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
Agreed, Tomi.
And I hope Sailfish does well. More than that, if it does get launched in Brazil, I will buy one.
More than that...
This year will be even more about Android. And I'm sick of it. It is NOT good enough for me. I hope Jolla does make right here, including more technologies and functions.
Posted by: Vinicius | January 31, 2013 at 02:41 PM
If the OS of a smartphone doesn't matter to the consumer, then anything can happen. But if the OS does matter, then changes are that one of the big platforms is going to win.
There is indeed a difference between the PC and the smartphone markets. But that doesn't mean that the smartphone market will not look a lot like the PC market, if the network effects for smartphones are as important as they were for the PC.
Basically, if an operator dumps the iPhone and then see all his iPhone customers move to the competition, then no operator will dump iPhone.
At this time nobody knows what will happen. It could be that the entiere smartphone market is sufficiently different from the PC market to have different rules.
Or the smartphone market could be segmented in two, a high-end, PC-like market, dominated by Apple, as Apple is currently best at maximizing the network effect for iOS.
The other segment would then be a low-end, featurephone-like market, dominated by Android right now, and who knows in a year or two.
Posted by: Sander van der Wal | January 31, 2013 at 02:57 PM
After looking at all the Blackberry launch reports it is clear that Google has won.
Google NOT ANDROID!
What do I mean... I mean that Google has won with the APK (The App file!) The OS and the UX are almost secondary to the App Catalog/App Ecosystem - So any system that supports/runs the APK will win! Apple will loose since no one can virtualize the Apple OS without being sued back into the dark ages. But developers who develop Android Apps, the APK , will thriumph.
Tizen has a fundamental architectural problem in that it is HTML5 Based - HTML5 is not getting much tractions. Second Samsung is beholdent to Google to "play nice" so running apk's nativly on Tizen may cause Google to slap Samsung.
Jolla has the formula, all the upside of Android apks, none of the downside of Googles "boot on your throat".
Jolla may be making the "Nexus " line of Sailfish devices , but many smaller ODM will pick up the OS to get the double win of the AKP without Google. Yes Jolla has to score a big ODM - imagine lenovo!!! Lenovo could run with Sailfish across Mobile devices, Tablets and alternatives to chromebooks.
So I do not peg Jolla's chances to be any worse then Tizen, since they do not have to worry about the strategic relationship with Google the way Sammy does...
Posted by: ejvictor | January 31, 2013 at 03:11 PM
Tomi,
"Synergy between pocket and desktop" is not what Ubuntu is promoting. In interviews when Mark Shuttleworth is asked "Why Ubuntu on smartphone?" ou "Why Ubuntu over Android?", the number one point is carriers. He says it will be the best platform for carriers to deliver their services and products. That's how they are promoting their OS to carriers: "You choose Ubuntu over Android because we will help you deliver your services, while Android will promote Google's services."
Personally I don't like that, I want carriers hand away from my phone :) But Canonical is not delusional like MS, they want carriers on their side.
Posted by: QtFan | January 31, 2013 at 03:17 PM
Do something truly wild, Tomi, and start thinking about what will be the future trend that relegates what we now think as smartphones into something that needs to be replaced. What is the next game changer?
Slabs that can be molded and attached to anything, clothes included, truly aware system that gives you constant amount of information, in "Minority Report" style. Who will come up with this? It seems to me that the only thing that can change things is something radically new.
The one who wins is the one who tries to make sci-fi come alive.
Posted by: Tom Gorr | January 31, 2013 at 03:22 PM
I'm not saying Ubuntu on smart phones will succeed, but if anyone has taken a couple of points from Tomi's "manual" is Canonical.
-Carriers, carriers, carriers
-We will change our OS to fit your services, not ours
-Smart phones as first and only computing device (full desktop OS when docked)
Posted by: QtFan | January 31, 2013 at 03:25 PM
@QtFan
Ubuntu is irrelevent for one reason... 2014 before devices are available.
Posted by: ejvictor | January 31, 2013 at 03:41 PM
@Tomi
Finally..... Thank you...
I was hopping to see your thought on the new platform, and the platform war scorecard.
Interesting insight on carrier relation. Microsoft have bought carrier relation to launch the WP7 & WP8 but failed. The OS must be really bad. LOL. Do you have insight on Apple vs. China Mobile situation?
Regarding Firefox Phone. (correct me if I'm wrong)
I was thinking that FireFox phone is more like FeaturePhone than Smartphone. This will compete with S40. WHY? Because it's a phone that will use HTML5 for everything. And I think Developer won't be happy to support it as APPS can be easily copied from one phone to another. So, I think it would be like the 'internet' phone. It's for someone that don't really into apps, and want the feature phone that can do internet the right way.
