Verizon Wireless’ presentation this week was all about taking on AT&T and Apple using Google Voice and new Android devices. Verizon and Google also set themselves up as the champions of openness against a closed iPhone world. It was a bare bones statement with little detail, but plenty of implications.
First off, Android will not just find its way into branded smartphones, such as the anticipated Motorola Tao/Sholes, at Verizon, but also into the devices that the operator brands and helps to design, in the midrange, and increasingly the basis of the cellcos’ own web services platforms and stores. This will accomplish an important goal for Android, to get into all levels of handset and web usage, and ironically, the US CDMA carriers – traditionally those with the most closed and controlled networks – are offering it the most open door (Google already has a close development partnership with Sprint Nextel). Symbian is also chasing the mass market and strategic carrier partnerships, and in the US has hopes of AT&T; originally, Windows Mobile was the first of the full operating systems to seek market share through the carrier branded approach, but may find its importance to US cellcos like Verizon reduced by the new Android initiatives.
Second – and another irony – Google knows, for all its protestations about the mobile web just operating through generic browsers and invisible carriers like the PC internet, that Android is dependent on the operators to make an impact on the cellular world, at least in the short to medium term. So it is working hard to give Verizon a more open platform than its usual centrepieces – BlackBerry and WinMo – to support its next generation open developer initiative, and at the same time to steal thunder from the iPhone. And in return it gets versions of its key applications, like Voice and Maps, optimized for the carrier networks and preloaded on their devices. The co-developed gadgets, which presumably will come from a range of hardware vendors and carry dual Verizon-Google branding, will come “pre-loaded with innovative applications from both parties as well as third party developers”, said the firms. Does this really sound a world away from the AT&T iPhone?
Verizon and Google certainly want to make it sound that way. The pointed mentions of Google Voice – still the focus of disputes with Apple and AT&T, and of FCC probes – were designed to emphasize the contrast with the iPhone model starkly. Voice would be one of the Google products tightly integrated into Verizon’s Android platform, said CEO Lowell McAdam – saying, in a clear swipe at AT&T, “the device is either open or it’s not”.
In fact, there is a huge grey area between “open” and “not” on phones. Preloaded and optimized apps, chosen by the carrier, may deliver a simple and efficient experience to users, and avoid destruction of the carrier’s network through uncontrolled usage, but they are hardly the stuff of the open web dream or of unfettered consumer choice. And it remains to be seen how carrier specific Verizon’s Android-based platform turns out to be, and at which points it manages to lock users in.
The multiyear roadmap for the Verizon-Google collaborations includes phones and netbooks, and potentially other formats in future, and two devices will be announced “shortly”.
Symbian may derive hope from Schmidt’s unabashed championing of the Verizon network, saying: “It’s an absolute fact that Verizon’s network is the best by far. We had known about that reach. We didn’t know that they’d take a lead in openness. This is a network engineering company that makes it work and makes it scale. This is a major milestone in the Android platform.” Perhaps his comments might have been more tempered had he retained hopes of a similarly strategic alliance with AT&T as well?
As well as PR value, both companies should gain in terms of choice of devices and apps, and speed to market. Google’s weight will help Verizon Wireless in its ongoing campaign to woo open developers, after years when it did not need to look beyond its own platforms and partners. And the support of the major carrier should increase the confidence of developers and handset vendors in Android, encouraging them to create more products for the OS and to move existing projects up the agenda.
As well as the joint devices with Google, expected early next year, Verizon Wireless confirmed that it will introduce other Android products within the next few weeks. These are widely expected to be the Tao/Sholes from Motorola and one or more smartphones from HTC.
In an attempt to pull some of the string of the Verizon/Google comments, AT&T chose the same day to allow iPhone users to run VoIP over its 3G connection, rather than just Wi-Fi. It will hope this move will divert FCC attention as well as placating angry customers. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer,” explained Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, in a statement.