Battle of the mobile operating systems

The mobile phone has increasingly become important to us. We have always loved our phones as they keep us connected and hold all our contacts. But the mobile handset in the last few years has started taking on a new role - a personal information companion.

The mobile handset for many of us now does not just contain our phones numbers and texts but also our email, photo's, video's, music, directions/maps and is a window onto our social networks and vital web sites.

Nokia boldly announced their handsets as the computer in your pocket, and whilst when that tag line was launched it felt a bit of a stretch it increasingly is true.

The mobile handset is truly becoming an extension of your PC at home - which is for many people the once place they keep all their information and communications. Over the next few years we are likely to see more information being stored in 'the cloud' which will get over storage limitations of mobile handsets and slowly turn them into our most frequently used computing device. Quite soon the mobile handset will become our primary PC.

But this cannot happen unless the right devices are available and services to deliver the experience. 2007 and 2008 have seen the devices come to market, finally after years of experimenting the manufacturers are launching products in form factors that really work.

Services needed to bring the computing experience to mobile handsets are really starting to happen. iTunes, Gmail and Google Maps are good examples. We are also starting to see the first capable mobile web browsers sneak out the door too. All in all its coming together.

The knock on effect of this is every body and their dog now recognises that mobile is very, very important indeed. This is where the next battle of the Titans is forming up. The hardware battle has been on-going for years, and the services evolving for a long time too. Its the mobile operating system (OS) thats now seeing the action.

Its a little like the battle for PC dominance. Windows slowly but surely bought up all the functionality you would want on a PC and integrated it into Windows.

Previously on mobile handsets most of the functionality not absolutely necessary for making calls and sending SMS messages was created by third parties. Nokia on its Series 60 handsets for example includes a whole range of third party applications that perform many common tasks. The overall feeling of a Nokia handset is a little like Windows in the old days. Lots of functionality and possibilities but with limited integration and ease of use.

But the world is changing. Mobile handsets are becoming more like Vista and Mac OS where its a fully integrated environment, and one where the owner of that OS can largely choose what services they push at you, and how.

So the one that owns the mobile OS will own the customer (not the hardware manufacturer) and guide what they do with their digital and online life when mobile. And as discussed the chances are these mobile devices will become your primary interface into that life.

So it boils down to this - the one that owns the mobile OS has the opportunity to own the entire ecosystem from end to end. Not just mobile but desktop too (but that will become less important). As the mobile becomes your primary devices, your PC will become a rich extension of your mobile. Rather than right now your mobile is a dumbed down extension of your PC.

So what does that mean? The Microsoft dominance of the computing world is seriously under threat.....

All was clam in mobile OS until last year. Nokia shipped 40% of all phones on the planet giving Symbian the largest market share. Symbian slowly evolved, and largely people love it through habit if nothing else. Then there was Microsoft Windows Mobile which was the only real competitor on the block, really aimed at the business market. A few niche players existed like RIM but the market was largely made up of lots pf proprietary OS on tier 2 handset vendors devices. And that was fine because these devices were used for making calls and sending texts.

A few things started to change that. The Nokia N95 was launched which all of a sudden made a mobile handset capable of doing so much more. Later that year the Apple iPhone launched which showed us how powerful an integrated OS environment could be. The functionality might have been limited - but it worked really well, did the things most of us wanted and was really easy.

This had a really interesting effect on the market. Nokia did not over react, it has been working hard on a new format device, to be launched when it all works well and its ready. The rest of the market however went nuts. Manufacturers quickly launched large touch screen devices to compete with the iPhone.

This highlighted something very quickly. Proprietary OS no longer cut it. It needed a new set of skills to integrate all the things a handset could now do, and it simply took too long and was too expensive. So they did the obvious thing, took an existing third party OS and put it on the device, an OS that could already deal with touch screen (and has been for some years). That OS is Microsoft Windows Mobile.

I bet they were quite shocked with the speed of take up of their MS WM on new, sexy consumer devices. The problem was it showed very quickly it was not up to the job. Firstly the OS tries to be Windows, on a mobile. Thats the wrong way around - that results in lots of simulated mouse activity with a stylus. I want to be able to use my phone whilst walking down the street - not stop, pull out a stylus, poke around a bit then carry on walking.

From a usability perspective it sucks. It also has a pretty poor web browser and worst of all it is really, really sluggish.

I have not used MS WM in years because I found it too hard. Last year, shortly after getting my iPhone, I bought a top of the range HTC handset. When it arrived it was obviously broken as it was so slow to respond to key presses and basic functions. I sent it back and was shocked to find out with my replacement that this is just the way it is. It was terrible.

