LG buys Palm, Firefox spreads, Tizen phones in July, and other observations in Smartphone Bloodbath Year Four, Smartphones Galore

So we have lots of news coming from Barcelona MWC (and to be clear, I am not there in person, I am monitoring via new sources). So its the Smartphone Bloodbath year Four: Smartphones Galore, and perhaps that should be 'Ecosystems Galore' haha.. The space in the OS wars keeps spreading. So lets cover a few big news items. 

LG BUYS PALM FROM HP

So in ecosystem news, this is the biggest today. LG bought the Palm WebOS unit from HP. If you ever wanted to see whats next for Palm, if you thought WebOS didn't deserve to die, now it has a chance to come back. LG is not really big enough to go it alone, they need now partners to provide handsets, but where LG bought its own OS, is a clear sign LG wants to be seen as a top-tier smartphone maker with its own OS, like Samsung, Apple, Blackberry, Google/Motorola (and until recently also Nokia). And thus separate itself from the second tier makers like Huawei, ZTE, Sony and Lenovo (and now also Nokia) who are totally dependent on others for their smarpthone destiny.

Two interesting developments - how long until first LG 'Palm' device is announced & released. They might be able to do it in 15 months, with Korean efficiency and 'balli-balli' philosophy or hurrying-hurrying... So first LG phones with WebOS out perhaps in summer 2014, and the hype to start around end of year 2013. What LG would dearly love, is to find a few hardware manufacturers to commit to WebOS. Remember, this was once rated as good as the then-current iPhone and iOS platform (3 years ago). So LG does gain a potentially competitive platform, but they must find partners to make the ecosystem play work. LG is no Samsung (or what Nokia was) in scale to be able to support an OS just by its own sales - like Sammy did with bada in the past few years.

FIREFOX SPREADS

And Mozilla's Firefox OS is now blasting the industry with an ever more impressive lineup of carriers (they had plenty of those already) and now, many handset manufacturers. At MWC we've already heard that Huawei, ZTE, LG and Alcatel will provide Firefox handsets - this year. Huawei is the world's third largest smarpthone maker, ZTE and LG are Top 10 makers, so Firefox now has a nice portfolio of handset makers in its stable. The little fly in the ointment is that LG just bought Palm, so don't expect LG to fully ever embrace Firefox, but early on, even one LG phone is good enough for Firefox to claim 3 of the 10 largest handset makers supporting their OS.

The main points with Firefox lie in 'how mobile' is the OS. Mozilla is an internet company, we've seen what mistakes for example Microsoft had made, time and again, taking USA West Coast lessons and attempting to force those into its mobile strategy (a strategy Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has just admitted last week that it has been a mistake). A first-edition OS is rarely solid and complete. Firefox will be compared to Tizen, which builds on the hugely admired and beloved MeeGo OS by Nokia and Intel, the only OS that ever was consistently rated better than the iPhone. If you take that, MeeGo, already better than the iPhone, and now evolve it further, combining Samsung's bada competence and knowhow into the MeeGo project, with Intel's Moblin background, expect Tizen to be the most complete and 'mobile' of any new OS this year - and the one rated by all analysts as 'by far' the best. And Samsung is trying to find the same handset maker ecosystem to Tizen with Huawei there already plus Panasonic and others. So for a Huawei, who already does Android, if the Tizen OS is proven to be far more robust, advanced and complete, than Firefox, we might see Huawei preferring Tizen over Firefox. But we don't know, and the operators/carriers will have a lot to say on which OS and which manufacturers they decide to support... Still, Firefox is moving into a strong challenger position now with the impressive supplier lineup.

