The hunt is one for a ‘third way’ to balance the power of Apple and Google in handsets, and there are plenty of candidates to step in should frontrunner Windows Phone fail. Ironically, one of these may be Android-based, with Amazon reported to be readying its much rumoured smartphone, which would deliver an Android experience almost divorced from Google (see separate item). Meanwhile, the big European operators continue to seek a mobile platform they can control, with Mozilla’s upcoming Firefox Mobile their latest target, and even the former Nokia/Intel OS, Meego, is making a reappearance. There could even be the option of an openly licensed BlackBerry 10, with RIM’s CEO once again hinting that this may be among his turnaround plans ‘ once the much delayed BB10 makes its debut next year.
Meego was briefly a leading light among the new-style, cloud oriented mobile platforms, when Nokia and Intel merged their respective Linux platforms in 2009. However, the project was sidelined when Nokia joined forces with Microsoft the following year, and has since been incorporated into an open source effort called Tizen, where it is converging with a previous failed candidate to lead the independent OS charge, LiMO.
Now a Finnish start-up, Jolla, is seeking to revive Meego in its own right. A group of former Nokia employees has formed the company and says it will bring a Meego smartphone to market later this year. The team is led by CEO Jussi Hurmola and by COO Marc Dillon, who was principal Meego engineer at Nokia, and other members of the former team behind Nokia’s one and only Meego handset, the N9. The fledgling company’s statement said: ‘Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued.’ Jolla is Finnish for dinghy, which presumably refers to Nokia ‘leaping from the burning platform’ when it abandoned Symbian for WP7.
Jolla will no doubt be looking for carrier support to boost its chances against the Android and iOS juggernauts ‘ just as Nokia is for Windows Phone. Operator supported operating systems, including SavaJe and LiMO, have a poor track record, but the cellcos keep trying, and their latest favorite is Firefox Mobile. Telefonica was the first to endorse the forthcoming browser-based OS and was followed last week by a group of peers. At its Telefonica Digital analyst day, the Spanish giant reiterated its support, claiming the Mozilla system offered a better proposition than Android on affordable smartphones, the key area of growth in cellphones.
Matthew Key, head of Telefonica’s O2 Europe unit, said: “The first handset cost is sub-$100 and will be launched before Q1 in Brazil. We can produce the same experience on Android cheaper, or a better experience at the same price.’ He echoed the insecurities of many carriers, adding: ‘We’re overly reliant on Android and that’s not a strategically strong position to be in.’
Going even further in terms of pushing smartphone capabilities to cheap hardware is chipmaker MediaTek, with its program of embedding support for web services directly onto its silicon. The latest is Twitter, bringing the microsocial service to basic handsets. It will
preload the application in its MRE middleware as a default feature in its reference design for handsets, allowing them to run Twitter on minimal memory and hardware requirements.
While such developments ‘ also being pursued by Facebook and Opera ‘ will be important to emerging market operators, carriers could also see a broader-based BB10 as an asset, given their close relationships with RIM and its deep understanding of how to design devices which are forgiving of their networks. If Amazon decides to become more independent, it has often been cited as a possible licensee for the RIM OS, and at the BlackBerry maker’s annual general meeting this week, CEO Thorsten Heins suggested that a third party program could be in the works. He revived the idea of licensing key technologies, including BB10 and BlackBerry Messenger, to partners, though not necessarily in the conventional handset space ‘ he hinted at targeting the connected automotive sector, where QNX, the heart of RIM’s new operating system, has its roots.
He faced hefty criticism at the AGM, but at least he had one piece of good news to share ‘ the BlackBerry App World storefront has amassed 3bn downloads, and the shop contains over 90,000 apps. This is dwarfed by Apple’s total to date (30bn downloads as of last month, and a base of about 500,000 items), but it is still a respectable score for what is increasingly a niche platform ‘ and endorses RIM’s strategy of focusing on quality, especially for its enterprise base, rather than quantity. And the figure of 3bn does not include web apps, apps from third party BlackBerry stores or internal company software.