This year 2013 will see several new smartphone operating systems launched. This blog is my first overview to these new arrivals, and is in response to perhaps the most requested commentary by me, from my Twitter followers in the past few months. What do I think of Ubuntu or Firefox or Sailfish or Tizen.. (or Blackberry 10 or Windows Phone 8)
Some might think this is 'too late' and that the market is 'already settled' into the duopoly that is Google's Android, and Apple's iOS (which according to Strategy Analytics held 92% of the smartphone market in Q4. My calculations have the pair with a little bit less, but still, they are the two giants currently). That may seem reasonable, until you understand the scale of the market and the near future. Smartphones sold a little over 700 million units in 2012, up 45% from just one year before. Smartphones now sell about twice the level that personal computers of all type sell per year (that includes the tablet PCs like the iPad), and almost three times as many as television sets globally. This must be 'too late' for a new operating system to enter and become big, isn't it.
No its not. The total global handset industry sells about 1.8 billion handsets per year (ie most of those were still 'dumbphones' in 2012, and only about 39% of those were smartphones. The handset industry experts have joined me in my originally quite radical view that all handsets would become 'smartphones' - and my view is that this transition will be completed (in new handset sales, not in installed base) before this decade is done. The annual sales of handsets will likely stabilize near the 2 Billion per year level, so we have something near 1.3 Billion annual sales growth left to do for smartphones - almost two times as much unclaimed, as the total market size in 2012.
This IS the right time to get in, if you ever wanted to be a major player in smartphones, whether on the hardware or the software and operating system size. During 2013 will we be somewhere near 1 Billion smartphone sales and about half the potential is taken. After that, it will become increasingly hard to break into the market, and probably by 2015 it will be too late.
Thats not to say, that Android isn't in the driving seat. Android was powering 70% of all smartphones sold in Q3 of 2012 and Android is used by seven of the ten largest smartphone makers, while the three others in the top 10 use three separate and incompatible systems. Android is the obvious big target and Google has played the smartphone opportunity remarkably well, so far. Apple had a strong growth trajectory in gobbling up huge chunks of market share until that growth bonanza stalled two years ago, and Apple's gains have been anemic, one or two market share points per year since. It is high time for Apple to either launch a lower-cost iPhone (what I call the iPhone Nano) or else abandon any hope of being a major player in the races, and becoming a niche maker similar to what RIM/Blackberry has become. The race for the smartphone market is mostly one of low-cost mass-market mainstream basic smartphones, not the high end of the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4.
HOW YOU WIN IN SMARTPHONES
There will be lots of techie 'experts' who bring their 'insights' into explaining why one OS is better than another, why its UI is more appealing or its app selection is the winner, etc. They are clueless. We saw how badly these experts misunderstand the handset market, from all the forecasts made in 2010 about what will happen to Nokia smartphone sales in 2012 as the new Lumia Windows Phone strategy is implemented (experts had errors of the scale of 200% and more, the worst 'expert' organization had a forecasting error of 332% !!!). That is not an isolated example, I will shortly be reporting on how badly the tech pundits and experts misjudged the launch of Windows Phone and the Microsoft market share for 2012 (can you believe, errors up to 400% !!! ???)
Smartphones may look like tiny pocket-sized computers, so many PC industry experts are quick to offer their 'insights'. They do not know, that this industry operates on totally different market rules than the PC market. Handsets are technically approved, and supported by the carriers/operators, who act as gate-keepers to all markets. If you do not have carrier support, you cannot win in a market. Witness Apple's iPhone for example, or Microsoft's Kin (forgot about that one, did you, the phone that died in six weeks from launch, because no carriers would support it).
In smartphones the best handset or best operating system or best app store does not win. They all are important, yes, but they are not the key to winning. Else in 2010, Apple's iPhone would have crushed Nokia's Symbian, because by every measure, in 2010, the iPhone was the better smartphone than then-current Nokia flagship, the N97; the iOS was far better than Nokia's first iteration of its aging Symbian OS attempting to do touch-screen; and the Apple iPhone App Store had more apps than Nokia's Ovi store. Why then did Nokia outsell Apple by 2 to 1, and more importantly, Apple grew 22.4 million smartphone unit sales from 2009 to 2010, but Nokia grew 35.8 million. How is it possible that a clearly inferior product line, on an inferior OS and UI, and a smaller app environment, can grow more than the better one? Its not about whose phone or OS is better in smartphones. Its about the carrier relationships (and related retail distribution). Nokia had by far the best carrier relations and retail distribution in the mobile handset industry at the time, Apple did not. So Nokia was able to sell an inferior product but get bigger growth - because of carrier relations and distribution.
Again, this is no anomaly. Look at Palm and the WebOS, the best smartphone and OS this side of an iPhone. It died. Being best does not give you the world. Or Samsung's bada - my apologies to all my Samsung friends, but bada was hardly the most exciting most advanced most capable OS. Yet it sold 20 million units in 2012. Why? Because Samsung currently has the best carrier relationships and widest distribution channel reach of any handset maker in the world.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying the handset design doesn't matter, that the user interface doesn't matter or the app store doesn't matter etc. I AM saying, that they will not decide your success. The decisive factor is carrier support, the second most important factor is resale distribution deals. Of course a good OS is better than having a bad one, that the iOS is so user-friendly that a 3 year old understands how to use an iPhone, and so does a 93 year old, without reading any user manuals - that is why Apple's iPhone has such fiercely loyal customer retention rates. But that is mostly loyalty and retention (Nokia used to have that too, with its messaging, its cameras, its QWERTY keyboards, its FM radios etc..). The key to gaining market share - especially for a new brand - is carrier support and retail distribution. Carrier backlash is one of the biggest reasons that has caused Blackberry to decline sales in past two years. Carrier support is why Huawei has been so successful in gaining big chunks of market share globally (partly helped by the fact that Huawei can bundle handsets in a network equipment deal, like Nokia and Ericsson often did in the 1990s).
UBUNTU NOT CONTENDING
So first up, Ubuntu. The Linux based open source OS with strong African roots is celebrated by many tech fans and PC experts as an obvious choice for smartphone makers, especially those sick and tired of the Microsoft Windows dominance on the PC side, and suggesting that PC makers should feel a natural affinity to the OS. Yeah, well, you don't win by having an OS that is popular on the far smaller desktop world, else Windows would have 90% of the smartphones market. Rather, after literally a decade of trying, Microsoft's smartphone platform has managed a peak of 12% global market share and today lingers at .. 2% in annual sales. There is no 'synergy' between the desktop and the pocket. HP was the latest victim to discover this when it tried to create some synergy for Palm that it bought, using WebOS, and the world's bestselling PC brand, HP. Lenovo learned this lesson, it released its smartphones using Android instead, and in one year climbed into the Top 10 biggest smartphone makers, and now, in Q4 is ranked either 5th or 6th (racing with Sony, we have not seen Sony's numbers yet).
Ubuntu will need two big hurdles. First, it needs support by major handset makers, it should attract at least one of the Top 10 manufacturers, preferrably more than one, to have any chance. They, the handset makers, have to commit to a couple of handsets that run Ubuntu OS, and then - the most difficult hurdle, Ubuntu needs to secure carrier support where several significant carriers agree to support the new handsets using Ubuntu. This is not an impossible task but it is a huge task. The schedule for Ubuntu calls for first phones to be available about a year from now. So far, we have not seen the news that needs to happen. This is why I am not currently taking Ubuntu smartphone aspirations very seriously (yet). They have to get these deals into place, to even be 'entered into the race'. They are like someone in the Olympics, who is not even allowed to line up to the starting gate yet. Ubuntu has not qualified for this contest. They might do it, they have to hurry, but so far, they haven't.
FIREFOX VERY DARK HORSE
Then we have Firefox. The web browser company Mozilla has been working on its smartphone OS, as an open source HTML based platform, and has been making the early needed steps. ZTE, a Top 10 sized smartphone maker has announced it will introduce a Firefox based smartphone now in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. There is a tiny start-up smartphone maker Geeksphone of Spain who has announced two Firefox based smartphones. So there is a little bit of handset manufacturer support but the handset offering is still slim. Meanwhile, bigger hurdle, the carrier support? Thats not yet there. There is some gossip that 'a European carrier' might be interested and KDDI of Japan has said it is looking into possibly doing some Firefox in its smartphone offering, but no carrier deals yet. But Firefox has achieved 'support' by a good list of carriers such as Telefonica, TIM, T-Mobile, Sprint, Etisalat, Smart and Telenor. That is not the same as a carrier actually launching the phone and is a far cry from selling it in its stores or offering any handset subsidies to the smartphones. But Firefox does have handsets coming now, and many carriers are in discussions. Firefox could be a dark horse to have a tiny slice of this pie going into 2014. What is very much needed now, is more than one handset model by one Top 10 manufacturer.
