Therecent launchof nine high-specification mobile
phones that use the Mobile Linux operating system(Limo)will
add fuel to an already overheated market.
The market for mobile phone applications is already chaotic
after Microsoft announced it will
port its Office applications to Nokia's
Symbian platform.
CIOs face a hard choice: do they let their users pick their own
smartphones and trust that they will support the applications that
are critical to the business, or do they give them a locked down
handset for work use only?
And what about
netbooks, which offer better keyboards and screens and
free Skype phone calls? And on top of that, why not just put it
all in the cloud with hosted services and largely dumb access
devices?
Developing market
These are not trivial issues; not from technology nor human nor
financial points of view. It would be simpler if the mobility space
were more mature. The trouble started two years ago, when Apple and
Google set out to win the hearts and minds of mobile software
developers. Who has the most apps wins, goes the theory.
But applications need an operating system, and the market for
mobile operating systems is getting chaotic. Microsoft's support
for Symbian is a huge vote of confidence for the operating system,
which is gaining ground as an open source platform.
But the Financial Times in Germany reported that Nokia was
hedging its bet on Symbian by expanding its involvement with the
Linux-based
Maemo, potentially running it on mobile phones, netbooks and
the N800 tablet.
Also bidding for open system kudos is Google's
Android, another Linux-based
mobile operating system. But such is
Google's gravitational pull that all handset makers, except
Nokia, have said they will bring out
Android phones, and some systems developers are thinking of
using it elsewhere, ranging from smart meters to laptops and
more.
Linux for business
Nokia may be the market leader with more than 50% of the
smartphone market,
according to Gartner, and Google's size makes it a formidable
competitor, but Apple, despite selling only five million handsets a
quarter compared with Nokia's 100 million, has proved
extraordinarily good at
winning the hearts and minds of consumers.
This is a problem for CIOs. Software developers have largely
written consumer-oriented, not business-oriented applications for
the iPhone, despite its support for Microsoft Exchange ActivSynch
and iWorks (which means it can read Office documents, PDF and Jpeg
files), support for Cisco IPSec virtual private networks, and WPA2
Enterprise encryption with 802.1x for authentication.
For the short term, this leaves CIOs to choose between Research
in Motion's proprietary
Blackberry and Nokia's open source
Symbian handsets for corporate phones. But Limo is backed by
Softbank, Vodafone, Orange, NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, Telefonica and
Verizon Wireless and others. This could be the dark horse to watch,
along with Android.
If nothing else, Linux could soon be the
operating system of choice for mobiles, and that will have
implications for integrating it with the enterprise.