Sunday
Sep192010
How open is open?
Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 6:28PM Over the last 12 months battle lines have been drawn for an ideological war whose battleground is your local mobile phone store. This war is about religion, ideology and the one true way because this war is all about the wonderfully nebulous concept of open versus closed. To give our protagonists their full names, this is Google versus Apple. Ladies and gentlemen, these are the mobile operating systems wars!
Most consumers will pay no attention because the mobile phone market is still about consumer products. The vast majority of mobile phone users are sold on a specific product or tariff, very few of us choose a phone based on the freedom of developers to release applications for our chosen phone. In fact, developers and apps weren’t really part of the equation until the summer of 2008 when Apple updated the iPhone and iTunes to support the installation of third party apps.
Despite the underlying complexity of mobile phones we treat them essentially as a single function dumb device. Unlike our computers, we have an expectation that ours phones should just work, and from Apple’s perspective it was key for the success of the iPhone that they continue to just work. The list of features available on other smart phones but missing from the first iPhone was not short, but Apple believed that the iPhone should be relied on to work without crashing or leaving the user with a flat battery before lunch. When Apple announced app support with version 2 of the iPhone OS it enforced a closed experience and sales model to ensure that the phone would continue to work as a phone. Third party apps had to go through an approval process that could result in an app being denied access to iPhones. Nothing should be allowed to spoil the experience.
Google’s position with Android, their mobile operating system, was that anything goes. You had a very capable, always on and always connected computer in your pocket, and why shouldn’t you be able to run any application you wanted to on it. It was after all your phone. If you could write, find or buy an app then you could run it on your phone.
And so the lines were drawn. Apple would manage what you could add to your phone to ensure it couldn’t hurt you and Google would allow you to do anything you wanted with your phone. Closed Apple versus open Google.
Apple is fundmentally a hardware company, it makes money by selling iPhones, Macs and iPods. Google is an advertising company, it makes money by displaying adverts. In a world where computing is going mobile Apple wants hardware sales and a quality product will do that. Google wants you to see it’s web delivered adverts and having a quality operating system that supports Google adverts on phones ensures their business model succeeds. The battle is frequently billed as Apple versus Google despite that fact Apple doesn't need to sell ads to be successful and Google doesn’t need to sell hardware to be successful.
Apple is steadfastly sticking to it’s curated model. Apple owns the hardware and software, it has it’s own extremely successful retail channel and the market presence to force the network providers to offer the experience that Apple wants. Because Google’s Android operating system is open any hardware manufacturer or mobile network operator is free to use and alter it. And altering it they are, and as is frequently the case, what is good for the manufactures and network operators is not necessarily good for consumers.
Google’s Android is facing a fragmentation problem. There is no unified user experience. Some hardware manufactures add their own look and feel on the phone interface. Some network operators remove apps and replace others with versions that support their business models, some choose to remove features like Wi-Fi to force you use their metered networks. There were rumors that one US mobile network was removing Google search from it’s Android offerings and replacing it with Microsoft’s Bing thereby defeating the very purpose for Google creating Android. Network operators are deliberately slowing down the roll out of the latest versions of Android in an effort to push sales of new phones rather than add new features to old handsets.
The very openness of Android means that there are many interested parties who can us it for their own ends. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the belief held by some that Android is better because it is open is increasingly inaccurate as that openness is being eroded. Apple’s strategy offers an extremely focused and consistent product, Android is being pulled in many directions to serve it’s various masters. There are great Android phones out there but there are some very poor phones as well.
As the iPhone and Android OS took the smart phone market by storm over the last three years, one of the market’s previous pioneers to fall by the wayside was Palm. Their impending death had been written about as if it was only a matter of time. While no one was surprise by HP’s purchase of Palm, it seemed to many to be an odd move for HP at the time, but as Android starts to fragment and the openness that is at it’s very heart is threatened I’m beginning to think that a company with HP’s manufacturing experience and now with an excellent mobile operating system can offer an almost Apple like level of integration. They may be much better placed for the future then many think, especially as smart phones and tablet computers become key products in the mobile marketplace.