SAILFISH (ie MeeGo 2.0 version A) PRETENDER
Jolla the Finnish start-up made of ex-Nokia staff from the killed MeeGo/Maemo project, is in a similar stage as Firefox, but on a very different trajectory. Jolla is stepping into the shoes vacated by Nokia in abandoning the hugely admired N9 and N950 smartphones running MeeGo. The N9 is the most heralded Nokia smartphone of all time and the only one that regularly beat the iPhone in side-by-side tests by major handset magazines and comparison websites. The N9 was headed to huge global success, until bizarrely the Nokia CEO decided it will not be sold in any major markets and will not be allowed to compete against the iPhone for example not being sold in the USA, UK, Germany etc. The N9 running MeeGo won the world's most prestigious technology design awards the D&AD Award in 2012, beating Apple's brand new iPad 2 among its rivals for the award. The German weekly newsmagazine Der Stern loved the N9 so much, it encouraged its readers to fly to other countries like Switzerland and Austria to buy an N9, it was that good in the magazine's opinion (yet Nokia refused to sell it in Germany??). And as Nokia refused to sell the sister phone, the N950 anywhere, only producing a very tiny run of the device, its second hand resale prices are above a thousand Euros. Nokia had a huge flagship hit product on its hands, when it had the N9 and N950 running MeeGo, yet Nokia abandoned this massive tech lead.
So enter Jolla. Jolla was formed with the help of Nokia's employee departure program and some seed funding, and took the insights and design ideas that the MeeGo/Maemo team had with the N9, N950 and other MeeGo devices, and builds upon that. Their new Sailfish OS is an evolution past MeeGo, still as an open source Linux based OS, and one could think of Sailfish as a kind of MeeGo 2.0 (version A). Sailfish is compatible with the (formerly Nokia owned) Qt application development tools and some gossip suggests the similarity between Sailfish and Android is so close, many Android apps can run natively on Sailfish. If so, Sailfish would almost overnight jump over that hurdle of 'how many apps do you have' and inherit a part in the biggest app environment that Android is now becoming, passing the iPhone App Store.
The point with Jolla is, that it is not attempting (at least initially) to be a mass market brand and platform, but rather a premium OS at the high end of the market, competing with the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, perhaps even aiming into the price stratosphere where Vertu exists. Considering how strong the passions were for the N9 and N950, and as the N9 was the only smartphone by ANY BRAND that regularly beat the iPhone in side-by-side tests, this is not a hopeless fantasy. The Jolla staff of about a 100 employees are essentially the same as the heart of Nokia's MeeGo team. So what we will later this year see from Jolla's first smartphone(s) are what probably could have been the 'follow-up' to the N9. The first Jolla phone may well be the ultimate superphone of year 2013 and get massive attention because of that.
Then, its their business model. To price the Jolla high enough to be able to skim those profits and slice a piece of the high-end that Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy own. Jolla doesn't need to sell 10 million in the first year to be successful and become viable in the mid term. And if the Sailfish OS starts to win all sorts of comparisons vs the iPhone, soon there may be more makers joining the Sailfish family. So for Jolla, the definition of success is quite different from most others on this list. They are not even attempting a mass market play, they know from the start, they hold a premium platform and they intend to fight for the top end of the market, not the bottom end.
Which brings me to the handset partners. We just heard that Chinese smartphone maker Zopo has decided to launch smartphones on Sailfish to sell in India. Are there carriers? The first one is signed up, Finland's DNA is committed to launching Jolla's first smartphone(s) in Finland. Yes, Finland only has 5.3 million people and DNA is the smallest of the three carriers in Finland but still, this is a real live carrier deal already signed up. And you can bet your bottom dollar that fiercely patriotic Finns will flock to Jolla to buy their first-ever smartphone, if it is anywhere near as good a follow-up to the N9 as we might expect. Meanwhile about the distribution deals? China's D.Phone, the largest handset store/distributor has signed up a deal to sell Jolla's smartphones in China. As China Mobile was a partner with MeeGo, there must be at least implied support from the world's largest mobile operator/carrier who counts one out of every 8 existing mobile phone users as its customer in the world - the carrier which alone is bigger than Sprint, plus AT&T, plus Verizon, plus T-Mobile USA, combined - and doubled.
Jolla's road is not secure, Sailfish has a big task ahead of itself, but for its early steps, it has already one handset partner, it has already signed its first carrier deal and has its first independent distribution deal. The Sailfish OS is already set to launch in China and India, the two largest mobile handset markets in the world. Jolla doesn't need to achieve huge success on this path, to make a splash globally and get the attention they want, to survive into 2014 and beyond. Will Sailfish reach 1% this year or even next, probably not, but they don't need to. They know they are a niche player at the luxury end. If they can do a million per quarter, thats enough for now, then grow from there. And then, if we find someone at the bottom end of the Top 10, wanting to differentiate from Android, with a high quality OS, we could suddenly find that someone like ZTE or Lenovo or LG suddenly announce their premium line will be powered by Sailfish.. But that would look more into 2014 than 2013..
TIZEN (ie MeeGo 2.0 Version B) THE CONTENDER
There are no sure things in mobile. But Tizen is the nearest thing to a sure thing, in smartphones. Why? First, because this is the big scale relaunch of MeeGo. MeeGo was a joint project by Nokia and Nokia's past Maemo project, merged with Intel's Moblin, both Linux based open source smarpthone OS projects. So when Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop suddenly announced on 11 February that Nokia was quitting the MeeGo path to its future and selecting Windows instead (Intel's CEO was apparently informed literally on the night before the announcement! Talk about arrogance), Intel rushed to rescue the project and find a new handset partner. And if you lose the world's largest handset maker, who would you prefer to have to replace it? The second largest handset maker of course. Intel found its new partner in Samsung. The project was renamed Tizen, it now includes both Linux and HTML in its code and is still an open source OS project, of course and merges also Samsung's own in-house bada project efforts.
Samsung's bada has been a stealth success story. Many in the West are quick to dismiss it, because they haven't seen any bada smartphones in the USA or the UK.. They think it has failed. Meanwhile bada has been a considerable 'third ecosystem' success from Russia to France to India to Brazil. bada has achieved nearly 30 million cumulative sales in its first 2 years. That is more than the iPhone did in its first two years! Yes, bada is the most successful new smartphone OS launch in history! But because most of the sales were in Emerging World countries - at low price points where bada was targeted - most Western analysts have ignored bada, and often do not even mention it as a major OS rival. But let me repeat, in the first two years, bada has sold more smartphones than Apple was able to sell iPhones in its first two years. Why is this? Partly its price, but mostly its - Samsung. Samsung has the world's best carrier relationships and retail distribution now that Nokia has shot itself in the foot and Samsung has easily stepped in, smoothly taking over whatever Nokia has abandoned. Samsung has literally today the best carrier relationships and the widest distribution reach in handsets. And obviously Samsung has become the world's biggest handset maker and biggest smarpthone maker.
For Tizen, consider bada as the 'practise run'. Samsung has previously used operating systems made by others - Nokia's Symbian, Microsoft's Windows, Google's Android etc. bada was their first attempt to launch a low-end, low cost OS. bada was intended to be Samsung's own OS and they didn't try very hard to win handset manufacturer partners to join in the 'ecosystem'. This is all different with Intel now and Tizen. Intel back from the days of Moblin, and with Nokia and MeeGo, had already secured handset maker partners and Tizen's Board includes Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic and Huawei in addition to Intel and Samsung among handset manufacturers. More critically, what of carrier support? The Tizen Board includes NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Sprint, Vodafone, Korea Telecom and SK Telecom.
These are not 'supporters' of an OS who like it and will test it or consider it. These are Board Members on the OS, who are committed to developing Tizen. The handset manufacturers cover 40% of all smartphones sold in the world (mostly currently on Android). The carriers that are represented on Tizen's Board cover 11% of the total mobile subscriber base on the planet.
