Alec Saunders SquawkBox

One of the most common debates among smart phone cognoscenti is which platform will prevail — BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone, Microsoft, or the latest entrant Android? Common thought is that the platform with the most developers will win, and currently that’s iPhone.  Many folks, however, having drunk the “open” kool-aid, believe that ultimately Android must win. Others point to the dominant market share already garnered by RIM in North America, and Symbian in other parts of the world, and say that developers will flock to those platforms by virtue of the fact that they represent the largest monetizable market.

So who’s right?

Commercial developers are looking for three things when they choose a platform.  These are:

1. A large and well defined market.
2. An efficient channel to reach that market.
3. A low cost to develop products for that market.

If you look at the history of the PC market, Microsoft’s Windows had all of those characteristics.  The PC market was large and well defined, Microsoft and it’s partners created retail channels to deliver products, the Windows SDK’s were cheap, and Windows was sufficiently well developed that it made the job of develop for the platform efficient, fast, and inexpensive.

In the world of mobile operating systems, although SDK’s were cheap, until now the channel to market was the carrier, and a multitude of platforms and form factors drove costs up.  Things have been changing, but the lessons haven’t been internalized by all the vendors yet.

Let’s look at the top players in the market today – BlackBerry, Android and iPhone.

BlackBerry

• The largest market. 
• The channel to reach the market is unclear, however.  BlackBerry AppWorld is a good thing, but developers can still choose to go with the carrier store, or distribute directly.  Choice is good, isn’t it?  Unfortunately no.  From a customer perspective having to search for an application in multiple locations is a poor experience.
• The cost to develop for the BlackBerry market is driven up substantially by the plethora of form factors, and the differing versions of the operating systems on the handset.  It’s common for BlackBerry’s sold to AT&T to have a different version of the OS than BlackBerry’s sold to Rogers or Orange, despite the fact that the model number may be the same.  The test matrix for BlackBerry is daunting except for the largest commercial developers.

Android

• A nascent market, but potentially very large.
• Like BlackBerry, Android has multiple stores available to it.  Again, paradoxically, channel choice does not necessarily make for a good customer experience or an efficient way for a developer to get to market.
• Like BlackBerry, Android devices are anything but uniform.  As open source, vendors can choose any form factor, and combination of features.  All of this makes for a headache for software developers.

iPhone

• A large market, although not the largest.
• A single store, making for a very well defined and efficient way to market, as well as an easy experience for the customer.  Developers products have a better change of being found by the customer on the AppStore.
• Low cost to develop. iPhone and iPod touch have essentially the same operating system, and most users upgrade to the latest version quickly via iTunes. Platform homogeneity means that developers can count on a given set of features being available, and execute against a single test platform.  Costs are dramatically lower as a result.

The homogeneity of the iPhone platform and channel is a huge advantage from a developers perspective.  As a result of the low cost associated with developing for iPhone, we should expect that developers will target iPhone first with new products.   If products are successful there, then expect to see them ported to other leading platforms.

And if you’re RIM or Google, perhaps it’s time to rethink elements of your strategy that drive costs for developers up.  Otherwise, innovation will flourish on the iPhone platform, and Apple will garner dominant share as a result.

Last week rumours circulated (again) that Nokia might acquire Palm.  Palm shares rallied, but seem to have settled back down this week. The “deal”, after all, is a Wall Street wet dream, and not much more. 

It’s true that Nokia’s stock price is suffering and that Nokia’s share is slipping in the smart phone market. The mobile market is in transition, and Nokia was ill prepared. Nokia is fundamentally a hardware company trying to become a software company in a market which has lurched sharply toward software as the core differentiator.  Wedded to Symbian while top competitors Apple and Google have bet on *NIX on the handset, Nokia knows it has to make some changes.  The advantages of a modern OS architecture on the handset simply can’t be overstated.

And, in fact, Nokia is making changes.  The N900 is a mobile Linux device, running Nokia’s home grown Maemo OS.  The N900 has debuted to mixed reviews but Nokia isn’t asleep at the wheel.

And that’s why the billions required to buy Palm aren’t going to get spent.

Who might make a good dance partner for Palm? How about:

• Yahoo – Apple and Google have both demonstrated the value of an integrated user experience connecting web based media and storefront properties to the handset.  By all accounts, Palm’s WebOS is the best platform for creating mobile web experiences today.  What better marriage than Yahoo’s deep web experience and Palm’s sexy new mobile platform?
• RIM – BlackBerry OS is long in the tooth, and everyone knows it. The current king of the smartphone hill has a lot to lose, and the current crop of new competitors have better platforms to build their future businesses upon.  Meld RIM’s deep understanding of the enterprise to Palm’s mobile web platform, and market it through RIM’s well entrenched carrier relationships and you’d have a winner.
• In fact, RIM acquiring Palm might be so threatening to Microsoft that they’d conceivably enter the race just to make sure that RIM didn’t win the big prize.  The shift to web technologies on the handset and within the enterprise would threaten Microsoft’s core franchise.  However, given how poorly Microsoft has executed on mobile, a successful bid from Redmond would likely be the kiss of death for Palm. 

