Google is pulling out all the weapons this month in its battle to maintain leadership of the mobile ecosystem. It has finally done something game-changing with its Motorola purchase (see separate item), and it is evolving its web experience to pull ahead of rivals again, particularly with in-app search and plans for new-look Maps. This burst of energy is very necessary, because Google’s mobile and web roles are threatened as never before by companies which are hijacking the Android platform and creating the operating systems that may, in time, topple it from its throne.
The most threatening of these players is, of course, Samsung. We have described the Korean giant’s efforts to become a serious mobile software player and to create its own user experience and developer base around Android ‘ based around its own revenue-generating services, not Google’s. And despite delays and uncertainties, the Tizen Linux-based OS has the potential to enable Samsung to assert full software independence in future.
Samsung is pursuing a process which will be common among smaller players too ‘ ride on the success (and low cost) of Android to get established in smartphones; increasingly create an alternative power base around Android, subverting Google’s power from within, while still taking advantage of its huge applications base; harness HTML5 and the shift of user behavior away from native apps, in order to create a fully controlled platform to step in when Android is looking outdated.
But treating this as a war about handsets and tablets is to miss the point. Yes, the promised Tizen smartphone has not appeared yet, and Orange is now uncertain about when it will launch such a product. Quite reasonably, a cellco ‘ while eager to dilute the power of Google ‘ will not see a major gap in which to fit Tizen at this point. But the backing for Tizen is not really about phones.
The open source OS has announced 36 new members of the Tizen Association, which was set up by chief backers Samsung and Intel and brings together no fewer than three previous attempts to create an alternative mobile Linux platform ‘ the carrier-driven LiMO, and the ill-fated Intel/Nokia collaboration, MeeGo, itself a mash-up of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin. Among the new members, conventional phonemakers do not figure highly, but major contributors to the broader web experience do ‘ eBay, Nokia’s Here mapping unit, Intel’s McAfee security division, and content providers like The Weather Channel. There are new vendors, but they are firms, like Sharp and Panasonic, whose successful devices have large screens.
These new members join initial supporters including Orange, SK Telecom, NTT Docomo and Vodafone, plus Fujitsu and Huawei on the handset side, and they reflect the broadening of the OS evolution to embrace all kinds of devices. Indeed, the mobile OS future will be decided by a host of non-handset devices, and a world where one OS will no longer fit all use cases ‘ surely a lesson we are already learning from the crisis at Microsoft?
There are plenty of candidates ‘ Tizen, Firefox, Baidu OS, Aliyun, Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, webOS etc etc. All have certain things in common ‘ a Linux base, a heavy focus on the HTML5 browser and on cloud content. They are next generation, moving away from the download/native apps norms of the big two. So their chances of success rely on consumers changing their behavior too. Of course there is a shift from native content and applications to streaming, but that is supported fairly well by Android and even, to some extent, iOS and related services. The new OSs need to make that cloud-oriented experience significantly different and superior, and that will increasingly mean being embedded in scores of gadgets, so users don’t even notice.
These slimline systems are more appropriate to being embedded in products with less resource than a smartphone or tablet, and there is a clear evolution towards the internet of things ‘ in which many currently unconnected gadgets gain internet access and applications. Of course, these are not real time OSs for the truly low end sensors and modules, but they will have a major opportunity if they can end the fixation with smartphones, looking to work alongside Android rather than against it.
LG has realized this with its adoption of HP’s cast-off webOS, which will turn up in set-top boxes and other consumer electronics. Yesterday we reported on the delays to Tizen, which is mainly backed by Samsung, turning up in phones from the Korean giant and operator partners like Orange. But again, there is a bigger and more relevant picture. And today we find that Samsung’s NX300M smart camera ‘ already on the market ‘ is powered by Tizen.