If you take the technical excellence that Nokia and Intel managed to produce with the first release of MeeGo and the first two handsets, N9 and N950 (while the new Nokia CEO was torpedoing every step of the launch) - and we add two years of further development, by Intel and Samsung - Tizen is likely to be a true generational leap beyond 'the operating system considered better than iOS'. When Samsung is winning all sorts of awards with the Galaxy series, and now gets to launch its flagship OS, Tizen, you can expect the first Tizen based Samsung smartphones to be glorious. When we see that in its 'practise run' of bada, Samsung was able to sell more bada smartphones in the first two years, than Apple in its high-profile media extravaganza that was the iPhone from 2007, and now Samsung gets to take all that and do better with Tizen, expect some fireworks. And that is, before we add in Huawei, the world's third-largest smartphone maker. And we add Fujitsu and Panasonic, both past Top 10 smartphone makers from Japan who are eager to return to the world stage and make similar profits with smartphones as tech giants rivals like Samsung, LG, Apple, Lenovo etc have done recently. Samsung and Huawei have promised first Tizen phones out this year. Samsung specifically has promised multiple Tizen phones and there is a tech spec of a Galaxy version running Tizen.
The operators/carriers have frequently been saying they would welcome a third ecosystem alongside Android and the iPhone. Windows Phone cannot become that because carriers hate and fear Skype (don't argue this point, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop himself said so to Nokia's shareholder meeting, that carriers don't like Microsoft because of Skype, adding 'of course'). Carriers also don't like Blackberry for the cannibalization of messaging by the BBM system and how RIM/Blackberry has been 'too secure' and bypassing carrier systems. Samsung and Intel understand carrier concerns - why else have six carriers joining six equipment makers on the Tizen Board? Of any new OS, Tizen is BY FAR the most carrier-friendly, and least threatening OS. Expect the carriers to warmly embrace Tizen this year and for Samsung to offer a lot of choice in its smartphones, many 'sister' devices, where they run Android or Tizen, and often carriers starting to push the Tizen variants. Again, Samsung knows now how to play this game, just this past week we heard of the Telegraph survey of UK retail, finding that when their undercover shoppers visited UK handset retailers, the most offered phones were Samsung Galaxies, even ahead of iPhones.
Like I said, there are no guarantees. If the first Tizen phones are dogs, or have severe bugs, or Samsung has some PR fiasco with carriers etc, the picture might change fast. But by current view, Tizen is set to exceed the performance of bada, and very importantly, differing from bada, Tizen to launch in all markets including the two most advanced smartphone markets, Japan and South Korea with major carrier support in both.
Tizen could hit 2% market share per quarter by the end of this year and easily rise to something like 5% market share by end of 2014. If so, Tizen would rather easily become the Third Ecosystem and then gradually grow to something near 10% in the next few years. Note, that most of Tizen's gains would come directly from Android. Still, if you remove 10% from Android's 70% now, it still leaves Google as the Gorilla of mobile, with 60% and at least 3 times bigger than number 2 (iPhone) and 6 times bigger than number 3 (Tizen). Hardly a 'threat' to Google and Android dominance.. But Tizen is likely to put an end to any hopes Blackberry or Windows have of ever becoming the third ecosystem haha..
BLACKBERRY 10 RELEGATED
BB10 is obviously not a new platform as such, its a new release of the oldest surviving platform play in smartphones. The first Blackberry smartphone came out in 2001 and all its contemporaries have died or been killed like Palm and Symbian. Windows didn't enter the smartphone wars until later in the decade. So now we've just seen BB10. The phones look new and modern, the OS looks good. But there is nothing radical, no great leap ahead. Blackberry has played catch-up and only become yet another 'me too' i-Phon-a-clone. This new fresh OS was desperately needed to stem the decline. But it, and the first 2 phones shown, is not enough to vault Blackberry back into contention for major position in smartphones. Just four years ago Blackberries had over 20% market share globally. Now the Beebee lingers at 3%. In fact, Blackberry's collapse ranks as the 7th fastest handset collapse in history. This new BB10 is no silver bullet to restore Blackberry to 20% market share or even half that. Blackberry's decline hopefully has ended. If they have good headwinds in Waterloo this year, BB might end the year near 5% market share, more likely they will be near the 3% they are today. Blackberry had its chance, it blew it by taking the eyes off the ball, and focusing its limited marketing efforts to launch the ill-fated tablet.. That chance is forever gone and Blackberry is now relegated to forever being a niche player, serving the enterprise segment of smartphones. A profitable business, no doubt, but one that is not growing as fast as the overall smartphone business.
WINDOWS PHONE 8
And what of our 'darling', WP8, which was promised by so many 'experts' to now hold something like 20% market share and was supposed to be the 'third ecosystem' and to challenge or by some 'experts' even pass the iPhone in sales, especially after Nokia joined in the 'partnership'. Yeah. That all went tits up. Windows had 12% market share in smartphones in 2007. It was down to 5% in 2010. Windows market share was down to 2% in 2011 and now that Nokia has launched 9 Lumia smartphones, supported by the world's largest smartphone launch marketing budget, joined by massive marketing suppport by Microsoft, and added to by the biggest handset launch budgets ever by some of the carriers like AT&T in the USA - what is Windows market share in smartphones now? In 2012 it was.. 2%. Windows Phone is failing comprehensively.
Nokia's CEO took Nokia's 35% market share with Symbian in 2010, and forcibly migrated it to Windows Phone. How many took this gambit? 2%. 1% is still left on Symbian as of Q4 of 2012, so 32% of Nokia's loyal customers have rather run away, taking an Android based smartphone like Samsung's Galaxy, or Apple's iPhone instead of taking the Lumia. And what of those who actually took the Lumia? The independent Yankee Group survey of customer satisfaction of USA based Lumia owners found that 4 out of 10 hated the phone so much, they rated it worst phone they've ever seen. And the brand new Bernstein loyalty survey of smartphone owners in USA and UK, found that the Windows Phone loyalty is so bad, two out of three will never buy another Windows Phone based smartphone again. The Windows Phone experiment has failed and is a dead man walking, only surviving as long as Nokia exists as a smartphone maker with Elop as its CEO (we have an Elop Firing Watch on this blog, counting down to when he is fired or Nokia itself is sold).
Almost all past Windows partners have already given up on Windows including Sony, Motorola, LG, Dell, Palm, etc - and of the last who remain, they cut their Windows offering like HTC and Samsung or postpone their first launches and cut their intended WP8 product lines like Huawei and ZTE. Most of the remaining Windows Phone 'partners' have other preferred new OS projects they now prioritize, from Tizen to Firefox. And if Nokia's CEO Elop is fired, his successor will no doubt almost instantly announce the end of Windows Phone and a shift to Android.
There are those who say 'but synergy' with Windows 8 on the desktop. Yeah. Where have we heard that before? Like with Windows Mobile. Like with Windows Phone 6. Like with Windows Phone 7. Like with Symbian - Stephen Elop when he was still at Microsoft, negotiated that 'partnership' where all Microsoft Office suite apps were made compatible with Symbian and Nokia E-Series. What good did that 'synergy' get the two tech giants? None whatsover. There probably IS some synergy from the desktop to the laptop to netbooks to tablet PCs. Yes, maybe Microsoft's Surface tablet can benefit from Windows 8 'synergy' but on smartphones we have one decade of evidence that it doesn't matter one iota. Windows has been the slowly dying operating system of smartphones, only kept alive by continued cash injections by Microsoft. All Microsoft partners who ever focused on Windows Phone have become unprofitable doing so, and only recovered to profits by abandoning the Windows path, from Sendo (bankrupted) to Motorola (bankrupted) to LG (recovered) to HTC (recovered). Windows 'life span' in smartphones continues only as long as Nokia CEO continues on his borrowed time. And as to Microsoft building its own smartphones - yeah, they tried that once before, remember Kin the world-record in market failure of a new handset launch, died in six weeks? What killed Kin was utter lack of carrier support. The carriers hate Microsoft, they fear Microsoft, they hate Skype, they don't trust Ballmer, they'd be idiots to go to bed with the company that always drives its 'partners' to bankruptcy, just like its now doing to Nokia.
So thats my view today of the upcoming newcomers to the smartphone OS races. My best wishes to all, we welcome competition and variety. But in the long run, the industry cannot sustain dozens of platforms, some will naturally disappear, like we've seen in the past with Palm, Symbian, LiMo, MeeGo etc. If I had to pick the strongest horse from this stable, I definitely have to pick Tizen. And as a Finn and ex Nokian, I do hope sincerely that Jolla and Sailfish do make a nice success out of their venture.
