Nokia and Google: Too much emphasis on the mobile OS?

With Nokia’s acquisition of Symbian, it is going head-to-head with Google Android and Windows Mobile to make a run at building the top software platform for mobile phones. The problem is that all three of them could be making some bad assumptions about the way the mobile phone market — particularly the smartphone market — is going to unfold over the next five to ten years.

They all seem to be assuming that the mobile phone market will mirror the computer market, which is dominated by a small handful of platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The reality is that there is likely to be a much larger diversity of platforms in the mobile world.

In addition to Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, there is now the iPhone with its OS X-based platform. And, beyond those four, there’s a plethora of phone makers that run their own proprietary operating systems on a variety of phones, sometimes with a customized OS for each phone.

It’s going to be very hard to put the genie back on the bottle in the phone market. All of these different types of phones are already out there and will be in use for years to come. Some may argue that the smartphone market does not have as many players as the general mobile market, but the lines are blurring between standard mobile phones and smartphones.More>>

Nokia to acquire Symbian: make it open source

GLOBAL - Nokia today announced a plan to acquire the 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn't already own and set up the Symbian Foundation, making the platform open source in the process. The ambition is to create "the most attractive platform for mobile innovation and drive the development of new and compelling web-enabled applications" Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

The full press release is below:

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million.

Nokia has received irrevocable undertakings from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Siemens International Holding BV to accept the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares subject to the offer. Nokia also expects Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to accept the offer.

The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced today by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.

"This is a significant milestone in our software strategy" said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia. "Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices. Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation. This will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers."More>>

Will Android have a tougher time than expected?

Access Co has been developing its own Linux ecosystem for years, and when it purchased Palm Source in 2005 it was expected that mobile Linux would go mainstream.

Unfortunately little has happened and at this year’s Wireless Developers Forum, Access had great ideas but little to show.

So Android should have a clear run. However the industry is following a different path led by LiMo, an association which includes many Android supporters plus a number of major networks and developers.

This is now a race between Google’s Open Handset Alliance and LiMo. In that case Android and HTC will be the winners.

Adobe Finally Takes On Apple, Google In Mobile

Today Adobe announced a new hugely important strategic initiative regarding the Flash Player called the Open Screen Project. The upshot: It's finally ready to start competing with Google and Apple for mobile platform developers.

There are three keys to the announcement. First Adobe (ADBE) is removing all licensing restrictions and fees for the Flash Player and the SWF file format that the player runs. OEMs will now be able to embed Flash at no additional cost and with no restrictions.

Second, the next version of the Flash Player and the AIR runtime will have two separate parts. The layer that is platform specific will be separate from the layer that is the real brains of the Flash system. This means that it will be easy to embed the Flash player any new non-PC device offering. All you will have to do is port the platform specific layer to your device. And Adobe will be providing a reference implementation so that you can see exactly how to do it, presumably just making minor changes related to the specifics of your platform.

And finally, the next version of the Flash Player will be the same across all devices. This means that you will be able to use Flex, Flexbuilder, and Thermo to build applications that run on mobile and embedded devices. This will *radically* simplify the process of making applications that run on mobile devices. It really is, essentially *the* next generation mobile operating system.

It's not an OS in the traditional sense. That will continue to be some form of Unix, or more generally,Linux. But the Flash platform will become the premier application development target for devices.

This is a direct shot across the bow of both Apple (AAPL) with the iPhone and Google (GOOG) with Android. Adobe has far more 3rd-party developers than Apple does with Mac OS/iPhone or Google does with Android, and if they can make it totally seamless to develop for desktop or mobile, it will radically change the dynamics of the business. Presumably Adobe will be able to port this next version of Flash to the iPhone as well, though the politics of that will be interesting given Steve Jobs' antipathy for Flash.

From a business perspective, Adobe seems to have everyone onboard that matters including Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm, Samsung, Intel, and lots of others. Now that Flash is free and presumably easy to embed, it instantly becomes the mobile and embedded software platform to beat.

Nokia ties up with Google

World's largest cellphone maker Nokia has tied up with Google to facilitate web search on its products, even as it launched models offering new services, moves that could consolidate its leadership position.

The integration will begin in select markets on Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic. Google search will be extended to additional models in the future.

Ultimately, Nokia will make Google search available to its customers in over 100 countries around the world, serving mobile owners speaking more than 40 languages.

At the GSM World Congress, the company also launched a number of new devices including phones that offer location- based navigation services.

Nokia improved its market share to 40 per cent last year and hopes to better it.

Launching four mobile phones -- N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 and Nokia 6219 Navigator, the company said these were no longer mobile phones but mini personal computers.

"As we continue to free the internet from the limitations of the desktop, we are taking mobility into a completely new realm of possibility," Nokia Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.

The devices exhibit different location-based and multimedia experiences from pedestrian navigation to geo-tagging and movie viewing to video and photo sharing. The phones would be in the market from second quarter this year.

Commenting on i-phones from Apple and other companies, Nokia officials said they were ready to face the competition.

Nokia Executive Vice President (Mobile Phones) Kai Ostamo, while commenting on its new range of phones, said "we would like to be called Mobile Experience Company and not just a mobile phone company."