TIZEN PHONES OUT IN JULY

Samsung is promising first Tizen phones as early as July or August and saying there will be several this year. Much of what I think was in the above paragraph, Tizen will be a success simply on Samsung's own push alone, and will be bigger than say Windows or Blackberry in two years, simply because Samsung will promote it as one of its OS platforms (and migrating/converging bada into Tizen). What Samsung and Intel need with Tizen is then many handset makers and carriers/operators embracing the OS, which is likely to be easier than Firefox, where carriers/operators like NTT DoCoMo for example are on the Tizen Board, and the legacy of the OS, being an upgrowth of something very well mature, developed, and highly competitive if not supreme to other OS platforms. Expect a lot of the tech buzz this year being between Tizen and Firefox

WINDOWS NO TRACTION

And yes, we heard last week Bill Gates admit that Microsoft had seen the smartphone revolution, was in it early, but the strategy they adopted had prevented Microsoft from gaining scale. Windows Phone has failed and Bill Gates used the words it is a mistake. Now we heard last week (before the Palm purchase) that LG for example said, they will not bother to make more Windows based smartphones until there is some demand by carriers/operators. Obviously the carriers/operators do want a third ecosystem, but after two years of Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop hard-selling Windows ("with Skype included, of course") at the operator/carrier community, with the biggest marketing budgets ever, the overwhelming response by the carrier community is rejection. Yes, they'll take the money, then not sell the phones. The Windows strategy is dead. But its no surprise to my readers, I told you so. And now, once again, we hear from yet another Windows partner - LG says there is no traction from carriers. 

NOKIA CLAIMS ITS NOT ME-TOO

Elop continues to play the Bush-Cheney strategy. Look at blatantly obvious facts and steadfastly simply deny deny deny. In January 2011, just before Elop announced his mad Microsoftian strategy, Nokia had the most differentiated smartphone strategy on the planet. It had smartphones with the best camera on the planet (N8) - far better than what Apple offered on the iPhone. It had smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards similar to Blackberries - something Apple refuses to offer. It had touch-screen and QWERTY slider hybrid phones like the highly praised E7, the latest 'communicator' a model of smartphones far more expensive than the iPhone, with astonishing tech that the iPhone didn't match, and yes, a QWERTY slider in addition to the touch screen. Nokia offered the most open ecosystem, something Apple didn't, and had the most connectivity from FM radio broadcasting to NFC to microSD slots to unrestricted Bluetooth - things again that Apple's iPhone didn't offer. In January 2011, Nokia was THE most 'not me-too' smartphone maker on the planet, selling smartphones far more expensive than the iPhone to smartphones far far FAR cheaper than the iPhone. 

Now we have seen 11 smartphones launched in the Lumia series. Not one of them has a camera that even matches the N8, or is anywhere near the best in the world today (Nokia's Symbian-based 808 Pureview, launched last year). Nokia is now in the same 8mp class as.. the iPhone. Nokia abandoned its QWERTY advantage, even as more than 1 in 4 smartphones sold by Nokia (and many more dumbphones) had QWERTY and Nokia would have a huge loyal customer base eager to buy one, yet of the 11 Lumia phones so far, not one has a QWERTY or hybrid with QWERTY slider/folder. Nokia had the most open ecosystem and was far beyond Apple, today it uses Windows, the only ecosystem on smartphones more restrictive than the iOS !! And what of connectivity? Yes, some Lumia series have been adding some connectivity options but many in the series are as unconnectable as the iPhone, and none are as broadly connectable as say the Nokia N9 (running MeeGo) or the Nokia 808 Pureview (running Symbian). So in reality, every Lumia is ever increasingly like an iPhone, often a more cheezy plasticky version, but all are same form-factor, thin slab touch-screen only large screen smartphones - similar to iPhones. Nokia abandoned all its differentiation opportunities and is purely now a 'me-too' provider. If you wanted an iPhone with some more colors, there is Lumia. Or if the iPhone is a bit too expensive, but you'd like a new phone that is very much like an iPhone from two years ago, Lumia has some cheap versions in some cheesy colors to let you have that. i-Phon-a-clones is what I call them. Elop clearly has made Nokia into only a me-too provider, abandoning markets worth millions of sales per quarter, and regions where other form factors are highly praised, in his search to try to make his Lumia company look exactly like Apple iPhone (minus the loyalty, minus the revenues and minus the profits, obviously).

But it should tell you something about how deluded Elop is, that he gives an interview promising Nokia is not a 'me-too' smartphone provider. He is delusional, that means madman. That means, he looks at reality, refuses to see facts, and substitutes his own imaginary world in the place of reality. That is delusion. That is what Nokia CEO proves to us, when he claims Nokia is not a me-too company, when Elop's own actions abolished all major differentiation abilities. Don't expect Nokia to recover from this madman (and why is Elop allowed to continue to ruin this company. The only reason the handset unit 'generated a profit' in Q4 was because Elop sold the HQ building and then attributed all its revenues to the handset unit, rather than accross all Nokia divisions evenly. Now he's sold the Nokia Oulu technology campus in Finland, is that so he can create another fictional profit for his handset unit for Q1?)