My bet’s on RIM, even though a Yahoo / Palm marriage has the potential to create one of the most exciting and dynamic companies in the mobile world today.  Palm needs a dance partner, but it’s not clear that Yahoo’s leadership has the stones to get the job done. The good news for Palm’s Rubenstein is that there are plenty of potential suitors in the market, if indeed the company is for sale.

Gizmodo’s Brian Lam is ticked off.  The Blackberry PR team didn’t provide him with a review unit of the new Storm 2 before launch, and consequently he didn’t write a review. Only the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal got the units, apparently.

RIM has consistently ignored bloggers for a very long time, so Brian shouldn’t be that suprised. Their strategy looks like a hold-over from their enterprise sales days.  The Journal and the Times are two of the biggest publications read by business leaders across the US, and so they get the review units.  As RIM continues their assault on consumer markets, however, it seems clear that they’re going to have to change the way they approach media outreach.  They’re going to have to come up with programs that target writers in enthusiast markets, and in mainstream publications.

The best at providing review units and opportunities for writers is Nokia. Nokia’s “blogger relations” program was started by Andy Abramson five years ago. The program cultivates a community of enthusiastic geeks (like myself) who are always pleased to get a chance to see and play with their latest offerings, and to write about them – good and bad.  It has paid off for Nokia with a large and loyal following of enthusiastic customers.

Over to you, Waterloo.

So there you have it.  RIM acquires TorchMobile, putting to bed the endless complaints about their browser, and fulfilling the promise made just days ago that they would provide an iPhone class browser on BlackBerry by next summer. TorchMobile are none other than the creators of the WebKit-based Iris browser.  The good burghers of Waterloo have at least realized that the browsing experience defines iPhone, and chosen to ditch the sad-sack BlackBerry browser.  BlackBerry users everywhere are no doubt rejoicing!

And how many mobile devices now sport WebKit browsers? Let’s see… Nokia, Apple, Google, Palm, and now RIM.  The odd-man out is, you guessed it, Microsoft.  Yes, the same Microsoft that invented the idea of embedding the rendering engine with IE, and who now clings stubbornly to the “competitive advantage” of owning said same rendering engine.  Too bad, unfortunately, that they’re doing so little to update the Windows Mobile browser, stuck as it is with equivalent capabilities to IE 6.  Blech!

And you know what’s even more embarrassing?  TorchMobile’s Iris was built for the Windows Mobile platform, not the BlackBerry.

So how about it Microsoft?  Are you going to let Windows Mobile continue to stumble along toward ignominious oblivion, or do something to recapture a little of the competitive mojo that you used to have?

Developers, including us, would like to know.

GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham interviewed Verizon’s Ryan Hughes yesterday about the mobile application store that Verizon is building.  Developers will be able to build applications for whatever platform they want from Windows Mobile, Palm, Android and BlackBerry and receive a revenue share for whatever is delivered on the Verizon network. 

The carrot? Developers can also tap into Verizon subscriber data for location or to bill a customer for example.  And the stick? Verizon’s store will be the only marketplace on devices sold by the carrier.  Yes, customers will be able to download the RIM BlackBerry App World or the Windows Mobile Marketplace, but the default store will be Verizon. 

That’s gotta feel like a toe to the ’nads if you’re RIM and have just invested in bringing BlackBerry Storm to the Verizon network. 

More to the point, as a developer would you invest energy in the Verizon store?  We are not currently delivering Calliflower on any platforms except the web and iPhone.  However, I would have to think long and hard about committing to a carrier specific store.

1. Committing to a carrier specific strategy means negotiating with hundreds of carriers around the world for distribution.  Imagine, as a small vendor, trying to launch a product in that environment!  Working with the handset manufacturer’s store means dealing with (at most) a half dozen handset vendors, who handle the carrier relationships on my behalf. Best of all, if the developer chooses to execute a rolling launch where each handset port is delivered separately from others, they only deal with a single entity at a time.
2. While at one point in time, the inarguable benefit of carrier subscriber data was a powerful carrot for developers, the carriers failure to act has led to others providing similar benefits.  The benefits of customer subscriber data, location, and billing have all been delivered at this point by the handset manufacturer stores and devices, and in some cases better than the carriers can deliver it.  For example, location is an especially weak benefit when acquired from a carrier.  The location data provided by the carrier is the lowest quality available.  See my piece on iPhone location services and SkyHook Wireless for more details.

I can’t help but feel that the carriers missed this train.  Many of us were calling for them to do exactly what Verizon is proposing, years ago.  2005’s Voice 2.0 Manifesto said, in part:

Fundamentally, this turns the service provider value network on it’s head.  In today’s world, the network operator aggregates services from a number of vendors, and then delivers them to the customer.  Tomorrow, the customer will buy the services they want from whomever they want, and the service provider will deliver a portion of that revenue to the owner of the platform component.

Led by Apple, the handset vendors have stepped into the vacuum with powerful end user devices and commerce platforms.  It’s difficult to see how Verizon can set the clock back now.