In the mobile wars, there is one thing that everyone agrees on ‘ that in future access to the web will be from a huge variety of devices, most of them mobile, with wireless embedded in them. So in the miles of column inches generated by Google’s launch of Chrome OS last week, the main criticism was about the search giant’s ‘muddying of the waters’ in launching two separate operating systems. But we think a more pertinent question would be how any vendor could expect to make a single OS work optimally across such a vast range of platforms. Microsoft has tried to make that approach work for years, and now its slowness in accepting that Windows cannot do everything may well prove its undoing, with Google as its nemesis, mounting a pincer movement based on Android – tight integration of mobile-optimized apps ‘ and Chrome OS, the web services platform where everything happens in the browser.
Although these two may collide in the netbook/smartbook, Google would do well to keep the distinction between Android and Chrome clear ‘ and avoid comments like those made by CEO Eric Schmidt this week, that Android and Chrome OS actually had a lot in common and could eventually merge. There is no need to over-simplify matters at the expense of delivering top quality platforms for vendors, especially as rivals like Nokia are also recognizing the benefits of a dual-OS strategy, one optimized for true mobiles, one for the cloud.
Jack Gold, analyst at J Gold Associates, told Computerworld that Chrome OS is fully geared to Google’s cloud computing ‘masterplan’. He said: ‘If you think of a web browser like Chrome in the new world of the web, the browser really is the OS. Chrome is not Android to the next degree. They want to keep Android pure, with stuff specific to smartphone devices [such as controlling the voice ‘talk channel’].’ In other words, a good smartphone OS has to support all the many protocols that are needed to run voice and text, while Chrome only needs Linux for basic tasks, with the browser doing the rest and the processing taking place in the cloud (and voice not an issue). “You need different technology for different products,” said Google’s Andy Rubin.
This two-pronged approach could significantly boost Google’s real objective ‘ to enable access to its cloud services, and its ads, from absolutely anywhere, with an easy user experience that is suited to the device (a lesson Microsoft failed to learn with WinMo). On the latter point, the jury is out on whether Android will be a game changer in terms of mobile consumer experience of the web. Tight integration of apps makes life easy for non-technical users, but also arouses industry suspicion; and in most ways – as HTC is already showing as it breaks away from the ‘Googlephone’ interface for its latest Android model, Hero – the experience that Android supports will be down to the individual handset maker or operator. Android is the action of a new entrant beating at the gates of an established fortress, largely following norms that are already in place at LiMO, Symbian or even iPhone ‘ and the economic impact of a free OS will only really be felt when Android hits real scale. Google’s risk remains high here, despite the early grip of Android on the imagination of the market ‘ as its integration of its own apps indicates, this remains a world where the OS, software stack, UI and device are intimately coupled, even if the OS is open source. So, fully integrated platforms like iPhone and BlackBerry own the customer and product execution/positioning, and to date have performed better than multivendor platforms like WinMo and LiMO. Nokia has shifted from one model to the other, with all the risks involved.
The need to attract developers and turn the phone into a fully fledged apps platform will change these norms, but only gradually, whereas the open web model is well established in the PC world, so here, Google is in its element. This means that Chrome OS is different ‘ while probably a simpler platform in technology terms, putting a browser on top of basic Linux, it is far more disruptive in terms of shifting goalposts. It is seeking to do no less than change our assumptions about what a notebook-type device looks like and how we use our software. Google did not invent the basic concepts of thin clients, cloud services, software-on-demand or browser-based developments, but it is looking to implement them in their most usable formats to date.
Having said that, let’s not dismiss the power of the incumbent. Google still has to execute on Chrome OS, and arguably has bitten off more than even its huge R&D and marketing budgets can chew ‘ it is running and developing Google Apps, Google Voice, Maps, Gmail, the book indexing initiative, the smart grid project, its massive commercial and public cloud offerings, not to mention Android and Chrome OS and its investments in various ubiquitous internet activities such as Clearwire. Yet nearly all its revenues still come from its original business, adverts (though admittedly these should be boosted by most of the above projects).
While it has to attack on so many fronts, making loads of enemies as it goes, Microsoft’s threatened ‘fat PC’ software model is not going away overnight. Microsoft Office still has over 90% share of US usage, compared to 1% for Google Documents and 6% for OpenOffice, and device makers will generally be far too risk averse to leap wholeheartedly into a new architecture, given that, even in an emerging category like netbooks, Wintel remains dominant and ARM/Linux combinations are only just appearing. Witness the first vendors hurrying to promise Chrome OS netbooks, Acer and Lenovo. These will be dual-boot models, so Windows XP will still be in there too, and could arrive before year end, bringing forward Google’s own timetable of the second half of 2010. If the reports are correct, the tight deadlines must mean some compromises on the radical design front, and Chrome OS could even be implemented, in the first instance only, as a pre-boot micro-OS, like those stripped-down Linux-based systems found on many notebooks, using systems like Hyperspace, which is getting close to Intel.
So Windows will not give up easily, and Microsoft, for all its missteps in the web and its shunning of open source economics, has powerful ammunition to throw at its fightback too. This battle will increasingly have a mobile slant, as users move to carry out the bulk of their web and office work on the move, from netbooks or smartphones. Microsoft’s first riposte after the Chrome OS launch was to launch a free, web-based version of its Office suite, with a smartphone implementation from day one.
Office Web Applications will contain slightly stripped-down browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, going head-on with apps like Google Docs, which are hosted on remote servers and accessed online. However, the mobile experience will be delivered via a standard browser interface ‘ a version optimized for small screens and mobile UIs will follow, under the name Office Mobile, but not until 2010. Both will be ad-supported.
The browser version will be made available through Windows Live, or via software licenses as part of a hosted offering from Microsoft Online Services. ‘Office 2010 was designed to deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, mobile phone, and browser,’ said Stephen Elop, business division president. ‘Documents will look the same all the way down to the formatting as you move across devices.’
Meanwhile, Bill Gates told CNET News that Chrome OS is just another Linux – “There are many, many forms of Linux operating systems out there and packaged in different ways and booted in different ways,” he said in the interview. “In some ways I am surprised people are acting like there’s something new. I mean, you’ve got Android running on netbooks. It’s got a browser in it.” While Gates was considering the shift to browser-based usage ‘ ‘what’s a browser, what’s not a browser?’ he asked philosophically ‘ Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was, predictably, more hidebound in clinging to the traditional Windows model. “We don’t need a new operating system,” he said in his keynote at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. “What we do need to do is to continue to evolve Windows, Windows Applications, IE, the way IE works in totality with Windows and how we build applications like Office.’ He pointed out that half of software activity still takes place outside the browser.
If Google is right about that pattern changing in favor of the browser, the web/cloud-oriented netbook should be the key device acting as a catalyst in the short term. The importance of this segment is seen in the 65% increase in sales of Intel’s Atom netbook processor during the chip giant’s last quarter (see separate item), but Intel faces some dilemmas as the platform evolves. So far, the first netbook wave has been based on the traditional Wintel axis. ARM-based processors like Snapdragon have not got much of a look-in yet, but if the second wave sees the netbook morph into a more mobile-optimized MID or ‘smartbook’, Atom could be under more pressure. And Linux-based systems are expected to start to steal significant share from Windows from next year, but will this OS be Chrome, Ubuntu ‘ or Intel’s choice for Atom, Moblin, recently significantly strengthened by an alliance with Nokia that will bring the telephony and true mobility features to drive Intel into smartphones?
This story was taken from a longer item in our sister paper Wireless Watch ‘ if you would like a copy of Wireless Swatch with the full version of the article, please email me the request at [email protected]