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All posts tagged Mobile Application Development

Samsung moves to block iPhone 5 in Korea, expands its anti-Apple offensive

by bhabani on September 20, 2011 in Introduction with Comments Off

SEOUL—Samsung Electronics Co. plans to open up its homegrown mobile software platform to outside developers and device makers next year in a bid to kick-start growth in the operating system and reduce its reliance on Google Inc.’s Android in the increasingly litigious smartphone and tablet computer business.

Samsung “is planning to make Bada software an open source platform next year,” a person familiar with the situation said, adding the South Korean firm has no plans to buy a software company.

The move comes after Google announced in August it plans to purchase competitor Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion. Analysts have speculated that the Motorola deal could see handset makers that use Google’s open-source Android lag behind Motorola in securing technology support from Google in the longer term. There has also been market speculation that Samsung is seeking to buy an operating system owned by rivals.

The move is also targeted at turning Samsung’s Bada software into a widely used platform for so-called smart TVs, which incorporate advanced functions such as on-demand streaming into flat-screen displays.

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Reuters

A Samsung S II, right and Samsung Ace, left. The company is planning to make its Bada software an open-source platform next year, in an effort to reduce its dependence on Google’s Android system.

Opening up Bada is aimed at keeping up Samsung’s strong growth momentum in high-end mobile devices. The Korean company was the second-largest smartphone vendor in the second quarter after Apple Inc. by shipments, overtaking long-time leader Nokia Corp., according to researcher Strategy Analytics. Its mobile business started to take off shortly after its Galaxy smartphone hit the market in June 2010.

That momentum has recently come under threat from Apple, which has taken aim at Samsung’s smartphones and tablet PCs with world-wide legal action seeking sales bans based on Apple’s allegations that Samsung copied its designs. In return, Samsung has launched countersuits against Apple, responding that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company violated wireless-technology patents held by Samsung.

Samsung, the world’s largest technology company by revenue, is traditionally strongest in hardware development. By opening the Bada platform to external developers, Samsung is taking a similar route as Google, which allows software engineers outside the company to adapt and modify the source code for Android for free.

Samsung launched Bada in late 2009 and the platform is used on the company’s cheaper smartphones in Europe and emerging markets. The company doesn’t disclose sales figures for Bada and Android-based phones. Other global handset makers such as Nokia have had challenges in growing the market for their own operating systems. Nokia, which sells phones using its Symbian operating software, opted to partner up with Microsoft Corp. earlier this year to make phones using the U.S. company’s Windows software.

Analysts say Samsung has to increase support for other alternative platforms in the high-end smartphone and tablet markets, at least in the short term, to lighten its heavy reliance on Android. Last week, Samsung unveiled its new 11.6-inch tablet device powered by a new version of Microsoft’s Windows software.

“Hardware vendor-controlled platforms that move from closed to open do not have a great track record in the past. Nokia failed dismally with Symbian, for example,” said Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics.

“For Samsung to be successful with opening Bada it will need to be launched in the United States market, because that is where the most powerful developers and consumers are found. If Bada does not get traction in the huge U.S. market, then the odds will be stacked against success,” he said.

It’s also unclear whether the strategy to push Bada as a global standard for advanced TVs will work. Unlike in the mobile industry, there are no dominant software platforms for smart TVs, which remain a high-end niche product.

“In theory, it makes sense to turn Bada into a multiplatform operating system because that will increase the total addressable market for service developers. But in reality, it is not yet fully clear whether Bada can scale up to bigger displays. For example, can the OS cope with the greater number of pixels in a large display?” Mr. Mawston said.

Samsung, the world’s largest maker of flat-screen televisions, currently sells a range of smart TVs globally running on an in-house operating system. There is no industry-wide consensus of what makes a smart TV, but Samsung defines that it should have built-in computer-style processors and a software platform so custom-made applications can run on the sets in the same way as they do on computers and smartphones. Early this year, Samsung said it aims to sell a total of 45 million flat-screen TVs in 2011. Of the total, it also plans to ship 12 million units of smart TVs this year.

Last year, Google partnered with Sony Corp. and Logitech International SA to launch a TV that lets users access the Internet and search for live television listings from their TV sets, but the device’s high price tag and the complicated interface have weighed on sales.


