Just when we were starting to worry that the OS world was becoming ossified around three increasingly-competent options, making it very boring for OS enthusiasts, along comes a re-energized mobile computing market and a furious land grab among established players and new entrants. Samsung, the #2 handset maker by marketshare, is releasing a new mobile OS called Bada and will be vying to become the seventh major mobile OS in the market.First of all, as a Sopranos watcher, I just can’t take the name seriously, though I’m seeing potential for some great NSFW co-marketing with Microsoft’s search engine.
The conventional wisdom on the mobile OS market is that it’s already crowded, and unlikely to be able to sustain six players over the long run, making Bada tragically late to the game. Engadget published two editorials on this subject recently, one proclaiming that WebOS will be the last smartphone OS and another, proposing that though there isn’t room for so many players in the long run, that doesn’t mean that more can’t jump into the fray and eventually succeed. This second article points out that in the early 80s there were a multitude of personal computing platforms (Atari, Commodore, Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, Apple, Timex/Sinclair, to name a few) but that once the standard for viability of a platform shifted from out-of-the-box capability as a hobbyist platform to availability of third-party software, the market coalesced around a couple of platforms that had the most developer support and the largest library of software.
This is an astute observation, and it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the mobile OS market will follow this trajectory. But there are several important differences to keep in mind: First, in the early to mid eighties, there were maybe a few million personal computer users worldwide, with a dozen companies, small and large, fighting for their business. (Today there are 1-2 billion PCs).
The mobile phone market is different. There are already over three billion mobile phone users, and though most of those phones are not the kinds of computing devices that these seven OSes are built for, there’s easily potential for the mobile computing market to reach and swiftly exceed the size of the personal computer market within the near future. This means that the pieces of the pie for even a niche player are huge compared to our last reference point for a crowded OS field, the 1980s-era personal computer era. Even the most low-end mobile phone is a computing device, with rather respectable capability by 1980s standards, and even the most low-end mobile user can understand and appreciate the benefits of having a handset with more capability. The purveyors of sophisticated mobile computing devices don’t have to blaze a trail through the wilderness with a machete like the PC pioneers did. Their market needs only to be tempted by useful features and low prices.
Second, compared to a PC, a mobile computer’s “mission statement” is almost always going to be narrower, meaning two things: OS design will place a much higher priority on simplicity, and the number of apps needed/used, and their complexity, will by necessity be smaller than a typical PC user’s. If you have any doubt about the difference between the PC software ecosystem of the past and the mobile computing software market, just look at prices. The average (mean) iPhone app costs less than $1, and very few cost more than $10. Even some of the most expensive iPhone apps, some professional tools and the GPS ones, for example, cost less than $100. There are only a few outliers.
Also, since we’re already looking at the web applications and cloud computing revolution in the rear-view mirror, the decades-long platform wars based on availability of essential apps in the PC space will likely never play out in mobile. If an app is ubiquitous and necessary these days, it’s likely that it’s a web-based app, and therefore accessible to all users, regardless of platform. Even in Apple’s vaunted and bloated App store, most of the truly useful apps are basically just wrappers for web-based services (Evernote, Dropbox, Skype, Tweetdeck, Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, Weather, various movie listing and to-do apps). Developers of these services don’t have to re-write their whole app for each platform. They just have to tweak the front end. The “app” is the service. So mobile computing users will very likely use fewer apps, and those apps will be much easier to develop and maintain for half a dozen platforms, if necessary. In a lot of cases, a popular web app (like Twitter) will have an API that lets independent developers build multiple mobile front-ends to their service, making supporting even a fringe OS easy.
