If you look at the history of computing, very few companies manage to resurrect falling fortunes to lead their respective markets. Does this mean that once down, a company should resign itself to being out?
Apple is a famous example of a come-from-behind victory, but also a poor one: while it wins plaudits for its sexy MacBook Pro laptops, it still commands less than 10 percent of the personal computer market. Good, but not great.
In browsers, Firefox was left for dead years ago, only to get a new life and 22 percent market share. But Mozilla executive Mitchell Baker is quick to call Firefox's resurgence against Microsoft an "anomaly."
Few companies or products challenge an incumbent, at least not on its own turf. Disruption is required to displace an incumbent, following Clayton Christensen's thinking in "The Innovator's Dilemma."
Laughing all the way to the bank...
All of which makes me doubt Google's efforts to beat Apple in smartphones, and suggests Nokia and Motorola aren't going to fare much better. They simply aren't disruptive enough.
Nokia, for its part, made a big gamble open-sourcing Symbian after years of nurturing it as proprietary software to run mobile devices. The company has now discarded Symbian for its foray into Netbooks by partnering with Microsoft, a move that exacerbates its weak-kneed decision to bolster its mobile strategy with Microsoft Office. Nokia's approach leaves pundits like Joel West wondering "how Nokia will have an advantage on scale, innovation, features, branding or distribution over existing netbook makers," not to mention traditional mobile and laptop makers.
Disruption through Windows or Office? Unlikely.
Microsoft compounds the error by playing up its more expensive application for Windows Marketplace for Mobile, a strategy doomed to fail. Microsoft is playing to the developers' wish to make more money per customer, but if those customers prefer the iPhone, who cares how much Microsoft lets developers charge?
It's not just Microsoft and its crowd that are screwing up. Open source has also failed to offer a disruptive panacea. Motorola is betting big on the Google Android platform, but thus far has little to show for it.
Google, for its part, has attempted to disrupt Apple's iPhone in its apparent area of weakness: its closed nature. Google open-sourced the Android platform and invited the world of third-party developers to flock to it.
They never came.
As Slate's Farhoo Manjoo writes, "Even though it's far friendlier to developers, Android has failed to attract anywhere near the number of apps now clogging the iPhone." Android may be open, but it's not cool, and "cool" is where customers and, hence, developers are.
Which leaves me with my original question: if a vendor finds itself playing catch up, should it even bother running the race? In response I'd suggest that unless a vendor is willing to commit significant resources to a disruptive strategy, it might as well give up.
Of the companies mentioned above, only Google has a disruptive strategy, but it isn't spending nearly enough resources to tackle Apple's iPhone. Until it does, it will lose, open source or not. As for the others, neither Microsoft nor open source will save them, as they lack even a hint of disruption in their game plans.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
As news broke this week that Microsoft and Nokia would be partnering to (brace yourself!) port Office to Nokia phones, followed by the equally momentous (or not) news that (sit down for this one!) Microsoft will replace Entourage with Outlook for Mac OS X, I couldn't help but agree with Larry Dignan's assessment of the Nokia deal:
Simply put, Nokia and Microsoft are the equivalent of two St. Bernards that are forced to run in 90 degree heat and high humidity. They're big. They're winded. And they could knock you over--if they could only catch you.
I happen to compete with Microsoft in one area that it is growing from strength to strength (SharePoint), but for everyone else, Microsoft is becoming a footnote in the history of computing.
Sure, it's still big. Yes, it still competes vigorously. But with the odd exception (Bing, perhaps), Microsoft just doesn't seem to have the energy to compete anymore. One indication of this is that most of the dirt that Roy Schestowitz digs up on Microsoft is from old court records. It's as if Microsoft struggles even to be nasty anymore.
So Microsoft dresses up tired press releases like the Outlook on Mac announcement "like they've been working in the lab for some time now and have had some technological breakthrough that allows them to bring Outlook to Max OS X," as ZDNet's Sam Diaz puts it. The breakthrough would be putting Outlook in the cloud, Google Apps-style. It would be creating products that wow in the same way that Apple's do.
