Fidel Vanegas

How about navigating the smartphone’s OS market consolidation …

May 28, 2010 Computer Programming

These are amazing times to be witnessing or perhaps being part of history. Just like in the early eighties the Personal Computer wars took place and people either went fanatic about embracing personal computing or not paying attention at all. At the end most of those getting into the PC Hardware and Software sailboats were  gratified with immense returns on their investments. In late nineties the information age with the explosion of the INTERNET CLOUD SERVICES created a new generation of technology entrepreneurs which are still today on top of their wave ride. But another wave has just arrived and this one is getting in our lives faster and bigger than any of the previous ones; the mobile computing leveraging the cloud computing services is seriously growing and we are just seeing its first baby steps. I have been blogging about what smart-phone development platform I would like better to try  but the issue here is not matter of preferences, it is all about how big of a market would you like to reach and we are talking about an enormous amount of potential consumer’s of your mobile/cloud applications. These are the consumers that are buying millions of “apps” capable devices every year.

In a previous blog I mentioned why getting into Android’s speed boat might be a good idea since these platform aims not only to the mobile devices but also to home, retail and enterprise  “always connected” devices; and for always connected I mean to the INTERNET cloud of services.  In another blog I also mentioned that Android’s OS was also worth considering for being the one showing the biggest growing trend in the market, since then I have been trying to find someone actually writing about latest figures to avoid getting stock with 2009 data.

Today I got blown away after reading “Tomi Ahonen” article “Deciphering Android’s Smartphone Sales Figures“. Android OS is selling at a ratio of 100,000 units a day, yes you read ok a “DAY” and to put it simple this is coming from “61 different device models from 21 different manufacturers” as noted by the author. If you are really interested, I recommend you to also to read “Smartphones Bloodbath 1Q 2010: Full Market Analysis” from the same author.

As recommended by wise people, never put all your eggs in the same basket, and as recommended by “W. Chan Kim” and “Renee Mauborgne”; Try to find a “Blue Ocean” to navigate towards a more certain success, it is also wise to choose at least a couple of more development platforms to bet on. At this point I am leaning towards “MeeGo” and “WebOS” and the rationale behind it is that both platforms seems like would be the most “OPEN”, “FREE”, “BLUE” and “DIVERSE” from the rest of the pack but I hope you would do your very own due diligence before choosing the boat to ride this wave.

You may be asking why is that I am not even mentioning “iPhone OS platform” as an option. An I have to disclose that iPhone OS platform is very appealing, robust and stable so it is worth to be considered. Hope you were a history class fan during middle school and at least learned that reading all those books and narratives fulfill many purposes for your own formation but one of them is to teach you that learning from past experiences of our ancestors will place you in a better position to resolve similar situations at your present and possibly position yourself to have a better future. And also some wise people has said that the “Man” is the only animal that falls down by hitting the same rock.

The only argument I have is that Mr. Steve Jobs and the flock of Geniuses at Apple inc. are repeating their early eighties story, they had the best personal computer hardware and the best OS at a very early stage in the wave but they never went OPEN and lost against the flock of companies offering IBM compatible PCs. Today Apple may have a great smart-phone device and a great OS but again it is embracing a CLOSED strategy with only a handful device models, only one wireless carrier per region, only one way to deploy apps etc, etc, etc. Until Mr Steve Jobs and company do not demonstrate that this time could be different I am betting on the “OPEN” and “BLUE OCEAN”  like proposals instead and hope I am not wrong by relying on history this time.