So back to Bada. Samsung’s press release says:
Based on Samsung’s experience in developing previous proprietary platforms on Samsung mobile phones, Samsung can create the new platform and provide opportunities for developers. Samsung Bada is also simple for developers to use, meaning it’s one of the most developer-friendly environments available, particularly in the area of applications using Web services. Lastly, Bada’s ground-breaking User Interface (UI) can be transferred into a sophisticated and attractive UI design for developers.
which is a lot of nice-sounding nonsense, and I’ll believe it when I see it. But Samsung has 21% marketshare in the handset market, so even if they don’t succeed in licensing their technology to anyone else, they still have a huge potential market for their own OS. Now, in smartphones, Samsung trails Nokia, RIM, Apple, and HTC, with only 4.3% share. But that’s still 1,589,000 units in one quarter. Let’s compare that to the 1980s: how many Apple II computers were manufactured? 5-6 million total. So Samsung sells more smartphones in one year than all the Apple IIs sold between 1977 and 1992. And even if Samsung’s smartphone growth only happens at the expense of its own handset installed base, we’re still talking about huge numbers.
Of course, Samsung could utterly fail to make it in the new, hyper-competitive mobile computing market. But the likelihood of an upstart mobile OS succeeding on its merits, or failing due to its shortcomings, seems more likely than what played out in the PC space, where success was based, seemingly, more on inside dealing and skulduggery than quality. This is particularly true when the “upstart” OS is supported by an industry giant like Samsung.
This could be wishful thinking, of course. OSAlert’ official editorial position is that the more viable OSes are out there, the better. Having the big boys jostle for position with no dominant player means that the pace of innovation will be more rapid, and it will be easier for new and fringe platforms to be able to survive at the margins. Furthermore, a heterogeneous mobile OS market will even benefit the desktop PC ecosystem, since eventually, as the continuum between mobile and “personal” computers becomes filled in and blurred, today’s “mobile” OSes will become indistinguishable from the “personal computer” OSes, and we may find in ten years that we have a dozen major computing form factors of various sizes, with just as many viable OSes to run on them. So let’s give a big OSAlert welcome to Samsung’s new OS. Bada Bing, bada boom!
Details where pretty scarce.
Personally I think the most important feature of any OS is the applications it can run, and that leads to the simple conclusion that there isn’t much room for different OSes at all as long as they aren’t compatible as far as applications go.
And for that reason I would had preferred if everyone including Nokia had decided to go with Android, or whatever, and then added their own tweaks to personalize it and have vendor specific apps if needed. As long as Android cut it that is (and especially as long as Meamo, maybe this Bada and more stuff will still be Linux with little variation but still incompatible with eachothers, atleast if there is some huge difference such as QNX or Haiku it would somewhat serve a purpose, but probably fail on its own.)
Something QNX/vxWorks/… based could had worked to I guess. Atleast they should run the same frameworks so the applications can be made to run on all phones, whatever that is QT, JAVA or web apps.
Edited 2009-11-10 18:25 UTC
And the one I’d like to point out, is related to iPhone software pricing.
There are far more other handsets than iPhones, but the thing is, there’s so many darn variations of them that you either need to code for the lowest common denominator, or you’re fragmented into customizing for each one, whereas, by comparison, the iPod Touch and the iPhone in all its variations (with the biggest difference being the more recent OpenGL hardware support for shaders) are almost identical, with around 50 million devices in use, or at least existing. Couple that with the fact that there’s exactly one place to get apps for a non-jailbroken phone, that’s centralized, and tightly controlled, it warps the equation fiercely, because there’s the economy of scale for marketing/selling overhead that developers of all ilk get via the iTunes AppStore, that doesn’t exist anywhere else: without taking all that into account, your statements don’t have much reality.
On top of that, because the iPhone has such a high PR visibility, it makes it that much more desirable and feasible to consider releasing apps really cheaply, since it’s so cut-throat. The limitations of the platform itself aren’t nearly as limited for what you can do, compared to what it costs to develop complex software for it: the complexity of software that is possible, with functionality, far exceeds the average iPhone app that’s been released by most developers, just that few as of yet have put in that huge investment, partially (I believe) due to the race for the bottom and lowered expectations of price, combined with the fact, that at only 50 million potential customers (right now) combined with all sorts of apps that do some of what’s needed, it’s a huge business risk.