By the way, did I tell you its all about the retail distribution/carrier relations? Here is Stephen Elop yesterday in YLE interview (Finland's biggest broadcaster) and its short English version news item - what does Elop complain bitterly about - once again - its the lack of sales support to his beloved and so utterly doomed Lumia phones. The market says loudly 'we do not want it' and refuses to sell it, but Elop keeps spending money to do new 'me-too' variants of Lumia, rather than abandoning Windows like the channel wants, and get sales growing again for Nokia. When Elop took over, Nokia sold 34 million smarpthones per quarter. In its latest results, Nokia sold 6.6 million smartphones in the quarter. That, my dear readers, is market failure. Its not because the phones are miserable with exploding batteries and antennagates and lack of apps, its because the retail channel says - no way. We will not support this platform. Elop heard this in 2011, he admitted it to the Nokia shareholders in May of 2012 and now its February 2013, and Elop cries the same song once again 'my retail sales guys are not selling my phones....' - get over it Elop. Windows Phone is dead. The sooner you quit the dead platform the sooner Nokia can start to recover.

JOLLA COMING

We are expecting news from Jolla and sailfish, it might be the coolest must-have phone of the year when it launches. But so far, nothing yet. Hopefully we'll learn soon

SONY NEEDS MOBILE

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said in an interview for the BBC that mobile is 'front and center' for Sony's consumer electronics business. Also that Sony had strong assets it could and would use to be one of the biggest players in mobile. Sony is currently a Top 10 sized smartphone maker and currently offers only Android based smartphones (left the Windows ecosystem after the carrier boycott relating to Skype). Now I would expect the delegations from Tizen, Firefox, LG/Palm, Ubuntu and Sailfish are making regular pilgrimages to Tokyo to try to bring Sony to their camp.

BB10 MIXED NEWS

Blackberry (ie the company previously known as RIM) is receiving mixed news in the first quarter of sales for the BB10. In some news the phone is highly desired and selling very well, in some other news the response has been lackluster. It will be interesting to see what kind of results we get when Blackberry reports this quarter sales in March.

Plenty more to come, as we get in the news from MWC in Barcelona.

For anyone needing more info on the mobile industry, if you are interested in the opinions of the most accurate forecaster of this industry, remember buying the Almanac 2012 will get you the Almanac 2013 also for the same one price, now before the Almanac 2013 is released. And those who need info specifically on the handset industry, my TomiAhonen Phone Book 2012 is your resource with all the facts, stats and numbers.

Comments

[dies felices]

I'm interested in Jolla because as far as I can see, so far at least, they're only ones to have moved on and extended the manner in which a user can interact with their device. I have owned and used an Ipod Touch but on the first day I got it I was severely disappointed by the UI and I don't mean in terms of appearance^1. There are new technologies becoming available which change the way we are able to physically interact with our mobile devices and it is the way that the operating system interacts with these technologies which will give it a distinguishable character.

As far as Ubuntu are concerned, the aesthetics of their UI doesn't appeal to me very much and I don't know of any news about how they're changing the way you can use their mobile devices. I would have to say the same for both of Firefox OS and Tizen. Please correct me if you know of how any OS is changing how we can interact with our devices because replicating the point and click model on small form factor devices was cheap and effective at first, it can not apply ad infinitum. Even though it did prove the concept of smart phones and PDAs. Now technologies are maturing just look at augmented reality and Sat-Nav and in vehicle entertainment systems, as these disparate things come together they'll introduce new complex questions which users want easy answers.

None of these discussions ever even seem to touch on the question of usability for those who are perhaps to say this politely and generalised but challenged. What does the latest IPhone or Galaxy have to offer someone who needs to use a hearing aid or a person who has a tremor and finds those small icons hard to click and harder still to click only once, when they do hit their target!^2 These are only things I've thought of just now. An innovation which may start off helping one group of people may have the potential to help many others. Fortunately for me, I do have any physical issue using phones or other portable devices so as above if you know of a how or a what that addresses this point kindly let me know.^3

The Live Tiles only virtue it appeared to me was that they might well make WP less challenging for some people.

