Platform Wars—They Fight, You Lose

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June 21, 2010

As smartphones become an ever-increasingly important segment of the overall mobile phone market, more attention is being focused on the software that runs on these devices – namely, the operating system, the applications and the services. In a very short period of time, 3rd party applications have become all the rage, and the heavy hitters in the smartphone OS space are vying for the attention of these application developers.

Everyone knows about the iPhone, Android and Windows. Nokia is trying hard to drive their Trolltech unit’s Qt application environment across its entire portfolio of MeeGo and Symbian devices. Samsung has come out with bada and in Japan, DoCoMo and its partners are working to develop a common application framework that can run on top of either Symbian or various flavors of Linux. WebOS, LiMo and others complete the picture.

While this is progress from the days in which every OEM produced a phone running on a proprietary, closed platform, I’m not sure it’s that much better. In my opinion, there are still too many platforms out there, all with very different application runtime frameworks.

This means for an app developer to monetize their product across all the major smartphone platforms, significant portions of the application must be re-written. In many cases, the re-writes happen serially, meaning the time-to-market for that app can vary greatly from one platform to another. The developer and the consumer are both losers in this scenario. Here’s why: Say you’re using a smartphone made by “OEM w” using “Operating System x”. Your friend, using “OEM y’s” smartphone with “Operating System z”, shows you this cool app that they just purchased from “y’s” online apps store. You go to your app store to look for that app, but lo and behold, it’s not there, since the apps developer prioritized customers of “OEM y” first, and thus developed on “OS z” instead. Net result: disappointment for the owner of “smartphone w” and a lost sale for the developer of the augmented reality app.

I’m not going to say that the world would be a better place if all smartphones ran the same OS and application framework; on the contrary, competition is good. Unfortunately, there are still so many choices out there that consumers and apps developers both pay the price. I believe the industry will consolidate on fewer platforms going forward, but there will be more pain to come for the consumer and the developer while the Platform Wars play themselves out.

Have you experienced this frustration firsthand? If so, it would be interesting to hear about your experience.

Topics: OS platform, smartphone
Tony Newpower

Tony Newpower

Director, Engineering, Qualcomm Innovation Center
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Comments

Michael

June 21, 2010, 12:23 PM

I have ran into this issue both personally and professionally. When looking at the 4 major platforms, I see developers prioritizing in this order; Apple, Google(my devices), RIM and Microsoft, (even though the market share does not follow in the same manner).

From a user stand point it is frustrating to see this need for developers to choose which users they want too reach first.

From a professional standpoint my company recently released apps on all four platforms simultaneously, but they did so by contracting with the app vendor, Handmark. If larger organizations want to see their apps released simultaneously, they too will be forced to contract with a vendor or have more FTEs dedicated to mobile app development.

However, many of the apps that we love are not created by large organizations with budgets to support these efforts. For the small developer prioritizing is a necessary evil. What this will do is cause strain on the small app developers and delayed deployment. It will also cause delayed updates of new features as small developers will most likely update their applications in the same priority.

What do you think about app modification software that can create solutions across platforms?

In April Apple released a new agreement with developers (3.3.1) that states that applications may only use Documented APIs to develop apps. Once again we ave Apple hear encouraging and stifling innovation at the same time...true hypocrisy.

Anonymous

June 22, 2010, 4:59 AM

I wish all Sony Ericsson's Symbian smartphones had access to Ovi store and services ! Nokia users able to enjoy free maps but Sony Ericsson's users are not despite both using the same OS.

Qualcomm Blog Author

June 23, 2010, 2:26 PM

Thanks for your comments. I suspect that today Nokia is trying to use Ovi to differentiate their phones from their Symbian competitors, but it would not surprise me if down the road they introduced more Ovi support for other OEMs via the Symbian Foundation.

Cheers,
Tony

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