The device manufacturers recognised that it was not up to the job on their new raunchy hardware, so set about designing a new front end for it. each manufacturer has its own graphic front end for MS WM. But ultimately its the same OS behind the scenes, so as soon as you get off the main menu screen you are back in the same experience. And worse still they are still just as unresponsive.

This is a nightmare for the manufacturers, as there is not really another easy option they can buy off the shelf.

Nokia is not a stupid company. The outside world seems to think they are slow to react. Wrong. They think things out in the wider strategic context and make good, big decisions and then act upon them with the full force of their organisation. Take Ovi, music and mapping for example. Nokia understand the future of the mobile OS and the environment and ecosystem it must support. They are taking pain and investing early.

So cleverly they have identified that they must also open up their OS to ensure it gets wider adoption and more third party application development. So they bought Symbian out and gave it to the masses. This was not a knee jerk reaction, but a smart move that will pay dividends in the next 18 months. So now the handset manufacturers have a second (and at this point far superior) option.

But Nokia are not the only smart company in town.

This year the Google Android OS is hitting the streets in the HTC G1 sold through T-Mobile. Google have realised how important this platform is. They saw more YouTube traffic from the iPhone over Christmas than they did from all the other devices put together for example.

They realise how important this battle is, and how winning it could give them computing dominance. Do not for one second think they are not interested in owning the mobile and the desktop. Already on my machine I don't use MS Office any more, I use Google Docs. I have Google Desktop on my computer to find things. I use Google Chrome as my web browser. I use GMail and Calendar. And of course I use their search. In fact the OS and the hardware is just about the only non-Google thing I use.

You could argue they do not need to own the OS space. But they do. They want you as a sticky customer, and one they can mine for information and advertise too. I don't mind being exploited by them, I use their tools for free and I think they are the best on the market. Seems like a perfectly reasonable deal to me. Mind you what happens when they have us all over a barrel in 36 months time is another story, and the topic for another blog.

So if Google can own your mobile life by owning the mobile OS and a large chunk of the services on it - it is well along the way to invading every area of our computing life.

Nokia should take note at this. Nokia if you took your N810 Internet Tablet and changed its format to netbook size/power and gave us the ability to have basic office functionality you would have a strong potential play in the wider computing world. The netbook market is up for grabs right now, as Microsoft does not have a medium or long term game plan. And netbooks will out sell laptops within 3 years. this is Nokia's weakness right now - it needs a plan for the rest of our computing lives, or it will never dominate the mobile computing world - the two are joined at the hip.

Anyway back to Google. Their OS is open to the world to develop what ever they like for it, which should mean developers and manufacturers have all the flexibility in the world (at little or no cost) to implement what they want. A stark contrast to the controlling world of Apple. Neither is necessarily the right answer by the way, no matter how much we like or dislike them.

So where does all this leave us? Apple and Google have stormed in with strong offerings. The Apple iPhone will succeed - all it has to do is convert some of its 90%+ music player market share to iPhone and it does very well. A good percentage of those will then convert to Mac OS. The Google platform shows real potential and with a large number of manufacturers looking to use it could be in real volume soon. Nokia will play catch up on the OS front over the next 18 months - they are already doing it, and they will execute well. Microsoft I think are lost at sea, they do not seem to have an answer to this market, in the same way they do not have an answer in the netbook market.

So I predict that Apple will ultimately mirror their PC penetration levels in mobile OS, with a similar closed strategy and do exceptionally well. They will not dominate but they will carve a big chunk out of the market and make it theirs. That will leave the rest of their computing ecosystem in tact and defended (with opportunity to grow).

Google will take a bigger foothold in our computing lives, and if they continue to capitalise on the joined up story could become a serious dominant force in all areas.

Nokia will continue to take the largest share in the mobile device area, but this will gradually erode unless they find a way to take it to the desktop/laptop too. They have a services strategy to cover this, but it probably needs to go a little deeper.

Microsoft are in danger of retreating to a hardcore business market where their devices are used in MS orientated corporate projects. But in the real world nobody will buy an MS based handset unless they work out how to make a usable OS for the mass market. The result will be Apple, Google and a number of Linux players will quite heavily start to encroach on their computing space.

But of course remember if you irritate the Microsoft machine it does have a tendency to react eventually - and when it does in a determined fashion it can turn things around.

But in summary expect the mobile in your hand to start to dictate the rest of your computing life - and those that win your heart in your hand will win the rest of you over.