Regarding BB. I was surprised that you still think BB can hold it's current market share. Is there any number/stats that track how many %%% of corporate that already flee from BB.
Posted by: cycnus | January 31, 2013 at 03:59 PM
@ejvictor
??? Maybe they will never be released. I never said it was going to relevant. Of all listed here it's the one in the worst position
Posted by: QtFan | January 31, 2013 at 04:10 PM
@ejvictor:
I have to disagree on "HTML5 is not getting much tractions". I rather think hat HTML5/CSS/JS is the future on mobiles as well simply because these are so wide spread technologies. I think it will be in the interest of each player named in the article to attract as many developers as possible. And I agree with Tomi that Tizen is very likely to succeed. But beyond that I only see a really good chance for Firefox OS to gain momentum because of its openness, the simplicity to develop for it and the excitment in the web developer community it already raised. In addition I guess Firefox OS is the providers' biggest chance (compared to the other "contestants" mentioned in the article) to take back control of the value chain and customer relationship Apple and Google stole them to a certain extent. I believe they would love to set up their own app stores and customize the subsidized mobiles to cross sell their services if they could do this as easily as with an HTML based device.
And last but not least I see a good chance th HTML based apps will play a greater role in general because you had the chance to "install" web apps on an iphone from the beginning on and find solutions especially from Firefox that make web apps appear as if they were native apps on Android (have a look at Aurora and the related Mozilla market). And since Google made so much progress with it's Chrome OS after all it is a question of time when Android will have the capability to run web apps sort of "natively". And I haven't even mentioned the HTML capabilites of all other OSes so far :-)
So I would rather bet on this approach in the long run then on native development (and cross compiling afterwards).
Posted by: willz | January 31, 2013 at 04:17 PM
@QtFan
we are saying the same thing. Even if Shuttleworth is saying all the right things, his problem is that they are not ready to capitalize on it "Now". The Technocrati have been waiting on Windows Phone to break the Duopoly, well that failed. Then they waited for Blackberry to break the Duopoly - to the rousing consensus of "MEH!". So now it's up to the "Farm teams" to come up to bat...and Mark is walking up to the plate with a picture of a bat...
Posted by: ejvictor | January 31, 2013 at 04:21 PM
@willz
I think the ChromeOS/FireFoxOS/HTMLbasedOS will be success on the desktop only to some extend. Yes it will work on office environment if the office have everything in their intranet in HTML based. Yes it will work for school library. Yes it will work for school computer center. It even work for home 2nd, 3rd computer.
But no, it won't work on larger scale than that. The apps developer need to be sure that their apps will not be pirated, and i haven't seen any implementation on HTML about DRMing application. Can HTML be DRMed?
Now, on the phone. If apps can't be DRMed with HTML, and the source code, image can be easily seen, usage, ripped, then app/content (especially game) developer will/might stay away from it... If this is true, only apps/game that constantly need internet might be build for this platform, therefore I don't think it will be a good platform.
Posted by: cycnus | January 31, 2013 at 04:45 PM
@Willz
"By 2016 more than 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers, up from just 109 million last year... (ABI Research)
We are talking next 6-12 months here for the next disruption. QT5 native can be leveraged across BB10, Sailfish, ubuntu.... But what developer wants another code base when they can just create APK's?
We are moving away from OS dominance to App dominance. Who rules portable "open" apps NOW - Google.... Where is Baron95 when I need him???!
Posted by: ejvictor | January 31, 2013 at 04:58 PM
@ejvictor: But what developer wants another code base when they can just create APK's
Bingo. It funny how supposedly intelligent people miss the point of HTML craze completely. They see that HTML5 applications are "all the rage" for the last decade on desktop and think that for some reason it means they are good.
Sorry to disappoint you, but no, they are NOT GOOD AT ALL. HTML5 is pitiful, wasteful, awful development platform. One of the WORST ever invented. Yet somehow it wins on desktop? How come?
Well, it's THE ONLY technology which is trivial and [more-less] safe for Joe Average. If you install software from random website then you are pwned in a matter of HOURS! But with webapps... it's not such a big deal (yes, you can catch trojans, etc, but these dangers are adequately controlled).
This DELIVERABILITY propelled HTML apps to prominence and they thrive ONLY where such deliverability is vital. As for other uses... Did you knew that MSVC 2001 supported HTML apps? How about "success" of Adobe Flex? 10 times of 10 when HTML5 apps are facing native apps without help of this large "but HTML apps are easily deliverable while native apps are not" card they LOSE.
