who are our prime constituency, is the Gartner prediction that this is the cross-over year for those accessing the Internet through mobiles, though of course, one has to interrogate the basis of the prediction.

Google’s operating system for cellphones has overtaken Nokia’s Symbian system as the market leader, ending the Finnish company’s long reign, a British research firm said Monday. In the three months through December, manufacturers shipped 33.3 million cellphones running Android, Google’s free, open-source cellphone operating system, up from just 4.7 million a year earlier, according to Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England. Shipments of phones running the Symbian operating system jumped 31 percent in the quarter, to 31 million, Canalys said.

Analysts said the figures represented a tectonic shift in the industry, cementing the influence of Google’s advertising-driven business on the mobile Internet. And this year, according to the research firm Gartner, more people will gain access to the Internet through mobile devices than with personal computers.

Growing pains in developing apps

Rohan Samarajiva — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:38:50 +0000

LIRNEasia has been supporting app stores because we believe this is the solution that reduces transaction costs and mobilizes decentralized innovation. But as the NYT story today shows, it’s not an easy path for developers:

Because Google makes its software available free to a range of phone manufacturers, there are dozens of different Android-compatible devices on the market, each with different screen sizes, memory capacities, processor speeds and graphics capabilities. An app that works beautifully on, say, a Motorola Droid might suffer from glitches on a phone made by HTC. IPhone developers, meanwhile, need to worry about only a few devices: iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Patent wars could make smartphones dearer

Rohan Samarajiva — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 16:21:00 +0000

Now that Android has taken a bigger market share than Apple in the smartphone market, the lawsuits are coming hot and heavy, according to the Economist.

Eventually, even lawsuits must come to an end. How much harm they will cause remains to be seen. If Apple wins against HTC, that would be bad news for upstart handset firms. Until a few years ago, HTC only made devices for others, but now it has become a brand of its own.

Litigation may also make smart-phones dearer. Mr White of Bristol York estimates that device makers already have to pay royalties for 200-300 patents for a typical smart-phone. Patent costs are 15-20% of its selling price, or about half of what the hardware components cost. “If 50 people [each] want 2% of a device’s value, we have a problem,” says Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School.

Isn’t it ironic that Apple, the great anti-establishment icon, is now the intellectual property absolutist? For those of who still remember the 1984 ad, this is another indication of the world turning out less idealistic than we thought.

g-phone v i-phone

Rohan Samarajiva — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:46:42 +0000

Competition in the handset market cannot but accelerate the process of mobiles becoming the primary interfaces to the Internet.

Google plans to begin selling its own smartphone early next year, company employees say, a move that could challenge Apple’s leadership in one of the fastest-growing and most important technologies in decades.

Google’s new touch-screen Android phone, which it began giving to many employees to test last week, could also shake up the fundamentals of the cellphone market in the United States, where most phones work only on the networks of the wireless carriers that sold them.

Full story

Android on the upswing

Rohan Samarajiva — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:54:08 +0000

There seems to be something about open operating systems, as shown by this NYT story. The question now is whether Apple will open its operating system too.

More cellphone makers are turning to the free Android operating system made by Microsoft’s latest nemesis, Google.

Cellphone makers that have used Windows Mobile to run their top-of-the-line smartphones — including Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Sony Ericsson — are now also making Android devices. Twelve Android handsets have been announced this year, with dozens more expected next year. Motorola has dropped Windows Mobile from its line entirely in a switch to Android. HTC, a major cellphone maker, expects half its phones sold this year to run Android. Dell is using Android for its entry into the cellphone market.

All four of the largest carriers in the United States have now agreed to offer Android phones. When the first Android handset, the G1 from HTC, was introduced last fall, only T-Mobile offered it. Now, Verizon, the largest carrier, is putting a huge promotional push behind the Droid from Motorola, set to be introduced this week. Even AT&T, the home of the iPhone, recently said it would join the Android party next year.

Android gains traction

Rohan Samarajiva — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:01:42 +0000

Handsets using the open platform Android will soon be available from Verizon, according to NYT, leaving AT&T as the only US carrier not offering Android phones.

A year after Google introduced its Android operating system on T-Mobile, the smallest of the major wireless carriers in the United States, it announced a deal to offer handsets with Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest carrier.

The carrier said Tuesday it expects to introduce two Android phones this year. It didn’t name the manufacturers, but one is expected to be made by Motorola. In addition, Verizon and Google said they would work together along with manufacturers to design handsets specifically for Verizon’s network.

“This is a very big deal for us,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, on a conference call Tuesday morning. “It is a major milestone in the development of Android as a platform.”

Android brings down smartphone prices?

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:16:27 +0000

LIRNEasia’s thesis that most people will experience the Internet through mobile networks depends to an extent on cheap terminal devices. According to the Economist, Android is playing a role in bring low-cost producers into the smartphone segment.

Prices are now on a downward spiral, says Ben Wood of CCS Insight, a research firm. Several other handset-makers are already offering cheap smart-phone-like devices. Android allows cut-price Chinese firms such as Huawei and ZTE to enter the smart-phone market, which they had previously stayed out of for lack of the necessary software. Last month T-Mobile, a mobile operator, gave a taste of things to come. Its British subsidiary started selling the Pulse, an Android-powered smart-phone made by Huawei, for only £180. (The cheapest iPhone model sells for £340 in Britain if bought without a contract.)

How do You Test Mobile Broadband Speeds?

Chanuka Wattegama — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:13:45 +0000

One point the experts at LIRNEasia’s Mobile Broadband QoSE workshop agreed: Mobile broadband test results will be device specific. Unlike PCs, mobile handsets, with their software and hardware limitations, have an impact on results. That is why iNetwork Test, one of the few test sites we could find on the net insists the users to take a choice between iPhone or Android.

The approach is parallel to what LIRNEasia plans.

Google’s Android Apps Make First Appearance

Chanuka Wattegama — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:18:52 +0000

A La Mobile, a San Ramon, CA based open source handset software development, has deployed Google’s Android platform into an HTC Qtek 9090 smartphone. The company is touting it as the first functioning Android-based handset.

The company included in the suite of applications a Google browser, phone dialer, audio player, maps, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, calculator, tasks manager and notes. “While mobile Linux has made steady progress in the industry since 2006, Google’s advocacy with the unveiling of the Android framework further substantiates the position of Linux as a major mobile operating system alongside Windows Mobile and Symbian,” a la Mobile’s president and CEO Pauline Lo Alker said in a statement.

Read the full story here.