PS - for those who need to have more data about the global handset industry including market shares, regional markets, average prices, installed bases, handset features etc, see my TomiAhonen Phone Book 2012
Some might think this is 'too late' and that the market is 'already settled' into the duopoly that is Google's Android, and Apple's iOS (which according to Strategy Analytics held 92% of the smartphone market in Q4. My calculations have the pair with a little bit less, but still, they are the two giants currently). That may seem reasonable, until you understand the scale of the market and the near future. Smartphones sold a little over 700 million units in 2012, up 45% from just one year before. Smartphones now sell about twice the level that personal computers of all type sell per year (that includes the tablet PCs like the iPad), and almost three times as many as television sets globally. This must be 'too late' for a new operating system to enter and become big, isn't it.
No its not. The total global handset industry sells about 1.8 billion handsets per year (ie most of those were still 'dumbphones' in 2012, and only about 39% of those were smartphones. The handset industry experts have joined me in my originally quite radical view that all handsets would become 'smartphones' - and my view is that this transition will be completed (in new handset sales, not in installed base) before this decade is done. The annual sales of handsets will likely stabilize near the 2 Billion per year level, so we have something near 1.3 Billion annual sales growth left to do for smartphones - almost two times as much unclaimed, as the total market size in 2012.
This IS the right time to get in, if you ever wanted to be a major player in smartphones, whether on the hardware or the software and operating system size. During 2013 will we be somewhere near 1 Billion smartphone sales and about half the potential is taken. After that, it will become increasingly hard to break into the market, and probably by 2015 it will be too late.
Thats not to say, that Android isn't in the driving seat. Android was powering 70% of all smartphones sold in Q3 of 2012 and Android is used by seven of the ten largest smartphone makers, while the three others in the top 10 use three separate and incompatible systems. Android is the obvious big target and Google has played the smartphone opportunity remarkably well, so far. Apple had a strong growth trajectory in gobbling up huge chunks of market share until that growth bonanza stalled two years ago, and Apple's gains have been anemic, one or two market share points per year since. It is high time for Apple to either launch a lower-cost iPhone (what I call the iPhone Nano) or else abandon any hope of being a major player in the races, and becoming a niche maker similar to what RIM/Blackberry has become. The race for the smartphone market is mostly one of low-cost mass-market mainstream basic smartphones, not the high end of the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4.
HOW YOU WIN IN SMARTPHONES
There will be lots of techie 'experts' who bring their 'insights' into explaining why one OS is better than another, why its UI is more appealing or its app selection is the winner, etc. They are clueless. We saw how badly these experts misunderstand the handset market, from all the forecasts made in 2010 about what will happen to Nokia smartphone sales in 2012 as the new Lumia Windows Phone strategy is implemented (experts had errors of the scale of 200% and more, the worst 'expert' organization had a forecasting error of 332% !!!). That is not an isolated example, I will shortly be reporting on how badly the tech pundits and experts misjudged the launch of Windows Phone and the Microsoft market share for 2012 (can you believe, errors up to 400% !!! ???)
Smartphones may look like tiny pocket-sized computers, so many PC industry experts are quick to offer their 'insights'. They do not know, that this industry operates on totally different market rules than the PC market. Handsets are technically approved, and supported by the carriers/operators, who act as gate-keepers to all markets. If you do not have carrier support, you cannot win in a market. Witness Apple's iPhone for example, or Microsoft's Kin (forgot about that one, did you, the phone that died in six weeks from launch, because no carriers would support it).
In smartphones the best handset or best operating system or best app store does not win. They all are important, yes, but they are not the key to winning. Else in 2010, Apple's iPhone would have crushed Nokia's Symbian, because by every measure, in 2010, the iPhone was the better smartphone than then-current Nokia flagship, the N97; the iOS was far better than Nokia's first iteration of its aging Symbian OS attempting to do touch-screen; and the Apple iPhone App Store had more apps than Nokia's Ovi store. Why then did Nokia outsell Apple by 2 to 1, and more importantly, Apple grew 22.4 million smartphone unit sales from 2009 to 2010, but Nokia grew 35.8 million. How is it possible that a clearly inferior product line, on an inferior OS and UI, and a smaller app environment, can grow more than the better one? Its not about whose phone or OS is better in smartphones. Its about the carrier relationships (and related retail distribution). Nokia had by far the best carrier relations and retail distribution in the mobile handset industry at the time, Apple did not. So Nokia was able to sell an inferior product but get bigger growth - because of carrier relations and distribution.
Again, this is no anomaly. Look at Palm and the WebOS, the best smartphone and OS this side of an iPhone. It died. Being best does not give you the world. Or Samsung's bada - my apologies to all my Samsung friends, but bada was hardly the most exciting most advanced most capable OS. Yet it sold 20 million units in 2012. Why? Because Samsung currently has the best carrier relationships and widest distribution channel reach of any handset maker in the world.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying the handset design doesn't matter, that the user interface doesn't matter or the app store doesn't matter etc. I AM saying, that they will not decide your success. The decisive factor is carrier support, the second most important factor is resale distribution deals. Of course a good OS is better than having a bad one, that the iOS is so user-friendly that a 3 year old understands how to use an iPhone, and so does a 93 year old, without reading any user manuals - that is why Apple's iPhone has such fiercely loyal customer retention rates. But that is mostly loyalty and retention (Nokia used to have that too, with its messaging, its cameras, its QWERTY keyboards, its FM radios etc..). The key to gaining market share - especially for a new brand - is carrier support and retail distribution. Carrier backlash is one of the biggest reasons that has caused Blackberry to decline sales in past two years. Carrier support is why Huawei has been so successful in gaining big chunks of market share globally (partly helped by the fact that Huawei can bundle handsets in a network equipment deal, like Nokia and Ericsson often did in the 1990s).
UBUNTU NOT CONTENDING
So first up, Ubuntu. The Linux based open source OS with strong African roots is celebrated by many tech fans and PC experts as an obvious choice for smartphone makers, especially those sick and tired of the Microsoft Windows dominance on the PC side, and suggesting that PC makers should feel a natural affinity to the OS. Yeah, well, you don't win by having an OS that is popular on the far smaller desktop world, else Windows would have 90% of the smartphones market. Rather, after literally a decade of trying, Microsoft's smartphone platform has managed a peak of 12% global market share and today lingers at .. 2% in annual sales. There is no 'synergy' between the desktop and the pocket. HP was the latest victim to discover this when it tried to create some synergy for Palm that it bought, using WebOS, and the world's bestselling PC brand, HP. Lenovo learned this lesson, it released its smartphones using Android instead, and in one year climbed into the Top 10 biggest smartphone makers, and now, in Q4 is ranked either 5th or 6th (racing with Sony, we have not seen Sony's numbers yet).
Ubuntu will need two big hurdles. First, it needs support by major handset makers, it should attract at least one of the Top 10 manufacturers, preferrably more than one, to have any chance. They, the handset makers, have to commit to a couple of handsets that run Ubuntu OS, and then - the most difficult hurdle, Ubuntu needs to secure carrier support where several significant carriers agree to support the new handsets using Ubuntu. This is not an impossible task but it is a huge task. The schedule for Ubuntu calls for first phones to be available about a year from now. So far, we have not seen the news that needs to happen. This is why I am not currently taking Ubuntu smartphone aspirations very seriously (yet). They have to get these deals into place, to even be 'entered into the race'. They are like someone in the Olympics, who is not even allowed to line up to the starting gate yet. Ubuntu has not qualified for this contest. They might do it, they have to hurry, but so far, they haven't.
FIREFOX VERY DARK HORSE
Then we have Firefox. The web browser company Mozilla has been working on its smartphone OS, as an open source HTML based platform, and has been making the early needed steps. ZTE, a Top 10 sized smartphone maker has announced it will introduce a Firefox based smartphone now in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. There is a tiny start-up smartphone maker Geeksphone of Spain who has announced two Firefox based smartphones. So there is a little bit of handset manufacturer support but the handset offering is still slim. Meanwhile, bigger hurdle, the carrier support? Thats not yet there. There is some gossip that 'a European carrier' might be interested and KDDI of Japan has said it is looking into possibly doing some Firefox in its smartphone offering, but no carrier deals yet. But Firefox has achieved 'support' by a good list of carriers such as Telefonica, TIM, T-Mobile, Sprint, Etisalat, Smart and Telenor. That is not the same as a carrier actually launching the phone and is a far cry from selling it in its stores or offering any handset subsidies to the smartphones. But Firefox does have handsets coming now, and many carriers are in discussions. Firefox could be a dark horse to have a tiny slice of this pie going into 2014. What is very much needed now, is more than one handset model by one Top 10 manufacturer.