The camera runs a modified build of the OS, and is a successor to the NX300 mirrorless camera, with a 3.31-inch AMOLED touchscreen capable of rotating 180 degrees. Creating different builds of the platform, optimized for different devices and apps, will be critical to differentiation. There has been some of that effort in Android, whose open source nature has allowed partners to adapt it for set-top boxes and consumer electronics. However, that has largely gone on outside the Google-driven mainstream, and has created a high degree of fragmentation and variable quality. A multi-faceted OS coordinated by one powerful player, but with open source development to drive innovation, could be a major step towards a world of huge numbers of intelligent, connected products.
So Samsung is working on a Mobile Lite version of Tizen for low end smartphones ‘ which would take on another OS that really might have a place in this space, properly modified, and that is Nokia’s Asha. And it has a Tizen smart TV due to appear in a similar timeframe to the first handsets, in the first half of next year.
All this shows the world’s largest handset maker asserting its software independence, and its first developer conference, held last month, highlighted its determination to be less reliant on Google and to create its own Android experience at the same time as pushing Tizen forward under its own full control. If one event illustrates the split between Samsung and Google, it is the news that Nokia is to power maps and location functionality in Tizen devices. The search giant will be deeply concerned that Samsung does not emulate Amazon and extend its support for Nokia Here to Android too, depriving Google of a major source of revenue.
Of course, Google has its own platform for the HTML/web-based mobile world, and that is Chrome OS. This has been available on Chromebooks ‘ effectively higher performance successors to netbooks ‘ but its real potential lies in targeting a huge range of connected devices, and converging with Android sufficiently that these products can also access apps and tools created for the older OS.
There have been several reports in the past week playing down the outlook for Chromebooks and predicting they will be the next netbook. That may be true to some extent ‘ though, once the pricing and form factor is right, there will be plenty of cases where an ultralight, always-connected browser appliance will be required, often as a companion to a PC.
Like Ubuntu, Google is pushing a Linux platform to make its claim to control the desktop of the future, along with the cloud-based vision it has always favored (though its ability to adapt to the real world is seen in the success of native-oriented Android). However, the opportunity for Google lies in making its browser and developer platform ubiquitous in ever gadget which gains web access, and the more key Android partners like Samsung threaten to drive their own platforms, the more urgently Google will need to change the rules again and take its huge developer base into teh new world of connected devices.
Starting in web TVs, ‘super-netbooks’ and cameras, then expanding into ‘internet of things’ appliances, the handsets may well be the last gadgets to join the revolution of the embedded browser-based OS. They do not have the urgency of the PC platform to find a new user experience. So by focusing on smartphones, we are not appreciating the potential threat to the current order from the new breed of operating systems.
We can be sure that Google is though. As well as having Chrome OS (or a potential Chrome/Android convergence) in reserve, it also knows it will stave off the decline of Android, and native apps, by making its user experience superior to that of Samsung and other challengers. That is why the divorce of Nokia’s handset business from its mapping unit should be a deep concern. Maps, and the location services they power, are critical to Google’s revenue model, and it has recently outlined plans to transform its own offering, making it far more interactive and responsive to individual user interests. However, Nokia Here will have similar plans and, once the Finnish firm sells its device business to Microsoft, the unit built around the purchase of Navteq will gain even greater self-sufficiency, as well as being one of the main businesses which could keep the venerable company alive.
Even before the Microsoft deal, Nokia had given its mapping business autonomy, and opened it up to non-Nokia devices with the cloud-based Here platform. It will have even greater freedom to bid to become the web’s dominant location system when the last conflicts of interest with the Nokia handsets are cast away. The firm has licensed here to drive map-based services for several Google rivals ‘ Microsoft itself of course, Amazon (another major hijacker of Android), and now Samsung. That deal is for Tizen now, but could conceivably spread to Galaxy as the Korean giant asserts its independence. Without the device conflicts, Nokia will hope to be the default choice for any new software platform, and has already snapped up Tizen and Jolla’s Sailfish (see inset). And the firm has made greater progress than its competitors in appreciating that, like a mobile OS, a mapping engine has to look beyond handsets and towards the internet of things. It has several major deals with carmakers and is working on use cases in vertical sectors.