One of the big advantages of the iPhone was to use a mainstream OS like OS X, and not one of those embedded crap which wasn’t designed to run on hardware equivalent to a PC from the Pentium 3 era (and phones are only becoming more and more powerful). The userspace is mostly the same than desktops, the APIs are similar to desktops, the development environment (languajes, tools, etc) are the same. The browser is the same. That doesn’t happen with an specialized OS
That’s also why Android rocks, and it’s also why Microsoft is f–ked up, because Windows hasn’t been ported to ARM and they only can use Windows CE and the alternative userspace crap that was designed to work in devices much less powerful than a iPhone-class phone.
So I don’t think samsung is going anywhere.
What do you think about Samsung’s chances if they release an OS like Nokia’s Maemo? Maemo is mostly based on the same software that powers Linux desktop distributions.
Actually, that’s one of the things that attracts me to Nokia’s platform, the idea that I could be running the same OS on my phone as I do on my desktop. I am actually going to be developing an app for Maemo, and as you say, one of the great things is that it’s basically very similar to developing on a regular Linux distribution, it doesn’t seem like I’m doing some strange alien embedded platform voodoo.
Since it’s all free software, there’s no reason why Samsung couldn’t do exactly the same sort of thing. Would that help their fortunes then?
These are mobile devices that are designed to have basic functionality.
The real advantage of the iphone is the app library. MS could duplicate everything else with ease. They already have the Zune HD which has a lot of the underpinnings.
I personally am a fan of the iphone and have no interest in anything else atm but I wouldn’t count out Microsoft when it comes to ARM devices. A lot of people were making similar predictions over netbooks and we saw how that turned out.
I’m glad to see that the iphone is getting some competition though, especially since I’ve never liked their at&t sweetheart deal.
The more diversity, and competition the better. Just look at all the different Linux phones alone (Android and WebOS) plus the various other proprietary/half OSS ones, Apple, RIM, SymbianOS, etc. – oh and Windows.
I love it, and am happy to see more. And i hope you are right, that merit wins the day here – I think UI merit will win the day though.
My top picks – iPhone, HTC (Sense UI). It’s all about using the device and UI matters. Android is pretty clean too. The rest have been around for long enough to have demonstrated their lack of mass market appeal.
BTW, HTC and Apple are demonstrating the right way to use licensed OS tech – you use the base OS (OSS or proprietary, Apple is a mix, and HTC uses both Android and Windows), and you build your own brand of value on top of that. That part can even be proprietary.
This is a beautiful new system, that the PC makers never figured out, deciding to shovel crap-ware instead (looking at you Dell, HP). There’s still time guys!
That’s actually not original, and the same companies that use shovelware now came up with that in the Windows 3.1 era.
Microsoft made stop doing that, because it was fragmenting the Windows platform, and instead told them they could buy copies of MS Bob if they wanted an easy shell on top of Windows.
for over a decade. There’s nothing for OEMs to figure out, Linux on the desktop just isn’t wanted.
After the Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade debacle I think it is pretty obvious that desktop Linux has problems that go beyond OEM support.
Losing the “screw proprietary software” attitude would go a long way.
Agreed – especially on reducing the hostility toward proprietary software – I think there’s a definite place for that. Proprietary software is mostly a problem only when you are asking others to build up their platforms on top of it – conflicts of interest are numerous and varied in that relationship.
I also think that OEMs aren’t always capable of building up their own software platforms. OEMs are usually hardware specialists, not software or UI specialists – Apple is an exception, being specialists at all three.
My argument to an OEM would be that it’s in their own interest to become specialists in all three, in order to better compete. IMHO HTC has figured this out. So has Palm. And while they are both executing with varying degrees of success, I do think that’s the competitive edge that they are bringing to market, and I do think if they can keep their other marks high (support especially, ASUS fell down here with eeepc linux), I think they’ll prove my point.