SAILFISH (ie MeeGo 2.0 version A) PRETENDER
Jolla the Finnish start-up made of ex-Nokia staff from the killed MeeGo/Maemo project, is in a similar stage as Firefox, but on a very different trajectory. Jolla is stepping into the shoes vacated by Nokia in abandoning the hugely admired N9 and N950 smartphones running MeeGo. The N9 is the most heralded Nokia smartphone of all time and the only one that regularly beat the iPhone in side-by-side tests by major handset magazines and comparison websites. The N9 was headed to huge global success, until bizarrely the Nokia CEO decided it will not be sold in any major markets and will not be allowed to compete against the iPhone for example not being sold in the USA, UK, Germany etc. The N9 running MeeGo won the world's most prestigious technology design awards the D&AD Award in 2012, beating Apple's brand new iPad 2 among its rivals for the award. The German weekly newsmagazine Der Stern loved the N9 so much, it encouraged its readers to fly to other countries like Switzerland and Austria to buy an N9, it was that good in the magazine's opinion (yet Nokia refused to sell it in Germany??). And as Nokia refused to sell the sister phone, the N950 anywhere, only producing a very tiny run of the device, its second hand resale prices are above a thousand Euros. Nokia had a huge flagship hit product on its hands, when it had the N9 and N950 running MeeGo, yet Nokia abandoned this massive tech lead.
So enter Jolla. Jolla was formed with the help of Nokia's employee departure program and some seed funding, and took the insights and design ideas that the MeeGo/Maemo team had with the N9, N950 and other MeeGo devices, and builds upon that. Their new Sailfish OS is an evolution past MeeGo, still as an open source Linux based OS, and one could think of Sailfish as a kind of MeeGo 2.0 (version A). Sailfish is compatible with the (formerly Nokia owned) Qt application development tools and some gossip suggests the similarity between Sailfish and Android is so close, many Android apps can run natively on Sailfish. If so, Sailfish would almost overnight jump over that hurdle of 'how many apps do you have' and inherit a part in the biggest app environment that Android is now becoming, passing the iPhone App Store.
The point with Jolla is, that it is not attempting (at least initially) to be a mass market brand and platform, but rather a premium OS at the high end of the market, competing with the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, perhaps even aiming into the price stratosphere where Vertu exists. Considering how strong the passions were for the N9 and N950, and as the N9 was the only smartphone by ANY BRAND that regularly beat the iPhone in side-by-side tests, this is not a hopeless fantasy. The Jolla staff of about a 100 employees are essentially the same as the heart of Nokia's MeeGo team. So what we will later this year see from Jolla's first smartphone(s) are what probably could have been the 'follow-up' to the N9. The first Jolla phone may well be the ultimate superphone of year 2013 and get massive attention because of that.
Then, its their business model. To price the Jolla high enough to be able to skim those profits and slice a piece of the high-end that Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy own. Jolla doesn't need to sell 10 million in the first year to be successful and become viable in the mid term. And if the Sailfish OS starts to win all sorts of comparisons vs the iPhone, soon there may be more makers joining the Sailfish family. So for Jolla, the definition of success is quite different from most others on this list. They are not even attempting a mass market play, they know from the start, they hold a premium platform and they intend to fight for the top end of the market, not the bottom end.
Which brings me to the handset partners. We just heard that Chinese smartphone maker Zopo has decided to launch smartphones on Sailfish to sell in India. Are there carriers? The first one is signed up, Finland's DNA is committed to launching Jolla's first smartphone(s) in Finland. Yes, Finland only has 5.3 million people and DNA is the smallest of the three carriers in Finland but still, this is a real live carrier deal already signed up. And you can bet your bottom dollar that fiercely patriotic Finns will flock to Jolla to buy their first-ever smartphone, if it is anywhere near as good a follow-up to the N9 as we might expect. Meanwhile about the distribution deals? China's D.Phone, the largest handset store/distributor has signed up a deal to sell Jolla's smartphones in China. As China Mobile was a partner with MeeGo, there must be at least implied support from the world's largest mobile operator/carrier who counts one out of every 8 existing mobile phone users as its customer in the world - the carrier which alone is bigger than Sprint, plus AT&T, plus Verizon, plus T-Mobile USA, combined - and doubled.
Jolla's road is not secure, Sailfish has a big task ahead of itself, but for its early steps, it has already one handset partner, it has already signed its first carrier deal and has its first independent distribution deal. The Sailfish OS is already set to launch in China and India, the two largest mobile handset markets in the world. Jolla doesn't need to achieve huge success on this path, to make a splash globally and get the attention they want, to survive into 2014 and beyond. Will Sailfish reach 1% this year or even next, probably not, but they don't need to. They know they are a niche player at the luxury end. If they can do a million per quarter, thats enough for now, then grow from there. And then, if we find someone at the bottom end of the Top 10, wanting to differentiate from Android, with a high quality OS, we could suddenly find that someone like ZTE or Lenovo or LG suddenly announce their premium line will be powered by Sailfish.. But that would look more into 2014 than 2013..
TIZEN (ie MeeGo 2.0 Version B) THE CONTENDER
There are no sure things in mobile. But Tizen is the nearest thing to a sure thing, in smartphones. Why? First, because this is the big scale relaunch of MeeGo. MeeGo was a joint project by Nokia and Nokia's past Maemo project, merged with Intel's Moblin, both Linux based open source smarpthone OS projects. So when Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop suddenly announced on 11 February that Nokia was quitting the MeeGo path to its future and selecting Windows instead (Intel's CEO was apparently informed literally on the night before the announcement! Talk about arrogance), Intel rushed to rescue the project and find a new handset partner. And if you lose the world's largest handset maker, who would you prefer to have to replace it? The second largest handset maker of course. Intel found its new partner in Samsung. The project was renamed Tizen, it now includes both Linux and HTML in its code and is still an open source OS project, of course and merges also Samsung's own in-house bada project efforts.
Samsung's bada has been a stealth success story. Many in the West are quick to dismiss it, because they haven't seen any bada smartphones in the USA or the UK.. They think it has failed. Meanwhile bada has been a considerable 'third ecosystem' success from Russia to France to India to Brazil. bada has achieved nearly 30 million cumulative sales in its first 2 years. That is more than the iPhone did in its first two years! Yes, bada is the most successful new smartphone OS launch in history! But because most of the sales were in Emerging World countries - at low price points where bada was targeted - most Western analysts have ignored bada, and often do not even mention it as a major OS rival. But let me repeat, in the first two years, bada has sold more smartphones than Apple was able to sell iPhones in its first two years. Why is this? Partly its price, but mostly its - Samsung. Samsung has the world's best carrier relationships and retail distribution now that Nokia has shot itself in the foot and Samsung has easily stepped in, smoothly taking over whatever Nokia has abandoned. Samsung has literally today the best carrier relationships and the widest distribution reach in handsets. And obviously Samsung has become the world's biggest handset maker and biggest smarpthone maker.
For Tizen, consider bada as the 'practise run'. Samsung has previously used operating systems made by others - Nokia's Symbian, Microsoft's Windows, Google's Android etc. bada was their first attempt to launch a low-end, low cost OS. bada was intended to be Samsung's own OS and they didn't try very hard to win handset manufacturer partners to join in the 'ecosystem'. This is all different with Intel now and Tizen. Intel back from the days of Moblin, and with Nokia and MeeGo, had already secured handset maker partners and Tizen's Board includes Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic and Huawei in addition to Intel and Samsung among handset manufacturers. More critically, what of carrier support? The Tizen Board includes NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Sprint, Vodafone, Korea Telecom and SK Telecom.
These are not 'supporters' of an OS who like it and will test it or consider it. These are Board Members on the OS, who are committed to developing Tizen. The handset manufacturers cover 40% of all smartphones sold in the world (mostly currently on Android). The carriers that are represented on Tizen's Board cover 11% of the total mobile subscriber base on the planet.