But Microsoft doesn't wow in its traditional businesses. Surface, yes. Project Natal, yes. But there doesn't seem to be much creative gas left in the enterprise computing tank.
And perhaps that's the point. How much innovation can there be, really, in Office? Or the Windows operating system? These are old paradigms that don't need window dressing: they need the window shattered and shifted to completely new methodologies of computing, similar to what Google (Web) and Apple (entertainment) are doing.
The desktop is a tired metaphor. This is why Google's Chrome OS, while not necessarily manna from heaven, is a welcome change, and just the sort of thing that Microsoft should be investing in, but is structurally, financially incapable of promoting in the same way and to the same degree that Google does. Because Microsoft dies if it innovates its way out of its Office and Windows businesses too quickly.
Google may be resorting to some of Microsoft's most frustrating practices, using its strong products to prop up weak siblings, but at least those siblings promise a different mode of computing.
Apple offers a premium "desktop" experience that makes old feel new. Google replaces the "desktop" with the Web. Open source commoditizes and then innovates enterprise IT, as Accenture's Alex Wied recently wrote. What does this leave Microsoft?
It leaves Microsoft desperately needing to refresh its approach to the market. Immediately. It can live off its billions for a long, long time, but it risks becoming like CA: ever-present but not very relevant.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
The big news coming out of Sun's JavaOne conference this week is that Sun (soon-to-be Oracle) is trying to outbid Microsoft as the world's biggest photocopier company. ("Redmond, start your photocopiers.")
No, Sun isn't actually building photocopiers but, like Symbian, Microsoft, and others, it is playing catch-up to Apple's App Store with its new Java Store, as The Register reports. The store is intended to be a central repository for Java and JavaFX applications, but it's unclear how it will distinguish itself.
As a consumer, I don't care if an application is built in Java. I just want to know whether it's any good, and whether it will run on my iPhone (Blackberry/Palm Pre/whatever). The Java brand matters to developers--it doesn't matter at all to end users.
Not to be outdone in imitation, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison used JavaOne to reassure Java devotees that Oracle's commitment to Java is strong and to drop a hint that Oracle/Sun may get into Netbooks, those ubertrendy devices that everyone is talking about but few are actually using.
Back to the App Store. Or, rather, app stores....
Sun isn't alone in copycat tactics. Nokia is also getting into the App Store clone wars, and Symbian has its own planned app store. Google launched its Android Market, and Microsoft, photocopiers at the ready, is beefing up its Windows Marketplace.
Pretty soon, consumers will have scads of choices of where to buy their applications...and so won't have a clue as to where to buy them.
It's not that application stores are a bad idea. It's just that it's not clear that we need a myriad of them, or that vendors will get the mileage from them that they expect, as Joel West points out.
Google Wave showed the industry that innovation is still possible, but requires vendors to discard existing paradigms for what is possible and how to deliver software.
In a similar fashion, platform vendors need to figure out novel ways to emulate the best of what Apple has delivered in its App Store, but reinvent the concept for their own customers. We don't need App Store clones. We need new ways of delivering and consuming applications.
Unless the industry is ready to declare Apple the sole source of inspiration, then different vendors should pave different paths.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Lost in the news that Nokia has finally released its Ovi application store, akin to the iPhone's App Store, is what this means for Symbian, the world's most widely used (and most easily overlooked) operating system for mobile devices.
Symbian, as an open-source operating system, should be mobile developers' darling. Instead, it continues to be an afterthought.
Symbian has been talking up its open source plans for roughly a year now, plans that should put it at the heart of an iPhone-beating application store. But that hasn't happened. Instead, Symbian has stood on the sidelines as Apple's App Store goes from strength to strength and even Google, whose Android platform is still in its infancy, entices developers with its Android Market.
Symbian, through Nokia's Ovi Store, ostensibly now has its own store, too, but it's branded by Nokia and will help Nokia far more than it helps Symbian (not the least reason being that the Ovi Store apparently doesn't distinguish between Java applications and Symbian applications).