Source: http://online.wsj.com

Mobile operators will lose voice services to mobile platforms

by bhabani on September 12, 2011 in Android, Introduction, iPad, iPhone, Social Media with Comments Off

Future Mobile

Imagine buying your SIM-free mobile phone from a local electronics store and logging into your Google or Apple account as soon as you turn the phone on for the first time. Then imagine having the phone ready to use for voice calls with a phone number provided to you by Google Talk or Skype, and ready to access email, YouTube or Facebook.

That same phone automatically hooks to your home Wi-Fi or any of the available 3G, WiMax or LTE networks without you even knowing (or caring) which specific network its running on at the moment. No longer do you have to belong to a specific carrier — your phone automatically picks the strongest and cheapest network option at any given time. Your network access, along with voice, app/in-app purchases and everything else are provided to you by the mobile platform provider. The carriers are only there to run network infrastructure and sell bandwidth to two to three mobile platform providers.

Let’s face it, the only two things that still connect carriers to consumers are the voice number and billing for the network access. SIM card technology is rudimentary — you can easily conduct user authentication using a simple login, just like Apple does on iPods when you want to buy apps or songs from the iTunes store.

Looking into the future, even the phone number itself will disappear. Why bother with all these numbers when you can just place a call directly to anybody’s Facebook profile?

This future is inevitable, and the changes are coming very soon. With mobile platform providers running the show today, carriers simply have no way of stopping the process. Not having any control over the platform vendors — for instance, via a consortium that would centrally license Android or other mobile platforms to equalize the balance of power between the platform provider and the carriers/OEMs — they will eventually give up on their ambitions to control the user. Just read the Google/Motorola/Skyhook story to see how it happens.

It only takes one carrier to crack and start selling bandwidth to Google, Microsoft or Apple; all other carriers will simply have no choice but to follow. It’s like the prisoners’ dilemma from economic textbooks: If both prisoners don’t talk, both win. But if separated and one is promised a way out (or an easier sentence) and he talks first, then game theory suggests the winning strategy for each prisoner is to talk. In other words, one of them will crack. They are nowhere close to being united enough to stand together, even in the short to mid-term. Look how effortlessly Apple, then everyone else, took over their app distribution businesses — something that only five years ago would have been totally unthinkable.

Most likely, these first-to-crack carriers will be tier-two low-cost carriers outside the U.S., possibly acquired by, but likely just partnering with, the big platform players. Those carriers will have a high incentive to enter such partnerships, as their networks are already optimized for low costs (lean, efficient cost structure without heavy marketing, support, premium services overheads, better network logistics, etc.). Short to mid-term, the strategy will be against tier-one carriers, who have a high marketing/operations cost burden. The UK actually looks like a very logical place to start, especially when some UK carriers have already been experimenting with Skype phones, which were successful to the degree that price-sensitive younger audiences actually started to carry Skype phones as their second device.

It will probably be a while before most users fully switch to non-carrier-provided voice/network services — maybe five to seven years — but it’s only a matter of time, as the new model is so much more compelling to the consumer. Signing up for multiple phone numbers as easily as opening email accounts, getting the best and the cheapest network at any given time in any spot (finally, no more service drops!), free and unlimited voice/video on WiFi networks, cheap roaming even when overseas on a local service, and so many more benefits are poised to take off.

Once this happens, carriers fall into a very undesirable position. Network access becomes an absolute commodity, much more so than in the case of landline ISPs. The latter at least have relatively high switching costs, while a mobile phone is already connected to every network available in its physical location. This means carriers compete head to head over who sells the cheapest bandwidth to Google, Apple or Microsoft, and only those most economically fit with the strongest network logistics survive in the game. This time, the brand, handset subsidies or any other marketing tricks are of no help — it’s all about economics.

What’s really interesting is what could happen with next-generation networks. As carriers see their margins disappear almost entirely and the profits shift to mobile platforms, operators won’t accumulate enough profits to be able to invest in next-generation networks. Nor does the marginalized economics of the network business promise them high ROI. Mobile platforms do the opposite: By that time, they’ll have accumulated profits for all the value-added services, so they’ll have both the money to invest and the strong economic incentive to do so. This will also be very lucrative to mobile platforms politically, as owning services end to end, from cloud to network to devices, enables a whole new level of control and market power.

Source: gigaom.com