If you take the technical excellence that Nokia and Intel managed to produce with the first release of MeeGo and the first two handsets, N9 and N950 (while the new Nokia CEO was torpedoing every step of the launch) - and we add two years of further development, by Intel and Samsung - Tizen is likely to be a true generational leap beyond 'the operating system considered better than iOS'. When Samsung is winning all sorts of awards with the Galaxy series, and now gets to launch its flagship OS, Tizen, you can expect the first Tizen based Samsung smartphones to be glorious. When we see that in its 'practise run' of bada, Samsung was able to sell more bada smartphones in the first two years, than Apple in its high-profile media extravaganza that was the iPhone from 2007, and now Samsung gets to take all that and do better with Tizen, expect some fireworks. And that is, before we add in Huawei, the world's third-largest smartphone maker. And we add Fujitsu and Panasonic, both past Top 10 smartphone makers from Japan who are eager to return to the world stage and make similar profits with smartphones as tech giants rivals like Samsung, LG, Apple, Lenovo etc have done recently. Samsung and Huawei have promised first Tizen phones out this year. Samsung specifically has promised multiple Tizen phones and there is a tech spec of a Galaxy version running Tizen.
The operators/carriers have frequently been saying they would welcome a third ecosystem alongside Android and the iPhone. Windows Phone cannot become that because carriers hate and fear Skype (don't argue this point, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop himself said so to Nokia's shareholder meeting, that carriers don't like Microsoft because of Skype, adding 'of course'). Carriers also don't like Blackberry for the cannibalization of messaging by the BBM system and how RIM/Blackberry has been 'too secure' and bypassing carrier systems. Samsung and Intel understand carrier concerns - why else have six carriers joining six equipment makers on the Tizen Board? Of any new OS, Tizen is BY FAR the most carrier-friendly, and least threatening OS. Expect the carriers to warmly embrace Tizen this year and for Samsung to offer a lot of choice in its smartphones, many 'sister' devices, where they run Android or Tizen, and often carriers starting to push the Tizen variants. Again, Samsung knows now how to play this game, just this past week we heard of the Telegraph survey of UK retail, finding that when their undercover shoppers visited UK handset retailers, the most offered phones were Samsung Galaxies, even ahead of iPhones.
Like I said, there are no guarantees. If the first Tizen phones are dogs, or have severe bugs, or Samsung has some PR fiasco with carriers etc, the picture might change fast. But by current view, Tizen is set to exceed the performance of bada, and very importantly, differing from bada, Tizen to launch in all markets including the two most advanced smartphone markets, Japan and South Korea with major carrier support in both.
Tizen could hit 2% market share per quarter by the end of this year and easily rise to something like 5% market share by end of 2014. If so, Tizen would rather easily become the Third Ecosystem and then gradually grow to something near 10% in the next few years. Note, that most of Tizen's gains would come directly from Android. Still, if you remove 10% from Android's 70% now, it still leaves Google as the Gorilla of mobile, with 60% and at least 3 times bigger than number 2 (iPhone) and 6 times bigger than number 3 (Tizen). Hardly a 'threat' to Google and Android dominance.. But Tizen is likely to put an end to any hopes Blackberry or Windows have of ever becoming the third ecosystem haha..
BLACKBERRY 10 RELEGATED
BB10 is obviously not a new platform as such, its a new release of the oldest surviving platform play in smartphones. The first Blackberry smartphone came out in 2001 and all its contemporaries have died or been killed like Palm and Symbian. Windows didn't enter the smartphone wars until later in the decade. So now we've just seen BB10. The phones look new and modern, the OS looks good. But there is nothing radical, no great leap ahead. Blackberry has played catch-up and only become yet another 'me too' i-Phon-a-clone. This new fresh OS was desperately needed to stem the decline. But it, and the first 2 phones shown, is not enough to vault Blackberry back into contention for major position in smartphones. Just four years ago Blackberries had over 20% market share globally. Now the Beebee lingers at 3%. In fact, Blackberry's collapse ranks as the 7th fastest handset collapse in history. This new BB10 is no silver bullet to restore Blackberry to 20% market share or even half that. Blackberry's decline hopefully has ended. If they have good headwinds in Waterloo this year, BB might end the year near 5% market share, more likely they will be near the 3% they are today. Blackberry had its chance, it blew it by taking the eyes off the ball, and focusing its limited marketing efforts to launch the ill-fated tablet.. That chance is forever gone and Blackberry is now relegated to forever being a niche player, serving the enterprise segment of smartphones. A profitable business, no doubt, but one that is not growing as fast as the overall smartphone business.
WINDOWS PHONE 8
And what of our 'darling', WP8, which was promised by so many 'experts' to now hold something like 20% market share and was supposed to be the 'third ecosystem' and to challenge or by some 'experts' even pass the iPhone in sales, especially after Nokia joined in the 'partnership'. Yeah. That all went tits up. Windows had 12% market share in smartphones in 2007. It was down to 5% in 2010. Windows market share was down to 2% in 2011 and now that Nokia has launched 9 Lumia smartphones, supported by the world's largest smartphone launch marketing budget, joined by massive marketing suppport by Microsoft, and added to by the biggest handset launch budgets ever by some of the carriers like AT&T in the USA - what is Windows market share in smartphones now? In 2012 it was.. 2%. Windows Phone is failing comprehensively.
Nokia's CEO took Nokia's 35% market share with Symbian in 2010, and forcibly migrated it to Windows Phone. How many took this gambit? 2%. 1% is still left on Symbian as of Q4 of 2012, so 32% of Nokia's loyal customers have rather run away, taking an Android based smartphone like Samsung's Galaxy, or Apple's iPhone instead of taking the Lumia. And what of those who actually took the Lumia? The independent Yankee Group survey of customer satisfaction of USA based Lumia owners found that 4 out of 10 hated the phone so much, they rated it worst phone they've ever seen. And the brand new Bernstein loyalty survey of smartphone owners in USA and UK, found that the Windows Phone loyalty is so bad, two out of three will never buy another Windows Phone based smartphone again. The Windows Phone experiment has failed and is a dead man walking, only surviving as long as Nokia exists as a smartphone maker with Elop as its CEO (we have an Elop Firing Watch on this blog, counting down to when he is fired or Nokia itself is sold).
Almost all past Windows partners have already given up on Windows including Sony, Motorola, LG, Dell, Palm, etc - and of the last who remain, they cut their Windows offering like HTC and Samsung or postpone their first launches and cut their intended WP8 product lines like Huawei and ZTE. Most of the remaining Windows Phone 'partners' have other preferred new OS projects they now prioritize, from Tizen to Firefox. And if Nokia's CEO Elop is fired, his successor will no doubt almost instantly announce the end of Windows Phone and a shift to Android.
There are those who say 'but synergy' with Windows 8 on the desktop. Yeah. Where have we heard that before? Like with Windows Mobile. Like with Windows Phone 6. Like with Windows Phone 7. Like with Symbian - Stephen Elop when he was still at Microsoft, negotiated that 'partnership' where all Microsoft Office suite apps were made compatible with Symbian and Nokia E-Series. What good did that 'synergy' get the two tech giants? None whatsover. There probably IS some synergy from the desktop to the laptop to netbooks to tablet PCs. Yes, maybe Microsoft's Surface tablet can benefit from Windows 8 'synergy' but on smartphones we have one decade of evidence that it doesn't matter one iota. Windows has been the slowly dying operating system of smartphones, only kept alive by continued cash injections by Microsoft. All Microsoft partners who ever focused on Windows Phone have become unprofitable doing so, and only recovered to profits by abandoning the Windows path, from Sendo (bankrupted) to Motorola (bankrupted) to LG (recovered) to HTC (recovered). Windows 'life span' in smartphones continues only as long as Nokia CEO continues on his borrowed time. And as to Microsoft building its own smartphones - yeah, they tried that once before, remember Kin the world-record in market failure of a new handset launch, died in six weeks? What killed Kin was utter lack of carrier support. The carriers hate Microsoft, they fear Microsoft, they hate Skype, they don't trust Ballmer, they'd be idiots to go to bed with the company that always drives its 'partners' to bankruptcy, just like its now doing to Nokia.
So thats my view today of the upcoming newcomers to the smartphone OS races. My best wishes to all, we welcome competition and variety. But in the long run, the industry cannot sustain dozens of platforms, some will naturally disappear, like we've seen in the past with Palm, Symbian, LiMo, MeeGo etc. If I had to pick the strongest horse from this stable, I definitely have to pick Tizen. And as a Finn and ex Nokian, I do hope sincerely that Jolla and Sailfish do make a nice success out of their venture.
