The long awaited and much hyped ‘gPhone’ announcement came at last, though as the intelligent speculation had realized, it was not really about a handset but an open mobile software platform with which Google hopes to set a new de facto standard for the mobile internet user experience.
Creating an attractive and usable experience on small devices is the most important milestone for the development of this industry, and all the major players are seeking to be the company that defines and drives this and so becomes the ‘Microsoft’ of the mobile web. Increasingly these efforts will be driven by Linux, open source and other PC-derived open approaches, and so far we have seen Nokia, Sun and various Linux-oriented consortia making their bid for leadership.
Now it is Google’s turn, with a platform it is calling Android. It hinted that specific phones could be created for this, so the fabled ‘gPhone’ could still emerge, but what is far more important to Google’s twin ambitions ‘ to generate more mobile web usage to bolster its revenue streams, and to take a pivotal role in the standards for that market ‘ is that its software should be adopted by as many handset and other device makers as possible, so that it is put in front of the consumers who will make the final decision on which environment and services they like best.
The bid to be as universal as Windows in PCs has driven Google to water down some of its talk about radical, open business models, that would conflict with the entrenched models of the operators and handset makers. Instead, it has seen that working with the cellcos to help them adapt to the mobile internet’s more open model will give it, in the short term at least, greater power and market reach than trying to compete with them. So the supporters’ club it has formed around Android features many of the traditional stalwarts of the mobile industry, rather than the crowd of disruptive internet players we might have expected from reading Google’s propaganda (though eBay/Skype is there).
The Open Handset Alliance has an initial membership of 34. The main traditional device makers signing up are Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC, the first of these, in particular, never missing a change to create challenges to Nokia and to involve itself in Mobile Linux initiatives (though lacking quite the weight of influence to create and push a software platform of their own).
As for the operators – supposedly Google’s b’tes noires in its lobbying for open access networks and free broadband ‘ seven majors have pledged support publicly. These are T-Mobile USA, Sprint Nextel, China Mobile, KDDI , Telecom Italia, Telefonica and NTT DoCoMo. Verizon Wireless is also widely expected to work with Google on Android, despite their recent differences over rules for the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auctions.
Of course, some of these companies will be joining mainly for PR purposes or to keep a watching eye on Google, but others are likely to see the chance to enhance their own offerings quickly by drawing on the expertise of others.
One of these is the beleaguered Sprint, which despite its current problems has a genuine appreciation of the mobile internet vision, and which has already agreed to work with Google on the software platform for its Xohm WiMAX service, and is now almost certain to adopt Android on some of the handsets it supplies.
Critically, the new alliance contains most of the major handset baseband and RF chipmakers. Given the closer relationship between the chips and the operating system in a mobile phone than in the more harmonized PC architecture, it will be a very long time before any operating system or software platform really can work unchanged and transparently across any handset, and so chipmaker involvement is key. The uniqueness of each handset design has been the source of deep fragmentation in many of the so-called universal mobile technologies, notably Mobile Linux (in all its many flavours, each of which needs to be optimized for each chip architecture) and Mobile Java.
This is why harmonization efforts such as this, or the Motorola-inspired LiMo Foundation, are important. As when Unix promised a multi-platform system, there will still be some Mobile Linuxes that are more equal than others, but at least the number of variations will be reduced, spurring developer commitment.
The main chip companies in the founder member list are Qualcomm ‘ itself no slouch in trying to drive mobile internet software standards – Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, Nvidia and Sirf.
Details of the Android reference design were sketchy at this stage, but the first implementation is based on an ARM-9 control processor, with drivers capable of supporting a variety of display sizes and types. Android will be offered through Apache open source licensing programs.
The Alliance promises to introduce a software development kit on November 12 for implementing services on top of the operating system. Google said this will put Android ahead of other efforts, such as the LiMo Foundation formed last year by Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo, in terms of market reality. He said the SDK will focus on “an amazing user interface” and hosted user services to allow distribution of new applications through USB or memory card formats.