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of mobile open-source leader Funambol, suggests that Nokia may struggle to make its Ovi Store pay, given that it's a hardware company at heart. I'm sure this is true, but it overlooks the larger issue: why isn't Symbian launching an application store, rather than Nokia?
I asked Capobianco, who gave a very reasonable response: Symbian already has its hands full:
Symbian is busy. I do not think they have time to breathe: trying to pull a full open source operating system is not an easy thing. Imagine building cloud services (like an application store) at the same time. No chance.
It's a good point, but not one that will likely placate members of the Symbian community, who have been clamoring for a Symbian application store for some time, but with little response. Symbian's David Wood suggested in December 2008 that it would take time to unleash its full power, but he may not have the time.
Symbian seemed so far ahead of the game when it announced in June 2008 that it was going to open source its software. Since then, it has apparently been heads down delivering on that promise.
Unfortunately, the world keeps moving, and Symbian risks getting left behind.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Mozilla just released the beta test version of Fennec, its mobile Firefox browser. The beta version is still slow and has a ways to go before it can compete with Apple's iPhone-ized Safari browser, but these are forgivable shortcomings, given its beta status.
No, the real problem with Fennec is that it's available only for one platform: Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet. Who cares about that device?
Seriously, while the rest of the world is experimenting first on the iPhone, why is Mozilla futzing around with a niche platform like Nokia's N810? I don't know a single person who has one, developer or otherwise. Even if Mozilla makes Fennec sing, who is going to care?
More to the point, who is going to help make it sing? Mozilla's desktop Firefox browser has been impressive in its innovations, in part because it marshalls a massive community that enables Mozilla to take advantage of resources otherwise beyond its small staff.
I solicited comment on the choice of platform but have yet to hear back from Mozilla on the matter.
Yes, as CNET reports, there are emulators for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows to help developers get a head start on other platforms. But it's not the same. And, frankly, it's not really useful: Mozilla should be targeting the top platforms for its Fennec releases, not an obscure Internet tablet.
Early on, Fennec (nee "Minimo") was available only for Windows Mobile devices, which further rendered it irrelevant to the crowd most likely to help develop it.
Sure, Apple is unlikely to welcome a competitive browser to the iPhone, but Mozilla is used to swimming against the current. You don't achieve 20 percent market share on Microsoft's Windows fortress unless you know how to build and deliver compelling value.
Ben Feldman, a software developer, noted to me in a Tweet that
Mozilla already said there won't be iPhone or Android versions because of inability/restrictions on running code they need to use. If I remember correctly, it had to do with restrictions on run non-SDK code, and Android is all Java at the moment.
So maybe it's Apple that's to blame.
If so, Mozilla needs to up the public pressure on Apple to open up the iPhone to this sort of development. Firefox is the best browser for personal computers, even better than Apple's Safari. iPhone users shouldn't have to slum with Apple's iPhone-enabled version of Safari if (or when) Mozilla creates something better. Put the pressure on, Mozilla.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
My friend and one-time colleague, Mark Watson, CEO of mobile open-source company Volantis, pens a cogent analysis of the mobile content industry, and what prevents it from becoming the gargantuan market it has long been predicted to become. Watson suggests that "fragmentation may be the very thing that is inhibiting the ability to meet market expectations for growth and proliferation of mobile content and services," and suggests that open source may offer a remedy for this problem:
...[I]t's not possible for content providers to just put a mobile web application "out there" and see the immediate uptake that they'd expect on the wider internet. Instead, they need access to the right enabling technology to reach the mass market -- development tools and runtime software that can automatically overcome fragmentation issues, without passing the burden of device knowledge to the developer.
To date, the proprietary license models surrounding such software have meant that this all-important access has been limited or even non-existent for many smaller developers and content providers. And, without ubiquitous access, the growth of the mobile internet industry as a whole has been held back. In the traditional internet environment, access has been provided through open source software models. So why couldn't the same principle be applied to mobile?
This is a perspective I hadn't considered before, but it strikes me as true. The Web has flourished in large part because it is an exceptionally open platform, one built upon open source and open standards. The mobile Web? It is precisely the opposite: walled garden, closed standards, and closed source.