PS - for those who need to have more data about the global handset industry including market shares, regional markets, average prices, installed bases, handset features etc, see my TomiAhonen Phone Book 2012
// This year will be even more about Android.
// And I'm sick of it
I agree here :)
But nevertheless, I would buy only Android next year.
The phones, capable of running more than one OS, that's what I think of.
E.g. Tizen/Jolla/Ubuntu/RIM phone, that also has alternative Android firmware from vendor.
That kind of thing, I will buy eagerly!
And for me, this would be a killer differentiating thing, a deal-making feature.
There are many similar Android offers, but alternativeOS capable would surely be my choice.
Otherwise, I'm very glad to see new faces, alternative OSes, let you guys go buy'em and fund'em! :) But good old Droid is my only choice. Let other rookies try new stuff.
Posted by: newbie reader | January 31, 2013 at 10:37 PM
// If the OS of a smartphone doesn't matter
// to the consumer, then anything can happen.
Many ppl are asking my advise which phone to buy. And I never allow my attitude to interfere their choice and only provide them with information.
And the first thing I always tell them, that they have to choose OS first.
I always say, don't get Nokia, it is Windows, and it is shucks... ok, not mature enough.
So, first they have to choose Android or iOS, then only vendor.
And that is advise that any honest techie would give.
So, people would get educated sooner or later.
Posted by: newbie reader | January 31, 2013 at 10:48 PM
@will: Serious - I still think there are use, space and developers for Firefox OS and HTML apps.
HTML apps - yes (to some degree), Firefox OS - no. Any platform which does not support good old C/C++ is non-starter. Microsoft found out it the hard way with WP7.
P.S. And, surprise, surprise, ChromeOS *does* have support for C/C++-based development.
Posted by: khim | February 01, 2013 at 12:12 AM
I am hoping that hardware virtualisation will be utilised to run multiple OSes but I won't hold my breath. I think it have a stronger showing on Tablets which I think any new OS will need to offer as well. My thoughts are that the smart phone will become the new feature phone and the tablet will take the place of the current smart phone.
The reasons I think this are two fold, one if you look at PC monitors as the platform matured they got larger and larger until they reached their maximum practical size and two you can will use a tablet to do a lot of the (intelligent/complex) things you currently use a smart phone for. Plus you'll be able to do more and better in the future. Let's not forget we're already seeing devices in the form factor of Phablets.
As an N9 owner, I am hoping Sailfish does well.
Posted by: dies felices | February 01, 2013 at 12:57 AM
@ Spawn
I am a big fan of QT and can't wait till the iOs and Android targets are available this summer..... But that only helps the QT developers, native Andriod devs will not move. This makes Elops crime of killing the migration strategy even more painful since QT "could" have been the top dog framework for mobile.
For all the +/- of HTML5 the reality is that we will need a transition period. Now the companies that created the "cult of the ecosystem" are about to get co-opted.... last weekend I downloaded WindowsAndroid by SocketEq a chinese startup it runs Android as an app under windows - NO NOT ANDROID APPS UNDER WINDOWS, THE WHOLE ANDROID OS AS A WINDOWS APP. So I can run full android on my Samsung windows 8 tablet (Again proving that no one wants a Windows Tablet) and have a better UX experince the Windows 8.
So we are seeing Apps replace the ecosystem and even OS components...why do mobile OS's have calenders and calculators,etc...because they evloved from PDA's. Why as a mobile OS maker do I have to make these anymore? They should just be apps. Jolla is doing something right focus on the Navigation and Use of the UX/OS as a shell for apps. Of all the screen shots of Tizen seen so far we have Android UX with N9 task switcher screen.
Sammy is number one, they will not put all the muscle behind Tizen as not to get afoul of Google and the Open Handset Alliance, just dip a toe in to see how it goes. Lenovo,ZTE... would put all the muscle behind the project.
All in all interesting times.
Posted by: ejvictor | February 01, 2013 at 02:59 AM
test...
(sorry, I can't post??)
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 03:47 AM
I can't post???
maybe i hit certain word that considered as spam or red flag??
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 03:56 AM
@Tomi: yesterday I attended a 'meetup' related to smartphones. The speaker opened the event with a picture of a CEO of once a glorious company who let Android fly with leaking one single memo. He also mentioned the two famous effects... :-)
Interestingly he did not see any room for a new OS but the dominating Android and (maybe) iOS, but declining.
On the other hand he had no clue what Asha Touch is, so... :-)
He was not so much interested in 'smartphone like feature phones' either - I think it is quite ignorant...
There was an investment capital representative there, too. Surprisingly he was quite ignorant for China, India, Brasil and Mexico - but English speaking markets only...
Posted by: zlutor | February 01, 2013 at 07:12 AM
@chithanh
Of course performance is still a hot topic with HTML5. Yes, performance is good enough for run-of-the-mill website-ish applications, like Google Docs or Office365 or a sprite-based Civilization. These are high-latency, low-performance applications.
But I wish you the best creating an high-performant application in HTML5, including a full-blown rendering engine, collision and input detection be it a game or an augmented reality application - delivering 60+ frames per seconds.
There is a reason we have a Native Client on Chrome.
Posted by: Lasko | February 01, 2013 at 07:36 AM
@ejvictor:
>> But that only helps the QT developers, native Andriod devs will not move.
I tend to disagree here. A Qt for all platforms will all those developers who would like to be efficient.
In the previous company I worked for they had an iOS team and an Android team, with nearly no information exchange between them. The code produced by one team was so heavily platform dependent that everything had to be done twice. Of course in such an environment a platform independent framework is useless. But also, such an environment only works if you have to deal with only two platforms.
However, with all the new OSs emerging such a strategy won't work. You have to use a more platform independent approach. And I'm quite certain that many developers would love to have a framework that not only lets their apps run on iOS and Android but also on BB10, Tizen and what else might come along.
The only platform left aside will be - small surprise here - Windows Phone, because it doesn't implement such all important stuff like OpenGL and instead goes their own way here. So bad luck, developers, you'll have to do separate coding here. I doubt many will do. They'd rather do BB10 and Tizen ports which would require a lot less work.
If I can reach 2% of the market with far less than half the amount of work to reach 3% it's a no-brainer.
So, the more diversified the OS landscape becomes, the more important it will be to offer development capabilities that allow to implement standards.
And this also means that a HTML5 only OS like Firefox will most likely be DOA, at best it'll be the next generation of feature phones. Don't forget, those are programmable, too, just not as powerful as smartphones.
HTML5 looks to me more like the successor of Java Mobile (J2ME), not like a 'smart' environment.
Posted by: Tester | February 01, 2013 at 08:30 AM
cygnus
You're not blocked and as far as I know, Typepad doesn't stop you from posting based on a word in the comments - I delete the comments manually that I find offensive of against our rules. And definitely you are not blocked by me, nor censored by me either..
Sometimes Typepad is just weird, they sometimes seem to have a 'length blocker' that works, ie if your comment is too long, Typepad acts like it was accepted, but won't actually accept it. That might be what happened, in that case, please re-post in two or more shorter comments. Try that please. But definitely you aren't blocked by me... Cheers :-)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | February 01, 2013 at 08:31 AM
Hi Tomi Perhaps we will see webos growing again now that HP has oos'et it
Or opened up the source code!
Posted by: firecracker | February 01, 2013 at 09:23 AM
@ejvictor:
"Why as a mobile OS maker do I have to make these anymore? They should just be apps."
I am intrigued by the idea of a bare-bones phone platform where one would configure all essential services by downloading applications. It could be ideal in a professional setting (corporate devices tailored for the personnel).
But for the vastly larger consumer market? A deadly avenue.
1) Most people do not like to install system apps, and avoid to do it. A persistent question for the past few years has been "why do Android users use so few apps -- especially compared to iOS users?".
2) One of the major advantages of having standard utilities from one source is that they are integrated (you can use the services of the phone book from the calendar, jump to the maps from the phone book to navigate to the relevant address, launch the browser from a point of interest in the maps, open up the BT transfer from a media gallery, etc). Even if the OS is well-designed to allow such service integration, there is no guarantee at all that applications from a variety of suppliers can work together.