And APKs give you this possibility already: put you app and half-dozen of app stores around the world - and you cover more then half of smartphones population. Why bother with this HTML5 nonsense?
And even if you, for some reason, LIKE to use HTML5 for your apps - it's not a big deal, there are a lot of ways to repackage these HTML5 apps as an APKs.
This basically means that it'll be VERY tough for any platform with "HTML5-only apps" design to gain any traction. Not impossible, but very-very-very hard.
Posted by: khim | January 31, 2013 at 05:58 PM
@khim, ejvictor, cycnus:
Fair enough, you came up with good arguments.
However, I want to share the link to the "Developer Economics 2013: the tools report" with you which somehow fits to our topic - you might be interested in it.
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2013/01/report-developer-economics-2013-key-insights/
(this is not meant to be an argument for or against anything - I am simply sharing this link with you!)
Posted by: willz | January 31, 2013 at 06:36 PM
Do you think anybody is going to use virtualization capabilities present in modern ARM processors (ARM A15/A7 and Quallcom S4) in order to produce phones capable of running two operating systems at once?
Posted by: Tomasz R. | January 31, 2013 at 06:36 PM
@HTML5
No, it won't get any traction. You might be able to create your run run-of-the-mill sort-of-website app, but the relevant parts of HTML5/JS, the intergration with the phone services, is NOT platform independent. HTML5 will have to be tailored for each and every device, will have serious performance contraints, there will be no intellectual property protection, there will be quite nothing. HTML5 is a NOT what developers want.
@Sander van der Wal
They already start doing so, not by dropping, but by decreasing subsidization, with T-Mobile US beeing the first one stopping subsidization for the iPhone in April/May [1].
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/09/us-ces-tmobileusa-idUSBRE90806420130109
Posted by: Lasko | January 31, 2013 at 07:13 PM
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...
Posted by: JJ | January 31, 2013 at 07:20 PM
Ha finally we are moving away from the silly Nokia / Elop discussions, time to look to the future and feel the joy of creation, innovation and passion again..
Posted by: EmmanuelM | January 31, 2013 at 09:09 PM
@ejvictor
> Tizen has a fundamental architectural problem in that it is HTML5 Based
So is Chromebook. But agreed that it would be indeed a fundamental problem if ...
... if Tizen wouldn't ship with native API's and even Qt too.
No, thy make no buze about it but so does Google not about Android's native API's. The point is, that Samsung and Intel focus on one API story and one only. The marketing message is "use HTML5" and below in small letters you will find a link to an HTML5 API-page which contains a link to the native, Efl and Qt API pages. Very much like Google handles that with Android.
@cycnus
> Can HTML be DRMed?
Yes. They even have the best DRM concept out that is you can split them into 2 parts. One for the client-side and one for the server-side.
The "only" problem on that is data-transfer which need to be small as long as data-transfer is so expensive. But guess what that problem is loved by the carriers (more data, more cash).
Yes this is also a total other app-story. Its one loved by carriers and service-providers like google. Full control, cloud, always on (or at least regular).
> If apps can't be DRMed with HTML, and the source code, image can be easily seen, usage, ripped, then app/content (especially game) developer will/might stay away from it...
If we like it or not but more and more things are clouded and servered this days. Think of the newest Civilization-game ehich runs in a browser or all those DRM games which require you to be online or all those games where you multiplay online.
Google Docs, Office365 all going online cause, while notmthenbest for us customers, its a great way to lockin, to sell software-as-a-service, to keep control, to DRM, to require you and me to be more online and pay more for services and data.
As customer if you not like that (and I don't) not use that (and I don't).
@ejvictor
> QT5 native can be leveraged across BB10, Sailfish, ubuntu.... But what developer wants another code base when they can just create APK's?
Why another codebase? Qt runs fine on Android, as APK's :-)
@khim
> Well, it's THE ONLY technology which is trivial and [more-less] safe for Joe Average. If you install software from random website then you are pwned in a matter of HOURS!
I see you are Windows user. Not outside of Windows you are not and outside of Windows installing softwarencan be as trivial as a reading a barcode with a scanner.
> you knew that MSVC 2001 supported HTML apps?
There was no msvc 2001. You mean 2010? What *you* define as HTML apps here isn't what the official definition is. Also msvc never did and never will cause its a compiler. What you mean is VisualStudio which contains various ways to create html/css/asp/etc pages since years. It still cannot do pure HTML5 wac apps. No, it can't.
Lately parts of ExpressionBlend and PhoneGap and node.js support got added but that's all. Microsoft is far away follower if it comes to HTML and Internet.
Posted by: Spawn | January 31, 2013 at 09:24 PM