When science has pretty much gone as far as it can, we will, we are sure, all have something akin to the ‘drones’ in Iain M. Banks future society ‘ The Culture. A floating, intelligent, combination between a voice controlled communicator, a link to the biggest computer network in the universe, something that can protect you with a force field, and intelligent enough to keep you company as a friend or play you at chess.
In the meantime there are periods of debate and experimentation when every company which builds handheld devices or contributes to their component eco-system, has to take a stab at what the very next, profitable step is going to be along the way, and we are in such an accelerated state of development right now.
The mobile market can stay very ‘evolutionary’ for long periods of time ‘ during which times it merely dabbles with the overall shape and function of a mobile phone, adding new subordinate features, but nothing major. What tends to trigger accelerated ‘revolutionary’ development are when one or more newcomers who think they can rule the roost, and clearly that’s where we are today, with Apple and Android rocking a very established boat and a swathe of GPS and PC makers thinking ‘ ‘Hey what’s so hard about making a handset?’
Obviously the more standardized the components of the industry get, the easier this is. And the advent of ‘handsets on a chip’ style architectures really mean that a handset maker has less and less to do in order to define a device.
For many years we have been saying that handsets will soon be able to do everything that a PC can, and more or less they can, except the small screen size and low storage levels and tiny keyboards have made it very uncomfortable to do ANY of the things that a PC can do. So the war between these two formats has been held in stasis. Phones added mobility to everything they do well, as well as features like diaries, calendars, cameras, reminders, music players, and still the lack of a credible keyboard has meant that typing a decent letter or even email just isn’t worth it on a handset. Yet. It’s like we took five years out from the battle between PCs and handsets, while technology caught up and made it possible to do more things, and now that time has come.
The advent of the Netbook, and its rival the Smartbook, are beginning to take over from the still-born MID (mobile internet device) and their suppliers are beginning to search out new form factors which can start the war again. Quite clearly Intel comes to this war extremely disadvantaged and the news that Nokia has signed a deal to explore new devices and offer Intel some of its modem designs, is all about Nokia controlling who has a seat at this particular table.
The two things that Nokia does not want to happen most are that the Microsoft Windows operating system suddenly gains complete control of this space between handsets and PCs or that Android does. So to us this looks like Nokia offering Intel a way to create an even playing field.
Right now ARM based processors are the only ones equipped to use low enough power that Smartbook batteries allow them to be used for a full working day. The Intel Atom performs less work, uses too much power and the operating systems on it are stuffed full of redundant commands that eat battery and processing cycles. Intel was in danger of going from being the apparent driving force behind Netbooks, to being ousted from the table and this would have happened, almost overnight by the end of this year, when new Smartbooks come to market.
So what Nokia has done is effectively created a brand new chip player in the mobile chip market, which will put Intel back on track where it was before it sold off its Xscale chips to Marvell, with the additional know how of being able to integrate its own baseband if need be.
The announced deal provided for Intel and Nokia to collaborate on open source mobile Linux projects and for Intel to acquire an HSPA/3G modem IP license for use in future products.
This means that the trend, driven by Qualcomm and others, to put more and more into a single chip – processing and baseband – would have been beyond Intel before this announcement, taking it a long time to catch up. The battle for the new device format would have been over before Intel got into the chip race.
At the same time there is the potential for Nokia to retain control of the Symbian open sourced OS, but also ensure its Linux expertise, along with Intel Moblin, comes to market in as strong a position as possible, to fight Android’s increasingly likely dominance of Linux based mobile platforms.
So when the announcement claimed that it would ‘shape the next era of Mobile Computing innovation,’ we think that’s true but perhaps not in the way the statement meant. Nokia has ensured that there are more chip players who are mobile capable, and at the same time created a stronger Linux platform to stand up to Android. At the same time it means that Intel does not have to go cap in hand to other chip makers if it decides that all future Atom based mother boards need to include a 3G chip, so that Netbooks, like Smartbooks, can always find a cellular signal to go online.
Sure Intel will have to buy some chips from rivals at first, but it will not always be in that position if it works with the Nokia IP gained from this deal.
Our take is that after this deal Netbooks are in better shape to take on Smartbooks, and so the war will be more likely to be even. Nokia can back both sides of the war, offer many types of devices, and be sure that it doesn’t find itself the wrong side of a dividing line, when one device or other in this segment develops iPhone class appeal. The Intel devices will still sit on Atom based processors, not ARM cores, but these are likely to look more and more alike internally over time.
Once Nokia backed WiMAX, alongside Intel, and Intel had said that it would offer motherboards with a chip that could one day bridge WiMAX, Wi-Fi, and 3G. Now it is scrambling to cover the 3G area alone, before it is headed off at the pass.
The two companies are talking about these devices being both user-friendly and pocketable ‘ which is just how rival camps have described smartbooks ‘ small enough to fit in your pocket, smart enough and large enough to type on and do PC tasks.
Kai ‘ist’m’, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia said, ‘We will explore new ideas in designs, materials and displays that will go far beyond devices and services on the market today. This collaboration will be compelling not only for our companies, but also for our industries, our partners and, of course, for consumers.’
The effort also includes technology development and cooperation in several open source software initiatives in order to develop common technologies for use in the Moblin (Intel backed) and Maemo (from Nokia Tablets) platform projects.
Significantly both companies are trying to align Linux efforts not only within their companies, but also with oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer and PulseAudio ‘ so that extensions to the Linux platform and key applications are also in place which run in a very similar way ‘off-the-shelf.’