1 At the time, capacitive touch was new and shiny.

2 Don't forget each of these click events is recorded and may well end up activating a control that hasn't even been drawn yet.

3 As has been well publicised audio described controls for the visually impaired.

[PJ]

@John Phamlore, support from a chipset maker is not quite the same thing as a device from a phone maker or a distribution deal with an operator. Think what Mozilla announced in MWC vs. what Jolla announced.

[PJ]

Funny how people think that SD card is omitted because of license costs and not because omitting SD card makes it possible to have a $100 price tag for 16GB of flash...

[Winter]

@PJ
"Funny how people think that SD card is omitted because of license costs and not because omitting SD card makes it possible to have a $100 price tag for 16GB of flash..."

In a cut-throat competitive market, getting rid of a $10 patent rent license is significant. For $10, you can add considerable fixed memory to your standard model. Space that will make a difference in the market.

[DS]

On correction. Samsung basically has broken all ties with MeeGo to the point Tizen can no longer be considered MeeGo descendant.
They replaced native api with one derived directly from Bada (which is widely considered poorly designed). No QT traces left in its phone incarnation.
Tizen is Bada/Linux, nothing more.

[John Phamlore]

Samsung goes where they want, does what they want, because they make stuff.

It's surprising to me on a site that has tried to diversify into politics that the focus isn't on what certain Asian countries are doing right in industrial policy to advance their own interests. Samsung is South Korea's national champion, and Korea works hard to make sure Samsung has the resources to spend on vital components such as their own fabs.

Samsung owns their owns fabs, is developing their own LTE baseband chipset, and is developing their own ARM SoC. That takes money and longterm patient investment. Similarly Huawei is one of China's national champions and they are following a similar path.

Get stuff, own stuff, make stuff.

Pre-Elop Nokia ran as fast as they could away from these principles and paid the price. Nokia went from a position where they owned the IP for the entire phone stack to owning nothing for how to make an LTE baseband chipset. It's the worst failure at choosing the right technological direction in our lifetime.

Intel bought Infineon. Nvidia bought Icera. Qualcomm bought AMD mobile GPU business, developed their own ARM SoC, and went all-in on LTE. Ericsson with prominent announcements at MWC 2007 and 2008 went all-in with LTE at a time when it appeared WiMAX would be first out of the gate.

Nokia alone chose to follow WiMAX not LTE. That is the reason Nokia is dying now.

[ejvictor]

Time to laugh...

In a video interview with Bloomberg this week during the Mobile World Congress trade show, reporter Caroline Hyde asked Elop if Windows Phone had a chance at being the second biggest operating system. Elop responded with the rather bold quote, "It can be the biggest operating system in the world."

[ejvictor]

On the NEW OS front - facts speak louder then marketing

Four video demonstrations

Firefox http://youtu.be/kqjI5gAohdI
Ubuntu http://youtu.be/sLtcj7FdIYA
Sailfish http://youtu.be/HpddtwIH-_g
Tizen http://youtu.be/PJkbevJg4-E

Which product looks the most mature? Runs the most apps, provides a unique user experince?

Vote!

[Tester]

@ejvictor:

My take based on those 4 videos:

Ubuntu > Sailfish > Tizen > Firefox.

Strange (or maybe not?) that the most hyped ones end up last.

Firefox couldn't impress me at all (looks boring and even in the video they explicitly say it's HTML5 only) and Tizen also doesn't look like a game changer. For me both of these are only pushed for political reasons, not because they represent something the public needs.

Sailfish and Ubuntu on the other hand - they in fact do look different than current offerings. And I actually like them both.

Thank god they all avoid even close rsemblance with Windows Phone. From a pure UI design perspective I'd still rank it worst with a comfortable margin to any competitor.

[cycnus]

As I said in the previous post on the other thread/subject.

FireOS won't be fighting Android/iOS. It will fight against FeaturePhone+ such as Nokia Asha (S40 on steroid). It will power the US$ 30 - US$70 phone. It main feature were LIGHT and EASY.