Despite what many are reading from the latest smart phone market share figures, Apple are here to stay, Android has not won anything yet and I really believe it’s too early to count HP/Palm out just yet.
Most consumers will pay no attention because the mobile phone market is still about consumer products. The vast majority of mobile phone users are sold on a specific product or tariff, very few of us choose a phone based on the freedom of developers to release applications for our chosen phone. In fact, developers and apps weren’t really part of the equation until the summer of 2008 when Apple updated the iPhone and iTunes to support the installation of third party apps.
Despite the underlying complexity of mobile phones we treat them essentially as a single function dumb device. Unlike our computers, we have an expectation that ours phones should just work, and from Apple’s perspective it was key for the success of the iPhone that they continue to just work. The list of features available on other smart phones but missing from the first iPhone was not short, but Apple believed that the iPhone should be relied on to work without crashing or leaving the user with a flat battery before lunch. When Apple announced app support with version 2 of the iPhone OS it enforced a closed experience and sales model to ensure that the phone would continue to work as a phone. Third party apps had to go through an approval process that could result in an app being denied access to iPhones. Nothing should be allowed to spoil the experience.
Google’s position with Android, their mobile operating system, was that anything goes. You had a very capable, always on and always connected computer in your pocket, and why shouldn’t you be able to run any application you wanted to on it. It was after all your phone. If you could write, find or buy an app then you could run it on your phone.
And so the lines were drawn. Apple would manage what you could add to your phone to ensure it couldn’t hurt you and Google would allow you to do anything you wanted with your phone. Closed Apple versus open Google.
Apple is fundmentally a hardware company, it makes money by selling iPhones, Macs and iPods. Google is an advertising company, it makes money by displaying adverts. In a world where computing is going mobile Apple wants hardware sales and a quality product will do that. Google wants you to see it’s web delivered adverts and having a quality operating system that supports Google adverts on phones ensures their business model succeeds. The battle is frequently billed as Apple versus Google despite that fact Apple doesn't need to sell ads to be successful and Google doesn’t need to sell hardware to be successful.
Apple is steadfastly sticking to it’s curated model. Apple owns the hardware and software, it has it’s own extremely successful retail channel and the market presence to force the network providers to offer the experience that Apple wants. Because Google’s Android operating system is open any hardware manufacturer or mobile network operator is free to use and alter it. And altering it they are, and as is frequently the case, what is good for the manufactures and network operators is not necessarily good for consumers.
Google’s Android is facing a fragmentation problem. There is no unified user experience. Some hardware manufactures add their own look and feel on the phone interface. Some network operators remove apps and replace others with versions that support their business models, some choose to remove features like Wi-Fi to force you use their metered networks. There were rumors that one US mobile network was removing Google search from it’s Android offerings and replacing it with Microsoft’s Bing thereby defeating the very purpose for Google creating Android. Network operators are deliberately slowing down the roll out of the latest versions of Android in an effort to push sales of new phones rather than add new features to old handsets.
The very openness of Android means that there are many interested parties who can us it for their own ends. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the belief held by some that Android is better because it is open is increasingly inaccurate as that openness is being eroded. Apple’s strategy offers an extremely focused and consistent product, Android is being pulled in many directions to serve it’s various masters. There are great Android phones out there but there are some very poor phones as well.
As the iPhone and Android OS took the smart phone market by storm over the last three years, one of the market’s previous pioneers to fall by the wayside was Palm. Their impending death had been written about as if it was only a matter of time. While no one was surprise by HP’s purchase of Palm, it seemed to many to be an odd move for HP at the time, but as Android starts to fragment and the openness that is at it’s very heart is threatened I’m beginning to think that a company with HP’s manufacturing experience and now with an excellent mobile operating system can offer an almost Apple like level of integration. They may be much better placed for the future then many think, especially as smart phones and tablet computers become key products in the mobile marketplace.
Despite what many are reading from the latest smart phone market share figures, Apple are here to stay, Android has not won anything yet and I really believe it’s too early to count HP/Palm out just yet.
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