Suddenly, open source provides an answer. As vendors like Nokia look to open source to build the mobile Web, we may finally get the open, thriving mobile Web we've been pontificating about for far too long.
Disclosure: I am an advisor to Volantis.
Last night in reading through my RSS newsreader I came across these two posts - one from CNET's Dave Rosenberg and the other from Funambol's Fabrizio Capobianco - and had to laugh at the odd juxtaposition of two seemingly diametrically opposed ideas:
So, which will it be? Open-source Windows Mobile or proprietary Windows Mobile, continuing to be sold at an outlandish $8 to $15 per phone for software that Businessweek's Stephen Wildstrom calls "awkward to use after a decade of tweaking by Microsoft."
It sounds like Windows Mobile should be free, and not because of any strategy to counter open-source Symbian (Nokia) or open-source Linux (Google). No, Microsoft should be giving it away because its Windows Mobile operating system is potty, despite a decade of effort to improve it. Microsoft has tried to replicate the desktop Windows experience on the handheld. Big mistake.
Microsoft's strategy? Well, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer notes, it's pretty much the same as ever: FUD the competition rather than beat it:
It's interesting to ask why would Google or Nokia, Google in particular, why would they invest a lot of money and try to do a really good job if they make no money. I think most operators and telecom companies are skeptical about Google. Handset makers are skeptical of Nokia, operators are skeptical of Google, I think by actually charging money people know exactly what our motivations are.
Just because people know that Microsoft wants to screw them doesn't mean they like it, Mr. Ballmer. First mistake.
... Read moreLast year Nokia bought out its Symbian partners for $410 million and then open sourced it. Now it would appear that the company's ambitions relative to open source have only just begun.
According to analysts quoted in this Reuters story, Linux may actually be Nokia's biggest bet, not open-source Symbian.
Nokia says Symbian plays a central role in its software strategy, but analysts say the role of Linux in the company's Nokia phones is also set to increase, reflecting a mindset shift for a company that has long shunned using software from multiple vendors.
"It is unlikely Nokia would be prepared to open-source a strategically important platform if it did not have another one in development," said Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight.
"We believe Nokia needs a more powerful mobile software platform to compete with the iPhone and similar products," Wood said, pointing to Linux as the likely candidate.
The idea seems to be that Symbian will be used for Nokia's mass-market phones, just as it is today, but Linux will power its more strategic bets, with Nokia's CFO recently calling Linux "terribly important" to the company. With that said, Nokia's head of software engineering, Ari Jaaksi recently blogged, "Nokia's vision is to bring open source and Linux to consumer mainstream." So perhaps Nokia has a bigger plan for Linux than niche devices...
Regardless, with Google pushing Linux in its Android phones and Nokia pushing Linux on its Internet tablets today, and possibly high-end phones tomorrow, Linux looks like it's set to find a yet another market to disrupt and, eventually, dominate.
In one of the biggest news stories of the year, Nokia has acquired all of the rights to the Symbian operating system (OS) and open sourced it under the Eclipse license. In one fell swoop, the need for mobile Linux just became far less obvious.
With 60 percent of the mobile market, Symbian has long been the dominant mobile OS. While Nokia has recently been dabbling with Linux, this move presumably will shift its efforts back to Symbian.
Indeed, Nokia's move may actually completely refactor the mobile industry's rising affection for Linux. As Glyn Moody suggests, developers already know Symbian and are likely to redouble their efforts there instead of moving to rival platforms like Google's Android and other mobile Linux platforms.
Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. It's not Linux, per se, that is important to mobile. It's open source. Whether through an open-source Symbian or open-source Linux, the benefits to developers is the same: Transparency, flexibility, and community.
... Read moreWith a 47.9 percent stake in Symbian, the leading mobile platform that it co-founded in 1998 and which today powers some 206 million mobile phones, Nokia has long championed it at the expense of rival platforms such as Linux.
No longer.
The mobile-phone maker is increasingly selecting Linux for Internet-enabled mobile devices, with its CFO declaring of Linux, "It's going to be terribly important."
... Read more
