As businesses get to grips with mobile phones for enterprise
computing, the fragmented handset market is likely to consolidate.
The big question is who will be the last man standing?
Mobile digital devices use common hardware components, but there
are lots of proprietary and more or less open operating systems.
The key to success is to get overwhelming support from independent
application developers.
There are five main mobile phone platforms and one in the wings.
Nokia owns the Symbian phone
platform. Microsoft sells
Windows
Mobile, which is based on what used to be the CE platform. Palm
has its Palm OS, which has
already been partially supplanted by Windows Mobile on some of its
hardware, and Research in Motion (RIM) has its own
BlackBerry operating system. Apple's iPhone is based on the
OS X platform,
which is in turn built on the Mach microkernel-based BSD version of
Unix.
There is no doubt which is selling best. Symbian sold 17.7
million units in western Europe last year, says Gartner. This is
not surprising given the involvement of Nokia, Ericsson and
Motorola in the project. This gave it a big lead over Microsoft,
which was in second place with 4.9 million units sold. RIM sold 2.3
million copies of its OS, while other operating systems totalled
483,000 sales (including just 11,000 Palm OS units).
Then there is the
Open Handset
Alliance Android, which is driven by search firm Google.
Android
is a software stack for mobile devices that includes the Linux
operating system (v2.6), middleware and key applications. It is
free to mobile device manufacturers and software developers. Google
has just released a new developer's kit. So far, only T-Mobile in
the US has said it will support the platform.
Shiv
Bakhshi, director of mobile devices, technology and trends at
IDC, says Google is giving Android away under the
Apache Software
licence (ASL) scheme. Unlike version 2 of the GNU Public
Licence, this lets developers use open source code without having
to give back proprietary enhancements to the
open source software community.
Google hopes that not having to navigate the inner workings of
proprietary technologies will persuade more developers to adopt the
platform and build on top of it, he said. Google can afford this
approach because it depends on services and advertising rather than
income from software sales.
Other vendors have so far taken a more proprietary approach to
platform development. Apple took months to release the software
developer's kit for iPhone code. And it wants to vet all iPhone
applications before it stocks them in its online store. Anyone who
wants to work around Apple's prescription must target the
"jailbroken" phones users have unlocked. This cuts their potential
market.
Microsoft, which sells only the operating system, is also
proprietary in its approach to code, but its .Net framework
includes a large set of application programming interfaces (APIs)
for developers.
Nokia, which is buying out Symbian's shareholders, plans to use
the newly formed Symbian Foundation to put the operating system
into the public domain by 2010. Some see this as a defensive move
in response to Android's openness.
How far will these platforms penetrate the enterprise market?
Much will depend on how many applications there are for the
platform. Apple has lined up £50m funding with venture capitalists
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to spend with iPhone and iPod
developers. Focus areas include
location-based services,
social networking,
m-commerce (including advertising and payments), communication
and entertainment.
Google has set aside £5m to support Android developers and is
holding coding competitions to find best-of-breed applications.
Symbian, through Nokia, is already well-proven in enterprise
circles, with its support for applications such as Oracle, and
Microsoft has a version of SQL Server for iPhone.
RIM has enviable consumer loyalty. Millions of senior and middle
managers are addicted to their "CrackBerries", giving IT
departments a security headache that will not go away. It already
has versions of Siebel's CRM running on the Blackberry.
Microsoft also has a tight grip on the business world with its
Windows Mobile platform. The firm has the advantage of owning the
desktop and the server infrastructure of many organisations. With
encryption of both removable media and in-phone memory built into
version 6.0 of the mobile software, compliance-driven firms seem
more willing to embrace it.
Apple has to convince the enterprise to buy the iPhone. The
3G's problems with dropped calls, poor battery life and overheating
batteries, which Apple claims to have fixed, may delay
adoption.
Gartner says the iPhone is ready for business, in spite of its
lack of native encryption. The capacity in iPhone 2.0 to integrate
with MS Exchange is clearly meant to court business users, but RIM
and Microsoft already have this nailed down.
Most of the end user and enterprise value in these platforms is
likely to come from third-party application developers. The extent
to which people target a platform depends on what it gives them.
Money, market share, an air of openness and a robust set of
development tools may decide the winner.
Looking for Software Developers? Get free quotes from up to 6
leading Software Developers.