3) Updates of a balkanized set of apps, in particular system standard ones (calendar, e-mail, file transfer, etc), become fraught with problems.
4) Commercially, many apps -- especially those that involve user data and communication, are essential assets in a cloud environment. Do you really think that Google, Apple, Microsoft are going to relinquish the treasure trove of user information and user lock-in represented by their e-mail, messaging, calendar, mapping, etc, services?
There was a time with PC where one had just to do as you suggest: install a word processor, an e-mail client, a browser, a backup utility, a firewall, an antivirus, a CD/DVD player-writer, etc. Nowadays, they all come pre-installed and integrated in Windows. Expect even more pre-defined, standard utilities and apps from Google, Microsoft, Apple and Blackberry in future smartphones, not less.
Posted by: anobserver | February 01, 2013 at 09:36 AM
@Tomi,
Thanks....
@willz
Thanks for sharing the link on visionmobile
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 09:59 AM
@JJ
>This may be a stupid question but what's wrong with Android from operator point of view?
>Elop keeps saying operators welcome a third option to Android and iOS but I personally don't
>trust anything he says. I like Google services and I'm not the only one...
This is a hype!! and also a war slap.
* Elop were trying to tell carrier that "HEY, YOU (carrier) would be better if there's an alternative to Android and iOS". The story behind this actually lies on Apple way of conducting business. Apple lock carrier for certain year of subsidising iPhone, if the carrier don't want to do it, then Apple won't support that carrier. Elop hidden message were something like "screw apple, we'll give you better deal".
* And this is really have nothing to do with OS. Because Manufacture (samsung, lg, sony, huawei, zte, htc, nokia) were the company that making the deal with the carrier, not the OS company. Elop here were acting like Microsoft pupet (read: spoke person), he might just got beaten up, and forget which company he's currently at.
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 10:00 AM
@ExNokian
>It's Google dominance. If there is one OS used by 90% of devices being sold, carriers don't
>have other options to turn to when Google starts going nasty and blocking carrier services
>replacing them with their own.
>Apple is bad as a medicine as Apple is notorious for dictating terms to operators in a
>"take it or leave it" manner. Third option is needed so those primary two can be kept
>in control.
I'm gonna say that this is a hype/FUD that Elop trying to spread. Any carrier can contact any phone manufacture to create custom made android phone. and Google won't block carrier services. Google also allowed other than google to be set as default search engine on android. Google use the OPEN STANDARD of (mostly) anything from mail to calender to address book. Any company can also create a Web Storage solution (box, skydrive, etc) and don't have to share revenue to Google (unlike apple). Apple is the one that trying to lock the user into iTunes, and elop just generalizing and discrediting Android.
>AT&T used Nokia for that: they could negotiate better deals with Apple and Samsung by
>saying they'll sell Lumia 900's instead if two previous if terms of contract do not match
>AT&T wishes.
>Whether AT&T was really planning to sell those Lumias is irrelevant for the strategy value
>of the capability to say they would.
Exactly...!!! Carrier WANT.... I repeat WANT.... more phone manufacture, NOT more OS.
More OS means higher cost because they need to train their staff to understand the OS problem, and also creating the apps (some carrier have custom apps) for more platform. Elop just trying to fool non-teechie into thinking this.
So, Carrier can say to Samsung & Apple that HTC & Sony & Huawei & ZTE & Lenovo give them better (android) deal....
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 10:01 AM
@Tester
Game developers (I'm assuming you are talking about them when discussing OpenGL/DirectX) can either use a framework engine like Unity3D or do their own engines that target different OS plaforms.
Also, don't forget that by doing DirectX you are not only targeting Windows Phone, you are also targeting PC (through Metro), Surface and Xbox (and almost certainly next-gen Xbox too). Games that work on all these platforms have just begun to appear so the scenario is not a hypothesis it has already begun to materialize. It all depends on the installed base for the developers (possible customers) and I don't think they will toss aside a massive installed base so easily as you are suggesting.
Anyway, great blog post by Tomi, I've liked it.
There are many variables in play when trying to forecast trends and it's nice to see how are things going from the companies perspectives. There's also a consumer's perspective I think.
Posted by: Cristian Radu | February 01, 2013 at 10:01 AM
@Spawn
ChromeOS (chromebook/ChromeBox) is a different market than HTMLOS phone.
In Desktop (ChromeBook/ChromeBox), such as the use for public library or office usage, the internet/intranet is considered **STABLE** and fast.
In phone, sometimes we hit a blank spot. Or maybe no signal at all such as on the plane. Therefore my question is:
1. If in FirefoxOS the apps can be installed offline and can't be DRMed? Will Commercial Developer interested? Game developer were very sensitive to this stuff.
2. If must use the Client-Server, will the user interested (because the apps performance will be lousy just like HTML-based facebook apps)?
and no, client-server is NOT consider DRMed... It's cloud based! not DRMed.
BTW, the Civilization game you mention is FREECIV.NET, it is the open source version of the commercial Civilization.
Google Docs, Office365, is selling the cloud based services. It's not the same as Game/Apps that don't sell services.
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 10:15 AM
@Cristian Radu:
Also, don't forget that by doing DirectX you are not only targeting Windows Phone, you are also targeting PC (through Metro), Surface and Xbox (and almost certainly next-gen Xbox too).
Let's see:
WP8 - low market share, not interesting
Surface - even lower market share - not interesting
Desktop Metro - low market share - not interesting. Aside from that, I could to a Qt-based desktop version and circumvent Microsoft.
XBox - totally different market. And it's not interesting for smaller developers.
Overall, I don't see anything here that's worth doing double work for. With Qt/OpenGL I reach far further than with Microsoft's locked 'ecosystem'.
Posted by: Tester | February 01, 2013 at 10:16 AM
@willz
HTML is not bad, but HTML have it's strength and weakness. The same as web apps.
HTML strength is it's platform independent. So it's good for news site, blog, and small-size game.... weakness, can't be DRM-ed.
Apps strength is, part of the apps can reside in the phone, so, it won't need to re-download. The positive part about this were, large 1GB-3GB game, no-internet zone.
This is the reason that I think FireFoxOS have different market market as Android/iphone crowd, and it also can't be considered as Smartphone.
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 10:21 AM
I think it will depend very much on the prices and the relationships with carriers. Given the global economic situation, how many people can change 600 euro phone any year?
Posted by: niqt | February 01, 2013 at 10:30 AM
@Lasko
Actually.... There were 3D browser game...
http://www.mmobomb.com/browsergames/3d
http://www.freebrowsergamer.com/2008/12/best-browser-based-mmorpg.html
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 10:32 AM
@Tester
>And this also means that a HTML5 only OS like Firefox will most likely be DOA,
>at best it'll be the next generation of feature phones. Don't forget, those are
>programmable, too, just not as powerful as smartphones.
>
>HTML5 looks to me more like the successor of Java Mobile (J2ME), not like a 'smart' environment.
I totally agree with you on this part
Posted by: cycnus | February 01, 2013 at 10:37 AM
@cycnus: Any carrier can contact any phone manufacture to create custom made android phone.
Well, to some degree:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19601341
@cycnus: and Google won't block carrier services. Google also allowed other than google to be set as default search engine on android. Google use the OPEN STANDARD of (mostly) anything from mail to calender to address book. Any company can also create a Web Storage solution (box, skydrive, etc) and don't have to share revenue to Google (unlike apple).
This is all well and good - but it's because of Google's kindness, not because it can not do that. Microsoft was once perceived as a liberator from IBM clutches, too. But once it grabbed 90% market share it stopped being so nice. Google can not do that (companies can always leave OHA and create a new coalition to develop alternative), but it still can push both handset makers and carriers around quite effectively even without pissing them so severe as to make them leave OHA - and carriers and handset makers don't like it.
Posted by: khim | February 01, 2013 at 10:40 AM
@Tester
Low market share you say. Well, imagine I develop a casual game for Xbox Live (lets say a card game like UNO or a board game like Carcassone, I think these are already out on Xbox Live) that has maybe a 20000-30000usd developing cost.
With just a day work (click of a mouse) I can recompile it for Metro which has an installed base of 60milions based on the latest data.
The WP/Surface has some millions as well.
I don't see how you can justify not reaching so many potential buyers for a low cost game, when is so easy to do so. Even if you sell another 10000 units on these other "low market share" platforms, that's a hefty sum.
Posted by: Cristian Radu | February 01, 2013 at 10:50 AM