On the day Apple became the #1 vendor of cell phones in the U.S. with 26%, All Things Digital put out the headline: “Android Surges… Apple Flat”.  Now when you’ve just eaten up a quarter of the market, it’s very hard to call you flat, but I’ll digress.  They are looking at OS shipments rather than product shipments.  From Apple’s point of view, the two are the same, and since Android isn’t a first-party OS, Apple gets the last laugh as the market leader. Still, it’s funny that the editor can call Apple “flat” on such a monumental day, especially when Android marketers are a half-dozen deep and Apple is just one company, with just one (or two) handset.   One thing ATD did get right is the fact that Blackberry is dying on the vine.

Another example is in the marching orders of the press corps towards treatment of the Android “family” of products (from a half-dozen different vendors) being treated as a single, monolithic anti-iphone. This depsite the fact that there are OEM features and major platform functionality differences on every handset.   Just compare an HTC to any phone with MotoBlur.  They really feel like entirely different products, but none in such a way that you can say yep this one is the “iPhone of Android devices”.

So I wonder if these journalistic tendencies are driven out of the desire to see Apple take a few bruisings now that they aren’t clawing at Microsoft from the bottom of the 32-bit barrel.

Android

MaxMobile Android is supported on the T-Mobile G1 and MyTouch phones; additional models and carriers will be supported in the future. The latest MaxMobile Android version is 6.5.1.401. It’s compatible with all MAXCS servers running 6.0 Update 2 (6.0.2.412) or higher.


iPhone

MaxMobile iPhone is supported on all iPhone models. The latest MaxMobile iPhone version is 6.5.1.404. It’s compatible only with MAXCS servers running 6.5 Update 1 (6.5.1.403) or higher.

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But the reason for my take on Android’s ascension has nothing to do with the wireless industry or the competitive dynamics of each particular platform.  Instead, it has to do with an observation I’ve recently made of my own industry and the local market for my company’s I.T. services.

Our firm shares a total market space of around $10 million with 9 other firms.  We’re larger than 7 of those firms (mostly one-man shops), and smaller than 2 (one of whom has 9 employees to our three).   When we started our company, we were an Android, not a Windows Mobile.  We wanted to advance to a rank in the local market where we felt competitive pressure on things like pricing from beneath us and not above.

Well, we’re at that point now.  Pricing pressure always comes from the guy below you.  So now I’m watching as some lateral moves occur beneath my firm.  The top three players can either go out and win business bid-by-bid or by looking for ways to consolidate the smaller competitors by acquiring books of business or merging.  Insofar as Palm and Windows Mobile are those smaller competitors toward the end of 2011, I see them dying on the vine or getting eaten up.  Because the momentum has shifted and because the smaller players are unable to effectively pressure based on quality, they’re going to disappear or die trying to woo low-end customers (a la Vonage).

To coincide with T-Mobile’s announcement earlier this week of the availability of the G1 mobile phone in March 2009, a German version of Truphone Anywhere for Android is available and will be the first native language multi-communications application in the Android Market in Germany and Austria when it launches at CeBIT 2009.

As well as being able to make low-cost international voice calls, Truphone customers can also easily instant-message their friends across a variety of networks including MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk and Twitter from within one Android application. Customers can also call friends anywhere in the world on Google Talk for the price of a local call, and similarly will soon will be able to instant-message and call their friends on Skype.

Truphone is also available on the Apple iPhone, the Apple iPod touch, Blackberry and Nokia devices.

The trick to understanding Google’s publicity lag for GC is the core technology they use: VoIP.  This technology family has not fully matured, and isn’t likely to be pervasive until somebody, Google, really figures out how to get the final frontier of datacomm applications–realtime media–OFF of traditional transmission mechanisms and ONTO the web. Up until now, VoIP and telephony have remained largely excluded from the Google party, relegated to a climate of inaction where business dictates the preservation of legacy, circuit-switched networks. End-to-end VoIP hasn’t materialized yet, so the penetration of services like Grand Central into mainstream culture has been low. That’s got folks wondering why Google is apparently just sitting on what we in the industry consider to be a gold mine.

