Mobile Musings, Mostly

As Philippe Winthrop points out in this entry on the Symbian Foundation announcement, currently there are six choices for mobile device platforms !!

Talk about too much choice - reminds me of the book ‘The Paradox of Choice‘ by Barry Schwartz. Although Schwartz focuses on how we become paralyzed when faced with the insane number of choices when it comes to choosing a pair of jeans, breakfast cereal, 401(k) plans, etc.;you could almost extend it to mobile device platforms as well.

Since monocultures are not necessarily a good thing whether it is agriculture or device operating systems, you want to have a reasonable choice as an application developer. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you pick the device platform based on a variety of factors. But right now, the learning curve when going across device platforms is not a trivial one - which forces developers to make some hard choices. And I am not talking just about a vanilla two-person developer outfit, it applies equally to large ISVs as well. To their credit, the Symbian Foundation in their announcement offered compatibility with Symbian 9 and S60 3rd edition.

Extending this further, Om Malik has a good writeup of the platform players and then offers up his odds on the eventual winners.

What is interesting in the coverage of the Symbian Foundation announcement is the near absence of any mention of Palm - used to be, they had a decent developer platform, program, and following not too long ago (at least, geologically speaking).

Some of you may have read this announcement yesterday, from Nokia to the effect that

• They have made a cash offer of approximately EUR 264 million to buy out the remaining 52% ownership of Symbian Ltd. they did not already own.

• This would be the first step in the creation of the Symbian Foundation to “provide royalty-free open platform and accelerate innovation“.

Parsing through the press releases, we learn that

1. The cash offer has been OK’ed by shareholders (Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens) who own close to 91% of Symbian Ltd.
2. Symbian Ltd. will be acquired by Nokia; the transaction is expected to close by Q408
3. The Symbian Foundation will unite the Symbian OS, and the various UIs that have sprung up, specifically - S60, UIQ, and MOAP(S). The Foundation will combine all these parts to create a new OS and UI.
4. When the Foundation launches (tentatively in first half of 2009), source code will be available for free to all Foundation members.
5. The intent is to move the entire platform to open source in two years.

So what does all this mean ? Well, here are some initial observations :

1. This is an attempt by Symbian to position itself as a compelling alternative to both Google and Apple. Although Symbian has been the leading mobile platform for quite some time (with Linux and Microsoft nipping at its heels), the past twelve months have seen this relatively stable landscape feel a pretty major earthquake with the launch of the iPhone and the Open Handset Alliance.
2. By going the open source route, the Foundation hopes to entice developers to its platform - The Symbian Foundation currently includes Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone among others. A quick scan of the current membership of the Symbian Foundation, the Open Handset Alliance and the LiMo Foundation reveals some players who are in all three - Motorola, Samsung, LG.
3. Microsoft now has its work cut out as it tries to keep justifying the operating system cost of Windows Mobile to device OEMs, while also attracting developers who might feel that their odds of innovating (and making money) are better in less restrictive developer paradigms.
4. As a developer, this introduces more competition in the market at an interesting time - with Google running into some glitches in the launch of Android handsets as reported here and Apple getting its iPhone developer program in shape.
5. However, it doesn’t do anything to resolve the fragmentation in the mobile device platform space that makes application development painful to say the least.
6. My feeling is that developers like the rest of us will try to find the path of least resistance - going with platform that offers the most innovative ways to develop applications, provides access to broadest set of customers, and places the fewest constraints on my business model. Which seems to indicate that unless there are some changes to the Microsoft and Apple models, they might find it difficult to become the preferred developer platform on mobile devices.

Funnily enough, this announcement came out on Symbian’s tenth anniversary. Not to let that go, their website proclaims this announcement as “a nod to the past and a look to the future as the most significant transformation of the company since its inception is announced.“

It seems like, not a day goes by, without some reference in the mainstream and technology press to mobile banking. Given the rather nebulous definition of mobile banking, you almost need a decoder ring to make sense of what they actually mean.

Much like the story of the six blind men and the elephant and its lessons regarding the importance of perspective in discerning reality, mobile banking means different things to different people. Here are some basic capabilities that mobile banking can refer to :

1. Extending online banking to a mobile device - In the past 12+ months, US banks, including Citibank, Bank of America, Wachovia, etc. have all introduced this feature. You can view account balances, transfer money between accounts and in some cases also access some of the electronic bill pay features.
2. Mobile money transfer - Typically refers to the use of a mobile phone being used to initiate money transfers (by linking to your bank/credit card account). These services usually charge lower fees than traditional money transfer providers, and are available either via SMS, mobile browser, or through a locally installed application. As can be imagined, this is of significant appeal in delivering services to the underbanked/unbanked segment - especially in emerging countries where mobile phone subscriber growth far exceeds the that of the retail banking infrastructure. Mobile money transfer, can also be extended to provide mobile payment services. Obopay is a provider that plays in this space.
3. Mobile wallet - Combining a mobile phone with additional hardware, a user can now use the device instead of an actual credit/debit card or handing out cash. Now you can use this combo device for financial transactions, and if configured appropriately, for other applications like ticketing for mass transit (you wave your device and the turnstile opens up), storing loyalty card information, managing access to facilities, etc. Near Field Communications (NFC) or Smartcards are typically part of the additional hardware needed to make this happen.

In upcoming posts I will look at these three areas - what are some of the interesting real-world deployments, what lessons can be learned from them, and some thoughts on how these applications might evolve.