That said even with the Ubuntu 9.10 problems (I actually missed that, but based on my own experience – they do have their issues – shipping with a grub2 beta for example), I think a good OEM, that wants something to build on, should be looking to Ubuntu, Red Hat, and others as their base. HTC and Palm have done that for their handheld devices – but do not rely on third parties for the entire support of their software (at their platform levels) – that software outsourcing would be the MS model, and frankly, I don’t think it works best (heck HTC even tried that for a long while, originally building Sense UI on top of Windows Mobile). Buying a Canonical and taking them in house though, that’s an entirely other thing.
or build on BSD as a way of avoiding problems related to kernel and distro updates. The problem with Linux is that too many people upstream don’t care about what happens downstream. A company like Dell could create their own OS and get the same level of hardware reliability and integration that Apple has.
However such an investment would be very costly and very risky. MS already sells their OS dirt cheap for netbooks. The big OEMs will probably just end up standardizing ChromeOS on non-Windows netbooks.
I installed from scratch this time and have missed that debacle. I’m interested in learning about it, however. Can you point me to some links? I googled for it with no success and I’m not a usual reader of the Ubuntu forums anymore.
Me too. Except that I upgraded my machines to 9.10. All without a hitch. And certainly no debacles. Perhaps “Debacle” is some new package manager?
Edited 2009-11-12 01:20 UTC
Ubuntu Upgrade: My Intel 5300 AGN wireless stopped working after upgrading to 9.10, but that’s the only issue, and it’s only that card that has issues, other wireless devices were fine.
A lot of the tech sites seem to have ignored it:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305924
One thing Microsoft did well to get Windows everywhere was getting developers, developers, developers (wink).
At the moment you have iPhoneOS, Android, WinMo, SymbianOS, and RIM that are the heavy weights right now with developers making the platforms more usable for consumers and exciting as a platform.
There’s room at the top for WebOS and Maemo but they need to get the people more excited about their platform. If WebOS was more available today I think it could have made the list. Honestly I don’t know enough about Maemo to make any judgements, but there is little hype around it.
Anyone new to the party needs to have some sexy bells and whistles to get people to want to develop for the platform. I think in the future once the current OS’s start to get old and stale a new comer offering totally radical new ideas that are exciting and take full advantage of future hardware it could topple the competition. I just don’t think now is the time.
Edited 2009-11-10 19:54 UTC
maemo.org
maemo.nokia.com
The first is the community site that’s been around since the N700 and provides a nice list of apps and such. The second is Nokia’s marketing site for the Maemo5 on the N900 and is worth a look. I don’t know how it is to work with but it looks gorgeous and folk who have played with the N900 have loved it.
It’s closer to a Linux distribution. They are working on getting developers to distribute more through the official repositories but there is still a pretty long list of personal repositories that anyone can tap into. After that, it’s like managing packages in synaptic or similar. You can even drop to terminal cli and use apt-get (great for us geeks but I wouldn’t send a regular phone user to the cli).
http://www.appscout.com/2009/11/samsung_bada_opens_up_feature.php
Every Samsung product I’ve had is a software disaster. It’s either unfinished or mostly broken. They have customers because their devices are inexpensive, not because they’re great.
So, Samsung putting a glitzy face on an operating system sounds like a bad movie plot. I think they’d do more for Microsoft’s mobile phone OS sales than Microsoft can.
… No more mobile OS’s imitating the iPhone. If Samsung or anyone else manages to make a mobile OS that focuses on productivity and efficiency, more power to them. But I don’t want yet another OS underestimating my intelligence, forcing me to touch icon after icon as if I were a preschool kid. I don’t want another mobile OS that’ll tie both of my hands in order to navigate it, one hand to hold the device and the other one to flick-flick-flick the screen like an idiot.
Mobile OS developers have focused way too much in trying to look cool, that they have neglected usability and efficiency. The results are utter failures that aren^aEURTMt as cool as the marketing teams want us to believe they are, and they aren’t half as efficient as they could and should be.
Please, please, PLEASE! Bring back one-handed navigation and quick key shortcuts. Someone out there, bring back reading and writing and stop dumbing us down with touchy-feely pictures. Make it all stable, reliable and open to customization and you’ll have a winner.
Indeed. I also have no need for intuitive gestures that allow me to interact directly with a device. I’d much rather use arcane key combinations, a fiddly trackball, or a tiny plastic stylus. Those are the real productivity boosters.
