Microsoft this week put some bones on its emerging mobile strategy with the launch of OneApp, a kind of widget platform on steroids. Ever since Microsoft cut a deal with Nokia over putting Office on Symbian, analysts have been interpreting everything that Microsoft does as a re-casting of its mobile strategy. Effectively it seems to have finally realized that Windows Mobile is only one way for it to move ahead and so Microsoft watchers are saying ‘hallelujah,’ WinMobile is dead, and Microsoft can finally make a stand on mobile applications.
The OneApp product was not widely anticipated and is a way of putting applications on ‘not so smart phones,’ as much as the smart ones. OneApp is an application environment where the applications can be written in tools like XML and JavaScript, but which are stored on the internet instead of on the phone, giving less capable phones much of the capability of smart phones. OneApp has a 150KB footprint and is ideal for bringing things like social networks, information management and messaging apps to less functional devices. Already Microsoft is pushing Window Live Messenger, Facebook, a Twitter client and an RSS reader using OneApp and is working with selected partners now and will open the OneApp SDK to allow third parties shortly.
Some people have called it a kind of Microsoft version of Java and note that OneApp programs reside in and execute within, a kind of sandbox. Microsoft says that because it is controlling the platform, it can ensure that all handset models will have compatibility of applications. This is exactly what is required for an App Store which any operator brings to market, and this could be pushed as a basis for App Stores which have to work with 100s of types of existing phones.
It’s not the sexy top end smartphone market, but Microsoft could effectively make the fat mid-range segment its own and share Smartphones with everyone else.
OneApp may therefore be right for emerging markets a fact that was brought home a few weeks back when Nokia said it had signed up a million users to its mail service in just six month, with 65% of accounts registered by users in the developing world mostly India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. So the fact that Microsoft is partnering with Blue Label Telecom in South Africa is not to surprising as partner for OneApp.
Microsoft has kinda been forced into this move by Apple and Android’s smart phone success, as the Microsoft share of the smartphone OS market fell to 3.4% in Q2 this year, while Apple’s jumped to 5.2%.
Microsoft must go up against its old rival, most recently turned into its best mobile buddy, in Nokia, which has within its Ovi Store the Widget Runtime (WRT) environment which already has an impressive library of applications similar to OneApp’s. But if Microsoft does its homework right, it should be able to enable its legendary development partners to jump on the OneApp bandwagon, in the same way that Apple programmers have jumped onto the Apple App Store.
It will be no walk in the park for Microsoft, as there are other phone widget players out there including Qualcomm, Opera, Access, SurfKitchen, mPortal and Myriad. Today OneApp is available for 37 handsets from Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.