The Dominant Mobile OS in 3 Years Will Be…

Every now and then a new forecast will be released that claims some sort of radical change in the overall market share of product X will occur in the next 3, 4, or 5 years. The latest Gartner study fits perfectly into that template. Gartner is saying that Google’s Android OS will rocket to second place among the mobile operating systems by 2012, behind Symbian. It sounds shocking and almost scary for those that make their living off Apple or Windows phones.

What I don’t like about these predictions is simple – no one can see the future.  In the tech industry, every time there’s a major challenge produced, the analysts come out with these wild predictions about how the world will change because of this new challenge. For the most part, it never happens. There are some times when it does come true, but that’s so rare. I can recall when IBM launched OS 2.1, the analysts predicted that it would capture some ridiculous share of the market in the next 2 years.  They had pages and pages of reasons why this was going to be the case.  I think we all know how that turned out. This is just one example.  Tech history is littered with failed predictions.

So will Google manage to move all the way to second place in 3 short years? If the competition doesn’t change and role with the tide, then sure.  But I really don’t see Palm, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM sitting still over the next few years.  Right now, in the mobile space, you need to be moving forward at a aggressive pace or risk being left behind.  Microsoft was caught taking a nap recently and are already reacting and pumping things up to the level where is should have been. A couple years ago, Palm was caught napping and came very close to losing everything.  They’ve finally started to turn things around and with any luck they could have some serious market share in a couple years.

Apple and Google are here to stay.  And for that matter, so is Microsoft, RIM, and Symbian. All of these guys will have a significant share of the market in 3 years time. I’m not so sure about Palm and Linux but that’s a rant for another day.  Unfortunately, these forward looking statements are not about to go away.  The public and the press need to remember that the future has not been decided yet and that anything can happen.

(source = PPCGeeks)

Where Are All the Flipping Smartphones?

When you look around at the type of mobile phone that the average person is using you’ll notice that the majority of phones are flip based. I’m talking about the average person like your mother, Aunt, Cousin, Grandparents, etc… Not the techno-geeks or early adapters. Just the average Joe and their phone. They’re typically cheap flip based devices that offer nothing more than the ability to make phone calls and send some text messages.

So what am I getting at? Well, there is a demand for the flip form factor. There’s no question that there are a number of dumb flip phones on the market today. But where are all the smart ones? RIM recently announced a new BlackBerry device to their line-up, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip. None of the other smartphone manufacturers have a flip phone in their product lineup. HTC did have that SmartFlip device, which was a pretty nice first attempt at making a flip phone. Especially if you had the Cingular version with more memory and a larger battery. Before that, we had Motorola, who made 2 different flip based smartphones – the MPX 200 and 220. While the 220 was plagued with problems, both devices where extremely popular for their time. That’s it for the Windows Mobile camp. Sony Ericsson had that P990 Symbian based device a number of years back. However, that wasn’t really a flip phone. It was more a PDA with a protector that covered the keyboard. And Nokia has the Communicator device, but that’s not a flip phone, it’s more of a clamshell. You can still make and answer calls without flipping the phone open. You only need open the phone to use the keyboard. Aside from the Communicator, Nokia does have a Series 60 flip phone – the N76. However, the N76 is already 2 years old.

It certainly looks like all the major manufacturers are ignoring this market segment, except for RIM. I don’t understand why these companies are avoiding such a popular form-factor. There’s no doubt that people like the flip design, so why not offer more smartphone devices with it? I can understand that there is some concern because of the hinge and the risk of that breaking, but I think the majority of manufacturers have been able to make solid hinges that don’t easily break.

The only other concern that I can think of is that the form factor doesn’t allow for easy text entry. Most standard flip phones are using T9 with the standard 12 key layout. Smartphone users tend to want a full QWERTY layout. While this could be hard with the traditional flip phone, I can’t imagine it being a show stopper. I actually prefer the landscape screen found on most messenger style devices over the portrait screen found on the typical flip phone. Combine the full QWERTY with the landscape screen and you’ll have a wider flip phone than most. Nothing’s wrong with that. The option is to use the portrait screen with a SureType-like keyboard. This would provide the traditional flip form factor.

I can’t imagine any other reasons on why this design hasn’t happened yet. I’m growing sick of the traditional smartphone designs. It’s time for a change, let’s see if any manufacturer is willing to step up to the table.

Motorola Accuses RIM of Poaching Employees

It seems like Motorola is having a pretty hard time as of late. Not only are the feeling the pressure of increased competition in the mobile phone space, but now they are also having to deal with Research In Motion poaching key employees. Motorola claims that RIM has targeted 40 employees who can’t work for a competitor without revealing corporate / trade secrets. It’s expected that these employees are working on a new touch screen mobile device for RIM, code-named Thunder.

When it comes to mobile devices, Motorola has 2 lines, consumer and industrial. The consumer line tends to be non-touch screen based. But the industrial line, better known as Symbol, is a full blown ruggedized device running Windows Mobile/CE and is touch screen enabled. So, if RIM is poaching employees for use on their touch screen device, does that mean we can expect a RIM based Windows Mobile-based device?

[Source]

Microsoft & RIM Announce Live Search for BlackBerry Devices

Today Microsoft and RIM announced that they are working together to integrate Live Search into RIM’s popular BlackBerry devices. Research in Motion still has the dominate share of the mobile market, despite the success of Apple’s iPhone which comes pre-loaded with Google’s search functionality on the device. Google has already displayed it’s Android mobile OS with their search functionality built in. Once the OS is released, Google will have a small but significant corner of the mobile eco-system etched out. If Microsoft can leverage their existing Windows Mobile market share and add RIM’s BlackBerry share, they will have a solid lead in mobile search.

Live Search is already available for BlackBerry devices (in beta) and Windows Mobile devices. You can download it directly to your smartphone by visiting http://wls.live.com using your phones mobile browser. The BlackBerry version will be released before the end of the year and is expected to offer better integration with the OS and browser.

The full press release is available at the Microsoft Press Pass website.