So why hasn’t Grant Central become the showpiece many of us expected?  I think I have the answer: the industry isn’t ready.

The opportunity for Google to capitalize on Grand Central might still be ahead of us, not behind us. Grand Central’s core technology is VoIP call-switching.  Software is used to automate this core technology and create a very simple, very useful palette of telephony tools, mostly for directing incoming phone calls to cellphones and SIP agents such as Gizmo Project.

I see Grand Central mashing up with services like searchable voicemail, language translation, Fonolo, which dials phone menus to save time, and things like SwitchVox and Fonality, which provide SIP-based telephony at the desktop.  To Googlize voice, the notions of search and user-preference-driven intuition  have to enter the equation, and Grand Central gives Google a means to this end.  But, I say again, the industry may not be ready.

In the background, Google is doing what it can to ready the industry–making access to the network more ubiquitous, fighting regulation of currently open access mechanisms (primarily radio spectrum), and readying a path to open converged platforms via its Android mobile operating system.  All the while, Google has avoided the nasty temptation to cozy up to the big phone companies, because of their affinity for the status quo.

A little success on each of these fronts could create the perfect storm for GC, just as the desire for cheap advertising and darn good searchability created the perfect storm for Google during Bubble 1.0.

But I’ve grappled with the open-sourcing of Android for a couple of reasons.  When you open source something, it’s either because you’re absolutely desperate to maintain a foothold or create one (like when Netscape Corp. spun off the Mozilla project), because the intellectual property being open-sourced is already stale (the Quake engines, etc.), or because the chances of achieving marketplace competitiveness are actually improved by going open source.  It’s one of the three, in my mind.

Sure, people say the Open Source community provides more abundant creative contribution and discourse, but I don’t necessarily buy that argument.  Don’t confuse Open Source advocacy with volunteerism.   Volunteer programmers get stuff done only when there’s something in it for them.  But real volunteers get stuff done because there’s something in it for somebody ELSE. Any contributions brought to Android by the outside world that are worth assimilation into the project are going to create project management expenses for Google, and the big G has always been an innovation leader (as opposed to a leech), so sucking the community’s cheap or free “cool new ideas” into Android is NOT what Google is up to.

They’re also not desperate for a market share grab.  Android is so far beyond anything Microsoft and RIM have brought to the table that perhaps only Apple’s iPhone is the only valid comparison.  And Apple isn’t running away with the mobile market. There’s just too much entrenchment in the wireless industry, what with all the lock-in contracts and vendor exclusivity and so on.  So Google’s open sourcing is not likely to have an effect on market share, not in the short term anyway.  And it’s clear that the Android technology isn’t what you would call “stale”.

So Google’s move to open up Android has all the appearances of a tactical error.  To figure out the “why”, it’s important to look at the “when”.   The timing of this move is peculiarly unlike previous “big open source” announcements.   Since Android has a ton of buzz and is clearly on the way up, not down, the convential wisdom that only desperate companies open source their stuff does not apply.   Android will be successful in Google’s mind, whether or not it were to become an open source project.

So why? Why now?

According to the official Google posting on the matter, which rightly accuses the iPhone of having a limited, closed distribution channel, the reason for the open-sourcing is to make the platform accessible and free it from the bonds of one hardware vendor or the next.  Open sourcing isn’t necessary to make the platform accessible, of course, but if you’re going to pull out a stop or two, pull ‘em all out.  It’s Google, after all, not Microsoft.

Google sees a future where the carriers and hardware vendors cannot collude because platform choices are going to be made by consumers.   That’s the answer to the “why”.   By giving the consumers at large access to a very compelling (free) platform choice, the carriers and phonemakers have one less competitive advantage in being tied at the hip.  And that is a very good thing.

