ICS is being heralded as a unification platform that can help developers
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...another path for MeeGo's development. The silicon vendor entered into a partnership with Samsung in September 2011. The two companies will combine their efforts and create a new OS environment based on MeeGo. The new platform, called Tizen, is a standards-based platform targeted at multiple device categories, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices and smart TVs.
Making sense of the smartphone market: Definitions and segmentation
Definition of a smartphone
Informa Telecoms & Media broadly defines smartphones as mobile handsets that offer at least two out of the three of the following criteria enabled by an advanced operating system (OS):
- Advanced computing capabilities.
- Access to open APIs.
- The ability to multi-task.
Included in this definition is any OS that is classed as either open source (e.g., Linux, Android, Symbian Foundation [SF]), open architecture (e.g., Microsoft, Symbian) or semi-open/controlled (e.g., Apple, BlackBerry), although Informa recognizes that not all in the mobile industry believe that all these types can be classed as an 'advanced OS'.
The availability of open APIs is also crucial to defining a smartphone platform. A smartphone OS almost always has an open architecture so third-party application developers can access the OS APIs. The RIM/BlackBerry and Apple OSs are notable exceptions in that, while they offer smartphone multi-tasking and computing power, they are only 'semi-open' and so do not run native applications efficiently, although both have released an SDK.
Informa Telecoms & Media's smartphone totals do not yet include Samsung's Bada platform or Qualcomm’s BREW MP.
Categorizing handset OS software
Informa Telecoms & Media divides the mobile handset market into three categories (see fig. 1) - proprietary, open-source and licensable - with sub-divisions indicating openness at the
level of APIs, the UI and the stack.
Fig.1 : Segmentation of handset-OS platforms and application environments by openness
With new UI tools and claims of simplified code and design practices, ICS is being heralded as a unification platform that can help developers reach a much broader market of devices with fewer headaches. According to the Android Developers' website (as at November 2011), the most-used Android platform is Gingerbread (V2.3.x) with a 50.6% share of Android devices, followed by Froyo (V2.2) with 35.3%. Honeycomb (V3.x.x) has only a 2.4% share at present. it will be interesting to see how long it takes ICS (V4.x.x) to achieve critical mass (see fig. 2).
Fig. 2: Relative number of active* Android devices, by version, 2011
OS strategy in the smartphone market
Although Android is fully open from an applications-development perspective, the roadmap of this OS and its upgrade cycles are highly governed by Google, the main contributor to Android's code. Google is highly influential in deciding what code should be contributed to the platform and what features are integrated into the hardware. Although device manufacturers could add extra features at the UI and, to certain extent, to the application layer, they have only a little flexibility to remove core features and modify the lower layers’ software, which is mandated by Google. For example, Google mandates to the partnering OEMs the use of closedsource Google applications such as Android Marketplace and navigation.
Obviously, device manufacturers could fork the code of existing versions and create their new variants of Android. However, the challenge here is the ability of the device manufacturers to maintain and build differentiated platforms based on forked versions. This process could be very costly and time-consuming and could dramatically delay time-to-market for new products. Almost all Android partners should wait for Google to validate the launch of the new versions before they are used widely. In most cases, apart from the privileged partners, the companies don't have enough visibility of the platform roadmap to be able to align the roadmap of their own device hardware accordingly.
Although the level of control that Google has over the Android ecosystem could be seen as a disadvantage, it actually represents one of Android's main strengths because the cost of innovation is borne largely by Google; the thorough and intense contribution by Google to the Android platform enables this OS to be highly-featured and offer a high performance.
Since Google's acquisition of Motorola, there has also been suggestion that Google will favor the OEM for the latest Android release versions. This is a change from Google's early collaboration with HTC to launch its flagship Android device, the Nexus One, and then with the Samsung-made Nexus S and in 2011 with the Galaxy Nexus.
There are now 22 device manufacturers using the Android platform and by mid-2011 nearly 300 device models had been launched globally (see fig. 3). This is an impressive record bearing in mind only one device was launched in 2008 and 20 in 2009. All the major handset vendors are members of the OHA with the notable exception of Nokia.
For more on this topic, check out Informa Telecom & Media's report Smartphones and Mobile Operating Systems: Creating segmentation for an increasingly complex market from where this article has been extracted.
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