Another important member of the new alliance is real time software specialist Wind River, which will work with Google on melding an open Linux kernel with an open mobile software stack to achieve the top-to-bottom, fully integrated software platform that Nokia, Sun, Access and others also hope to provide, and which helps to remove some of the performance problems and fragmentation of Mobile Linux.
In the cellphone world, Linux has been caught uncomfortably between two worlds. It is not as high level as SymbianOS or Windows Mobile, and so requires significant work by handset makers and chip suppliers to provide a full application downloading platform; but it lacks the full real time support of the proprietary, native cellphone operating systems, which will remain important in low cost devices. MontaVista has so far been the Mobile Linux specialist with the most success in turning the system into a real time OS.
The LiMo Foundation, the best supported of the various mobile Linux initiatives, chose to welcome the OHA rather than see it as a challenge ‘ unsurprisingly since there is considerable membership overlap. Key backers of both, like Motorola, will surely see a combined effort by LiMo and OHA as a way to strengthen forces against a Nokia-dominated mobile web platform ‘ although it may be out of the frying pan, into the fire, since Google is behaving just like Nokia and is equally keen to hold the reins of future standards.
Like Nokia with platforms like Series 60 and Wibree, it could have lent its weight and power to an existing initiative with similar aims to its own, and which would also have encouraged increased uptake of mobile internet and therefore Google services. LiMo would have been the best choice. But instead, like Nokia, it chooses to create its own platform and set up its own alliances around this, even while appearing to be behaving like a good internet citizen by putting products into open source and open licensing.
Two issues are particularly interesting about how the OHA will develop and whether it will gain significant traction, and these are highlighted by the two most conspicuous vendor absentees from the initial line-up, Sun and Nokia.
One issue is how far it can make headway in creating a really attractive mobile internet experience, and how well it can do vis-‘-vis Nokia’s efforts (and others from Microsoft, Palm and so on). Nokia’s absence, then, was unsurprising, given its own ambitions to outwit Google in the battle to run the mobile internet, and given its desire to set its own standards rather than support those of others.
Sun’s absence was bizarre, as was the near-silence on Java at the launch, since Andy Rubin, the brain behind Android and Google’s director of mobile platforms, told the New York Times that the new platform was based on Linux and Java.
It looked even stranger when Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz waxed lyrical in his blog on the OHA launch, offering his ‘heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android’. He went on to write: ‘I’d also like Sun to be the first platform software company to commit to a complete developer environment around the platform, as we throw Sun’s NetBeans developer platform for mobile devices behind the effort. We’ve obviously done a ton of work to support developers on all Java based platforms, and were pleased to add Google’s Android to the list.’
This gives rise to the question, does Google aim to create its own Java platform, and has this created a complex situation with Sun? Google has chosen to use Apache for open source, a process that has been a thorn in Sun’s side, and it may not have chosen to use Java FXMobile as the technology to deliver rich internet applications ‘ and the main vehicle for Sun’s renewed attack on generating real success in mobility from its ownership of Java.
The use of the Apache v2 license is interesting, since for Google to license an implementation of Java under this, it has to be a derivation of an existing Apache-licensed code set, or one of its own creation. This is because Sun has avoided Apache, which has often been used against it by Java rivals like IBM, and the sourcecode to the implementations of Java that Sun has open sourced itself is found under version 2 of the GPL license. The Free Software Foundation considers Apache v2 to be compatible with GPL v3 but not v2 as used by Sun.
If Google were to create its own Java-based handset application development framework, which is not J2ME ‘ as some companies, such as Salesforce.com, have done in the past ‘ it would not only be taking on Sun and the prevalence of J2ME, but could split both the mobile Java and mobile Linux communities down the middle, before even thinking about Nokia and Series 60.
Google shares reached an all-time high on Tuesday after Android was announced, getting to $738.38.
Other members of the Alliance include Aplix, Ascender, Audience, Esmertec, LivingImage, NMS Communications, Noser Communications, Nuance, PacketVideo, SkyPop, SoniVox, Synaptics and The Astonishing Tribe.