Vodafone warns of threat from Google and Apple

Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin has warned the industry to get creative about mobile services or risk becoming marginalised by the arrival of new kids on the block such as Apple and Google.

In his keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona on Tuesday, Sarin said: "We must, as an industry, learn to both partner and compete with these new players because our customers want to experience entertainment such as music downloads, mobile TV, user-generated content such as YouTube, and social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. We have to welcome these new ideas and yet make sure we are relevant for our customers."

Sarin also called for an end to the competition between WiMax and LTE (the long-term evolution of 3G), saying WiMax could be happily accommodated under the LTE umbrella, rather than having "duelling standards".

Sarin said: "In the end… technology is not what matters; it's services, it's applications, it's experiences."

Because mobile customers now want to communicate via a variety of methods — be it SMS, email or social-networking websites — Sarin said the industry must step up to the challenge and "be in all these places".

"We must not allow ourselves to become bit-pipes and let somebody else do the services work," Sarin warned. Read More>>

AOL Announces Open Mobile Platform

AOL today announced the Open Mobile Platform, which the company plans to release to developers this summer. AOL says the software development platform will help developers create applications across major mobile device operating systems including BREW, Java, Linux, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. The platform will consist of three parts: an XML-based scripting language, a device client, and an application server.

AOL's platform differs from efforts like Google's Android, which was demoed today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in that it isn't a singular phone operating system that attempts to lock users into one way of doing things. Rather, it is a software development platform for multiple operating systems that aims to make it easier for developers to deploy apps across the various mobile OS and platform options.

Lest you think the entire endeavor is completely altruistic on AOL's part, the Open Mobile Platform is also the unified "software module" that AOL hinted at last September, which the company hopes will push its services and APIs onto as many mobile devices as possible. The platform is designed to play nice with third-party APIs, as well as those from AOL including AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Video, MapQuest, Userplane, Truveo, and Winamp. AOL is counting on developers to create mobile applications that lean on AOL services and can be deployed across multiple mobile device operating systems. Read More>>

GPhone Prototype Expected at Mobile World Congress

It's a big week coming up in the Mobile Web world. The annual Mobile World Congress is being held in Barcelona, 11-14 February. The early buzz is around Google's much (and oft) rumored GPhone. According to the Times Online, Google "is expected to produce a prototype mobile handset" at the show. Even if Google itself doesn't unveil a phone, there will be plenty of Android prototypes on display (Google's open source Mobile Operating System).

CNN is reporting that "as many as one dozen handset makers and chip companies are expected next week to unveil mobile phone prototypes designed to operate with Google Inc.'s (GOOG) new Android software platform".

We'll just have to wait and see if Google itself comes out with a phone, although our network blog last100 speculated recently about a potential partnership with Dell. Check out a classic last100 post from last August if you're interested in some visual concepts on what a Gphone may look like! Read More>>

First Google Android phone may debut next week

The first mobile phone to incorporate Google’s open-source Android platform will debut at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a source close to British chipmaker ARM Holdings has told Reuters.

According to the source, ARM, a U.K.-based company that makes embedded and graphics processors, as well as processors for mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs, will introduce a prototype for a telephone that uses Android as its operating platform as soon as next Monday.

Google and its partners in the Open Handset Alliance unveiled their open source Android platform last November with the goal of spurring third-party developers to create new and innovative applications for mobile devices. Read More>>

Google to Launch a Search Engine for Ringtones

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google works on a search engine for mobile media content that will include ringtones and games.

"With the new system, users would search for a piece of content -- such as ringtones -- and would get back a list of companies that provide it, with links letting them easily purchase the material. (...) The company has been working for months with content providers -- including large entertainment companies and smaller mobile media aggregators -- to index their material and make it available via mobile search. (...) The Internet company has considered including a social-networking component that would let users of Google's Gmail email service exchange content, one person familiar with the initiative said. Google declined to comment."

Google has launched mobile versions for most of its services, including search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube and it's now testing AdSense for mobile content. But a search engine for ringtones and games could jeopardize Google's partnerships with many carriers that want to keep the customers inside their "walled gardens". There aren't many good services in this space (Mogmo comes to my mind), so Google's search engine will actually fill a void. Until some carriers decide to block it.

Google testing AdSense for cell phones

Google (GOOG) has begun testing text ads on cell phones, offering publishers a way to make money off of their mobile sites, the company confirmed to The Utility Belt moments ago.

What is Ads for mobile?
Well it kind of does what it says on the tin, Ads for mobile allows publishers to place ads contextual advertising on website designed for mobile (cell) phones to monetise that traffic.

Is Big 'G' Planning for Mobile domination?

Anyone can get the Web on their cellphone these days. But now it seems Google is interested in so much more than that. It has reportedly approached the Federal Communications Commission recently about obtaining wireless spectrum, the base upon which mobile-phone networks are built, in the U.S. agency's next auction.

Never mind the potential buyout of Bell Canada Inc. or Apple Inc.'s much-hyped introduction of the iPhone yesterday, there's a much larger, game-changing force in telecommunications lurking just around the corner.

Search engine giant Google Inc. has been putting together a massive cable network to provide customers around the world with telecommunications services ranging from broadband Internet to home and mobile phones.More>>