The smartphone wars once devoured a great deal of attention and energy, particularly during the long PR war that took place in the first four barren years – from the birth of the venture exactly ten years ago, to the first mass market consumer handset appearing in 2002. Today, apart from a few gadget fans, nobody really cares any more.

(In my best Luke Skywalker voice: “I care”.)  Seriously, anybody in business today is using a smartphone.  And people who aren’t in business don’t use them, almost without deviation.  The reason the first four years sucked was because smartphones sucked during the first four years.  Today, we’ve got better ones (though doing personal info management on a 2-inch screen still blows).

[...]

Even five years ago, it was apparent this was a war in which there would be no winner.

The winner is clearly Apple, as Andrew later points out.  Nokia’s lack of consistency and scattershot approach to applications and platforms is what kills Symbian devices.  Microsoft is better about this with Windows Mobile, and Blackerry and Apple are better than both Nokia and Microsoft.  Plus, where Blackberry has ‘quiet librarian’ excited, Apple has sex appeal and sheen. So I think, for now, it’s pretty obvious who the winner of this war is.

How did “smart” phones lose their luster? While they were bigger, slower and harder to use than phones based on older closed platforms, they didn’t offer the value that persuaded most people to put up with the pain and use the extra “smartness”. For example, Google Maps runs on any midrange phone today very capably – and like Google itself, it does the job well enough.

Disagree. Who do you know that actually runs Google maps on a non-smartphone?  Right, I didn’t think so. Just because a device CAN do a thing does not mean a device SHOULD do that thing.

But even then it’s doubtful that Nokia and Symbian executives would have opted for Exile in Freetard Street, had it not been for two competitive factors. One is the diminishing cost of smartphone OS licenses, which reflects their market value. Google is giving away its smartphone OS, Android. As Bill Ray correctly pointed out today, that makes Android utterly pointless.

Disagreed. Google is trying to carve out a platform ecosystem by becoming a technology provider as opposed to an application provider.  It’s the next logical step for any serious software company to become a tech licensor instead of an appmaker, which is what they’ve traditionally always been.  Android gives Google a vehicle to accelerate its control into areas where the competition is either stagnant or too wet to know what hit it: like the wireless industry.

Lack of 2.0-style innovation and consumer accessibility has pissed on the explosive growth we all want in this sector, and Android seeks to address this. Really, aren’t consumers sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed by Bell for every little feature they want to use? No wonder people don’t adopt new stuff. The cost and claustrophobia of the licensing experience shun people from adopting.   So, it’s not pointless to Google to give away seat licenses for free (it may’ve been for old school Symbian).  It eliminates one barrier to access: cost, while working on the solution to the other barrier: outdated telco business models. Increased demand for the open platform, Android, puts pressure on the network operators to stop banging consumers over the head with micro-fees and contract hoops.

There’s another factor, too. Symbian’s founding CEO, Colly Myers, the father of the OS formerly known as Epoc, used to talk of the “enchantment” factor. Tech wizardry wasn’t enough, he said, but the devices had to charm.

It’s largely Nokia that must be blamed for failing to make Symbian phones remotely “enchanting”. Nokia’s UI is cumbersome (Symbian doesn’t do UIs); the hardware was for years underclocked, making it slow. And Nokia’s legendary marketing has appealed to nerds, outcasts and social freaks – and been guaranteed to confuse everyone.

Today it’s the iPhone which has the enchantment factor. How could it not – it comes straight from the Dream Factory. And Apple must now see a clear road ahead for world dominance.

Symbian has done everything its original designers asked of it – a twenty year lifespan is not bad at all. But it’s now Apple’s business to lose

Absolutely agreed.  Apple is driving now.  The problem is, they’ve got to get out of the creepy deal they have with AT&T. That’s their #1 barrier to entry for business adoption in the United States. Solve that problem, and I think Apple may just run away with the business Android was designed to capture.