So it will be vital that Google leapfrogs Nokia with its next Maps release. Since the company has, riskily, decided it must have its own hardware in order to showcase and drive uptake of its services, it will also be vital to achieve real scale with the Nexus and Motorola products, so that Google’s own take on Android is widely seen and used. Its trump card, however, lies in its search engine. It remains synonymous with web search, and this drives many of its revenues ‘ and Samsung has no search engine of its own. Apple may be trying to redefine search with Siri, but Google has, in technology terms at least, got that covered with the more sophisticated Google Now AI engine. Now it is ensuring it stays another step ahead of challengers with the announcement of in-app search.
This will roll out with a few dozen early launch partners later this month, taking a big step towards connecting the mobile apps on a user’s device with the web. That could dilute many of the perceived benefits of the HTML5 approach and transform the Android experience, in a way that Google firmly controls ‘ and where Samsung has no current response. In-app search is supported by the latest release of Android, 4.4 or KitKat, and will be included in the search application for older releases too. If a search result comes from an app that is installed on the device, the user will be able to open that specific finding in the application and then take action on it (for instance, making a booking on a restaurant app). Initial partners include Expedia, OpenTable and Moviefone.
This shows Google appealing to apps partners, and encouraging them to enable deep linking in their content ‘ opening it up to the search giant’s engine and adding to its advertising and other revenue potential. This opens up siloed apps to be part of the broader web, encouraging usage, and it seems likely that Google would make the experience more intelligent and interactive by incorporating Google Now too. All that can help to keep Google’s store and platform more attractive to partners than Samsung’s, and with the search giant facing a real challenge for the first time, the wave of innovation that should encourage on both sides will only be good for the mobile consumer.
Jolla partners with Yandex for Android apps:
One of the would-be Android challengers is Jolla, whose Sailfish OS, like Tizen, draws heavily on code from MeeGo. The start-up, created in Finland by former Nokia executives, is pursuing an increasingly common path in mobile platforms ‘ harness Android’s applications base to get a new OS off the ground with developers and users, while minimizing Google’s role in the experience, and working towards a fully independent offering.
BlackBerry was supposed to be pulling off a trick like that with BB10’s Android links, but fumbled the ball. Chinese retailer Alibaba uses some Android elements in its Aliyun platform (how much is disputed with Google). And Sailfish will be compatible with the Google-driven OS, but will obviously be excluded from Google Play, so it will come with one of the increasingly numerous alternative Android stores, this one from Russia’s Yandex.
Sailfish devices can run Android apps alongside their own, and recently the OS was adapted to run on Android hardware too, as a second system. This week, Jolla announced an alliance with Russian web giant Yandex, which is trying to create its own mobile web platform around its Yandex.Store apps marketplace. This will be pre-installed on Jolla smartphones and currently offers 85,000 Android items in 37 languages (though that is a fraction of Play’s 900,000 of course).
According to a statement from Jolla co-founder Sami Pienimaki: ‘Jolla’s strategy is always to work with the most applicable service partners in specific markets and create long term strategic partnerships. We analyzed a number of alternative Android app stores to use for our first markets in Europe, and quickly found out that what Yandex offered was very competitive and that they were very interested in developing their app store together with us for their future needs and for the needs of Sailfish customers.’
The start-up’s initial distribution focus has been heavily on China, and it seems likely it will make a similar deal with one of that country’s local app store operators, such as Tencent AppGem, Baidu AppStore, Alibaba or AppChina. Google Play accounts for only 6% of app instals in the country.
Jolla will hope to attract users with a differentiated and rich experience using its own native apps, while giving them the safety net of access to Android’s huge base. It has opened its native store to submissions this month.
More predictably, Jolla has also announced a partnership with Nokia, and will pre-install the larger firm’s Here mapping platform on Sailfish devices.
Although it hasn’t announced further progress in China, if it does, the fact that it can’t distribute apps through Google Play probably won’t matter. A recent breakdown of the Chinese Android distribution by mobile analyst Benedict Evans showed that Google Play was only responsible for six percent of all app installs in China. Third party app markets, such as Tencent App Gem, Baidu App Store and AppChina, were responsible for 72.6 percent of all installs in China.