[ejvictor]

@ Tester
I worry about Ubuntu's usability as a "mobile" device - I mean using it while walking! Left App launcher a problem for large screen devices, and the options on pulldown- might be hard to select reliably while walking/moving.

[ejvictor]

@ Cycnus
How can fireos be targeted at low end user when HTML 5 needs to be connected? Hence data plan, hence $$$

[Spawn]

@ejvictor

The Sailfish clip has a horrible background-wallpaper leading to a bad impression compared to Ubuntu Phone. Text and icons are not readable and look more disconnected. I think with a better, more soft, lesser disturbing wallpaper impression may different.

The Ubuntu Phone drop-down indeed is hard to take. Those fast switching captions have frustration potential. I hope that concept is going to change. The sidebar may become a problem with increased nimber of icons. That means it can only be used as favorite-bar and duplicates the home-screen. As quick-launcher it may still useful or as useful like other quick-launchers are.

Tizen, boring. But that may an advantage for some. Yet I found the N9's simplicity not boring. FirefoxOS isn't an option at all. Also cause of the limitations but thay may again an advantage for some users.

Sailfish and Ubuntu are equally place 1 and 2. Then a long gap and after that Tizen on 3. Then an even longer gap and FirefoxOS.

[cycnus]

@Spawn

The strength of FireFoxOS is THEY DON'T NEED ECOSYSTEM. THE WEB IS THE ECOSYSTEM. But in order to embrace this, the FireFoxOS should do the BottomUp approach. So, for the first couple of months/year it would be targeted at LOW END FIRST.

Imagine this.... A phone + web browser... that's it.
It's target it's a person that don't care about apps, and have the occasional need for web.
It's simple to use, because it's like the OLD FEATURE PHONE. The main apps on the phone will be PHONE (CALL), SMS, Photo/Video, Galery, Music.
The 'apps' is just a shortcut/bookmark to web pages.
It's like the Nokia Asha (S40) ***MINUS THE JAVA***
Battery life would be VERY LONG.

It would be like ChromeOS, but for phone.

[cycnus]

@Spawn

First,
although it's HTML5 OS, you don't have to connect to internet if you only want to use it for Call, SMS/MMS, photo, music.

Second,
Connecting to the internet is not as costly as it used to be. In the last couple of year the price of connecting to the internet in developed country already at the affordable level. Lots of family that were considered at poor level by the western standard have a handphone (or 2) that were used by it's family member and USE THE INTERNET to connect with other family member and to socialize.

example in Indonesia were an income of around US$ 80 can afford US$ 3.5/month - US$ 5/month internet (Unlimited, with 800MB FUP ). Which is MORE THAN enough for light browsing with Opera web browser and for facebook & twitter.

and, also the price of internet is as already low as US$ 0.12/day (at least in Indonesia)... Yes, it's NOT a type... 12 cent (US-dollar) for DAILY internet.

[cycnus]

@Spawn

I agree with your thought about Ubuntu. I really hate that's UNITY sidebar. It really hard to use.

[Lasko]

I think the main issue with Unity is that it is almost non-configurable.

If they address this problem, I think I'm having a hard time understanding all the hatred against Unity.

[Tester]

@cycnus:

>> It's like the Nokia Asha (S40) ***MINUS THE JAVA***

Excactly! It's a glorified feature phone, not a smartphone!

[cycnus]

@Tester

Disclaimer, I have no information at all about FireFoxOS, what I'm gonna write bellow is just an educational guess.

I certainly don't know what will Mozilla do with their OS, but they could LET DEVELOPER write a WEB-APP. A web-app is an HTML5 file/app on our phone. So, for example, instead of loading the WHOLE facebook web, it only load the data and have the 'frame' in the phone. and it will be in pure HTML5.

If my above guess is true, what make me curious about this were, since HTML5 would be just plain text, anyone can 'see' the HTML code and change/hack it. Perhaps some malicious hacker could put a trojan apps? I really wonder how secure this HTML5 approach were.

[cycnus]

@Lasko

Somehow I feel that Canonical proud about Unity as much as Microsoft proud about Metro.