There's already a lengthy wish list as users ponder the invention of the "ideal" smartphone in 2009. All well and good. But I submit that next year's most important technology development won't have anything to do with a new feature or application.
Instead, it's going to boil down to whether mobile device makers open smartphones as widely as the personal computer. Manufactures and carriers, scared to death about the possible security implications, may decide that it's wiser to instead keep their devices closed. How long they can ignore the pressure is unclear.
That's because it's only a matter of time before smartphones supplant mobile and desktop PCs--maybe not today, but eventually. A recent report on mobile Web usage forecast the number of highly capable Internet browsers on smartphones expanding from some 130 million units this year to around 530 million by 2013.
Even before the market reaches that point, the implications for smartphone security are likely going to be profound. Not the least because smartphones will face the same sorts of security and virus breaches that have become commonplace in the PC scene. Let's face it, people are creatures of habit and if past is prologue, they'll get lazy about virus protection. Odds are they're going to commit the same stupid acts of omission and commission with their smartphones that they do with their computers.
"Smartphone owners have been sending mixed signals about whether they see the need or the responsibility to deal with security, or whether they see it as the responsibility of carriers to put it in right out of the box," said Jan Volzke, a McAfee exec I spoke with recently.
If you think about how people have used their cell phones, it's basically been for sending messages and communication only. Only recently have devices gotten more complex. When it comes to Internet viruses, worms, or phishing, it's all available.
That's where the pushing and pulling between advocates arguing more open is better and those arguing just the opposite becomes especially relevant. For the companies behind Android, the iPhone, the BlackBerry, and Symbian, more openness means more software development and thus, more creative applications in the market. But as Khoi Nguyen, Symantec's group product manager for its mobile security group, told me, the downside is that this invites the attention of malicious virus writers.
"New technologies are being introduced. Lot of these smartphones have Wi-Fi connections and lots of users will go onto Wi-Fi connections or install voice over IP apps on their devices," he said. "It will be interesting to see how that plays out and to see whether hackers try and take advantage. We expect that they will."
So why haven't there been major smartphone attacks yet?
Chalk it up to the absence of anything approaching the Microsoft "monoculture" in PCs. The smartphone market is fragmented among Symbian, Windows Mobile, Apple, Java, etc., thus making it harder for writers of malicious code to come up with their incarnation of (literally) a "killer app." Turns out then, notes Volzke, that the No. 1 protection in mobile boils down to counting noses: "It's still easier for hackers to make money working on the PC side than on the mobile side...Fragmentation protects us and equals out to a very poor return on investment (for attackers). "
Not exactly a consoling thought but it does mean that we've bought some time. How long, of course is anybody's guess.
Credit John Thompson for having impeccable timing. Of course, the timing of his resignation announcement as chief executive officer from Symantec was purely coincidental, falling just one day before Microsoft dropped an A-bomb on the antivirus security market. But better lucky than good.
Microsoft's move to kill its Windows Live OneCare PC care and security suite and replace it with free consumer anti-malware software is a big deal for the likes of Symantec, McAfee, and the other antivirus suppliers (though nobody's going to say that on the record). Competing against free is always a tough sell, and this is no exception.
The only real surprise is that it took Microsoft this long to reach this point. But it's in line with the company's practice of offering for free the features that other application makers charge for. Let's remember that back in the Stone Age, companies used to sell things like word processors and spell checkers. Know anybody in their right mind still paying for that functionality today? Those companies--if they still exist--have long moved on because those businesses dried up. You can get that stuff (and a lot more) as part of Windows.
Forget antitrust claims. There's a world of difference between today's announcement and Microsoft's takedown of Netscape in the late 1990s. Microsoft is not the dominant vendor in the antivirus market. It won't be bundling the product with the Windows operating system. Neither will it force anyone to use the application. There's just no case to be made.
If past is prologue, I'm sure some commercial antivirus makers will argue that their products remain qualitatively head and shoulders above anything Microsoft could make in the security realm. Even if that were true, it doesn't matter. The economy's on all fours and times are getting worse. Some bozos may still be ordering $200 bottles of wine for dinner, but most folks are into saving their dimes.
In that budget environment, "free" is going to ring a special bell.
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