• MOST READ

• LATEST NEWS

If Google is prepared to go as far as Android, why not go the next step and produce its own handsets? Not just a single 'gPhone' but entire portfolios of Android-enabled devices. Before this statement is dismissed as an aftermath of our office Christmas party last night, it's worth asking this question: where would the Blackberry and iPhone be today if RIM and Apple had decided to rely on handset vendors instead of manufacturing (outsourced) and distributing their own phones? The answer's not hard to find since the market is littered with examples of companies that have not gone down the self-manufacturing route: poor Microsoft must be reaching for its corporate razor blades this week to learn that after just mere months on the market the iPhone is already outselling Windows Mobile devices in the US; and anyone holding their breath for the first Access Linux Platform (ALP) phone would have died approximately two years ago.

It is worth noting that both RIM and Apple could have leveraged Android-like business models - giving away their phone platforms in the hope of generating cash from email servers or iTunes downloads (respectively) once the market was seeded with millions of devices. But instead they took fate in hand and become masters of their own destiny.

Google owes its dominance of online search and advertising to a 'pre-seeded' desktop market. When Google appeared on the scene, the web browser was ubiquitous (over 90% provided by the same Redmond company) and online commerce had already secured a strong foothold amongst consumers. Mobile, unfortunately, is proving quite a different beast. In mobile, Google's single biggest challenge is finding a fast and, more importantly, prominent, route onto millions of handsets. Partnerships with mobile operators and handset makers are fine, but they are slow to negotiate and don't deliver 'surface-level' access to Google applications on the device or volume shipments.

Android is Google's attempt to seed the market by giving away for free an entire software stack, but one littered with hooks for its applications and services. But Google can't be thinking this alone will work. Offering a free software stack is simply not sufficient to catapult shipments of Android handsets into the multiple tens of millions within a timeframe fast enough to get Google excited, despite the impressive celebrity-list of cast members which Google has assembled for its Open Handset Alliance (OHA). If free or 'cheap' was all that determined success in the handset software market, then all our boot-screens would be graced by that adorable Linux penguin.

One of the biggest cost and time-to-market overheads in phone development is integration of the software stack with the device hardware. This is the main reason most phones continue to be based on in-house proprietary operating systems or just a handful of third-party platforms (e.g. Symbian/S60, Window Mobile, Palm etc) despite competitively priced operating systems and application execution environments being widely available from a plethora of software suppliers.

Pages: 1 | 2

COMMENTS

No comments yet. Be the first to add a comment!

Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...

Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...