Ironically, I’ve witnessed preschool kids who were able to operate an iPhone one handed without any problems.
C’mon, not even an adult can hold the iPhone with one hand and operate it at the same time, except for very basic tasks. An adult’s thumb is unable to go across the screen’s width and you want us to believe a preschool kid can do it?
Touch screens are beautiful and elegant. That’s all Apple is about these days and they can convince even tech editors like Thom. God I’d love to have those marketing guys on my company…
Making phone calls and using a few online services is MUCH easier with a keypad. Showing off such a phone is much much harder though.
(PS: I’ve read about the Ubuntu upgrade “debacle”. Just the usual stuff with upgrades, nothing extraordinary, I would say. Unfortunately Shuttleworth and Co. are taking Apple as a model and will spend all of their efforts dressing the thing up before making rock solid upgrades their first goal.)
Edited 2009-11-12 22:49 UTC
And having a massive app library and an excellent portable browser that even won over someone like me who would never buy a macbook.
It is a debacle when they AGAIN break a bunch of working wireless and video cards. That means locking non-technical people out of their computers.
Copying Apple would be a good idea for Shuttleworth. I really don’t know what Mark is thinking when he releases these 6 month upgrades that break working hardware. What is he paying all his employees to do?
Edited 2009-11-12 23:36 UTC
Yes I have used an iPhone since my girlfriend’s got one (she’s a “fashion victim” and I’m OK with that). As many of us, I’m the family’s tech guy and I have done most of the jailbraking, configuration, unlocking, app search and downloading, etc.
I find it a great toy, but not a very serious mobile phone. It has subpar texting (no character count, no single message deletion) and subpar voice operation (no silencing of incoming calls, very hard one-handed call answering) IMHO, but amazing little funny apps, especially those relating to the accelerometer. While browsing the App Store, however, I can’t find that many great stuff… for a phone. If you think of the iPhone as a very little computer, then it’s great. If you need a real phone, that’s not it.
I’ve been trying to love it and switch myself, but I just can’t. I wouldn’t even use it for web newspaper reading, which I happily do on my Symbian phone regularly for a couple of hours every night in bed. The touch interface, the two-handed approach and the font size make it all useless for that task (for me at least).
I’ll wait until someone thinks of the anatomy of the human hand and thumb and creates a touch interface that actually allows you to use the whole thing one-handed and without having to move the phone in your hand. THAT is a mobile OS there’s a lot of room for. THAT’s the mobile OS all those sticking to current keypad phones -which are the vast majority of people in the world- need. It surely won’t fit that many icons and won’t be ideal for movie watching, but that’s not the main purpose of a phone.
Regarding Ubuntu I was only pointing that the latest upgrade is no different from past ones. It is indeed a “debacle” but just the usual debacle. When I say Shuttleworth is after Apple’s footsteps I mean that he’s trying to focus on first impressions rather than deep solid foundations. (Yes I also use and administer a MacBook. My girlfriend again…
) Check the latest icons in the systray and see how inconsistent they are with any third party icons. Or the way WiFi signal strength is shown now. You could tell one WiFi network from a another in a blink in Jaunty. Now you have cooler and slicker icons which look almost identical no matter the strength of the signal. But they are very OSX like. Yeah, that’s the goal… 
(When I say Apple is going skin-deep and focused on first impressions I mean this: http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html and this: http://www.asktog.com/columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html)
Edited 2009-11-14 02:39 UTC
Is There Room for a New Mobile OS?
No. We already have Android, BlackBerry OS, iPhone OS, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.
I think anyone else entering the market would just be asking for fail.
Not only there’s room for another mobile OS, but there’s also a need. Current offers -except Symbian- target touch phones only, which are a niche market (no matter what the internet geeks want you to believe).
I don’t know what Bada is after, and I’m quite happy with Symbian, but mobile OSes are in its infancy and it’s good to have competition. The current desktop OS scene is terribly boring, so let’s enjoy these mobile exciting times.