For years, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM have used Linux to lower the cost of their hardware and software-based solutions, while keeping profit margins fat and healthy. Google, ever the quick learner, is now doing the same with Android.
The mobile market will never be the same.
Take a peek inside the Android.
(Credit: Google)Just as Google and others are using open-source software to lower barriers to adoption of their proprietary cloud offerings, so, too, is Google using open source to reduce the cost of mobile computing in order to drive uptake of its proprietary search-related advertising business in mobile.
Google CFO Patrick Pichette said as much in Google's most recent earnings call:
If we move forward the adoption of these smartphones by having a lower cost infrastructure because it's open source...all the (mobile) searches...will happen so much faster.
Open source: it's all about peace, love...and capitalism.
However, Android is more than just a way to shave a few dollars off a phone's purchase price. Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation's executive director, declared recently that Linux offers "greater flexibility, freedom from lock-in, and lack of licensing costs."
He's right, but I'd argue that the "lock-in" argument is a bit of a throwaway line and the cost advantages are of secondary importance. The real value for would-be Android developers is its flexibility, which in turn helps to corral a community of interested participants.
Google Android's open-source license also encourages broad experimentation with the platform by a range of device manufacturers. Some handsets will be flops, but others, like Verizon's forthcoming Motorola-developed Droid, look likely to succeed.
Google can play the odds because, unlike Apple, it hasn't tied its fate to any one device. Instead, it has intentionally spread Android's risk--and chances of success--through its open-source license.
It's genius. Sheer genius.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seems determined to revive Microsoft's stale desktop monopoly, as reported by The New York Times and, in mobile, is focused on toppling Apple's iPhone "momentum." But he probably should be more worried about Android as a long-term community play.
Mobile is the future, and that future is going to be heavily influenced by open source.
Linux has succeeded in servers precisely because a wide array of Microsoft competitors have converged on it as a way to club Microsoft. The same is happening in development tools (Eclipse), browsers (Firefox), Web servers (Apache), and more.
In Android, then, Microsoft isn't simply competing with Google. It's competing with the entire industry--or will be, soon enough.
Google, for its part, should continue to spearhead Android development, but must find ways to open Android further to outside involvement. Otherwise, it stands to lose out to open-source alternatives like Symbian if they do a better job at encouraging community uptake. Google really doesn't need to control the platform to succeed.
In fact, given that its revenue derives from proprietary services delivered on top of the Android platform, its best chance for success is to do whatever is necessary to further proliferate Android.
Android is powerful with Google behind it, but it would be much more so with Nokia, Palm, and others. As in the server war, such vendors may find it advantageous to abandon their "Unix" variants to combine behind Android.
That is the power of open source, and it's how Google has made such intelligent use of Android. It's not about freedom from lock-in; it's about freedom to demolish competitors and serve customers by shifting the rules of the game.
To beat Apple in mobile, Google is going to need more open-source developers. But it's also going to need more Google.
Take me to your leader(s), earthling
Such developers, however, also want more choice than Apple offers them. Somewhere in the resolution to that tension is a big market opportunity for Google, one that carriers and consumers are going to give it time to figure out.
Google's Android efforts have looked Apple-esque at times, as Linux Journal notes. This is a problem. Google may not have discovered "the evil room" on its Silicon Valley campus, but even a hint of "evil" from Google could send developers packing.
But Google is no Apple: its DNA meshes well with that of open-source developers', as Tom Foremski notes. The company really doesn't want to do evil.
Its dilemma, however, is that it may not be able to avoid some of the "evil" that upsets open-source developers. Like control. Control is critical to good software, something that the best proprietary and open-source software has long demonstrated. Linux, for example, depends upon Linus Torvalds serving his role as "benevolent dictator."
The difference is that it's easier for Linus Torvalds to be autocratic than Google. He's an individual. Google is a company.
Even so, Google isn't going to beat Apple at its own game (i.e., deathlike grip over all aspects of a product). To win, Google must marshal an external development community, one that doesn't like to be managed and, as Dan Lyons (aka "Fake Steve Jobs) points out, one for whom rebellion in the form of 'forking' is par for the course.
Google is therefore left with a strategy that depends upon diversity not wanting to be overly diverse.
This is a challenge, but also an opportunity.
If the company can learn to exercise Linus Torvalds-like control without appearing to dominate Android, the project will win. It certainly has a lot of people cheering for it. It also has growing experience that suggests it's learning to walk the fine line between community and control.
As CNET writes, "device makers see Android as their biggest hope to compete against Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices in the smartphone market." Bingo. Carriers can't afford to cede all control to Apple and RIM, and consumers remain individualistic enough to demand devices that fit their needs, whether they're based in India or Canada or Armenia.
The world isn't going to abandon that diversity to uniformly converge on the iPhone. It's just not. There is no one handset to rule them all, Sauron-style.
And so long as it's not, developers will give Google leeway and time to figure out the optimal development model for Android.
While TechCrunch highlights technical problems with Android's handset support, this strikes me as a short-term, highly solvable problem. It's a relatively safe bet that Google will figure out ever easier ways to manage development across diverse devices, as others have done.
Volantis, for example, offers an open-source approach to manage Web development across an ever broadening array of mobile devices: 6,000 and counting. (Disclosure: I am an adviser to Volantis.)
Google could do the same. It has time. As ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn writes:
Google's cost structure gives it the power to be patient, something no other market player has. The Android bandwagon is built on this patience.
With over $4 billion in mobile advertising revenue that Coda Research Consultancy is projecting for 2015, it's worth it to Google to figure this out. I suspect that, like Red Hat's certified Linux, over time we'll see Google certify Android applications. There are more mobile devices than different servers and server architectures, but it's essentially the same problem.
Developers may find Google's control of Android irksome, but it's less burdensome than Apple's winner-take-all-and-we're-the-only-winner approach, and it's worth it to see device compatibility issues dissipate.
Open source, despite its community roots, often doesn't become mainstream until corporations get involved. There are notable exceptions--Mozilla Firefox and the Apache Web server being just two--but often it is corporate self-interest that provides the mechanism to deliver the value of community-developed open source to a mainstream audience.
While the mobile market remains highly fragmented, therefore, I take it as a very encouraging sign that Google has thrown its considerable heft behind Android, its open-source mobile operating platform.
Sure, we've had mobile open-source companies for years. I was part of one of the first: Lineo, an embedded Linux vendor that distributed an optimized Linux distribution for PDAs like the Sharp Zaurus. More recently, Funambol has proved popular as a mobile application server, specializing in synchronization technology.
But just as Linux's big moment on the server came with IBM's $1 billion commitment to fund its development and marketing, so, too, will the mobile open-source market come into its own with Google Android.
Android has recently pulled ahead of Microsoft's Windows Mobile in the smartphone market, according to data from AdMob, hitting a global 5 percent market share (in terms of access to mobile ads, not units shipped), while continuing to grow 25 percent month over month.
While Microsoft dominates on the desktop, with even its not-yet-released Windows 7 beating Linux, according to W3C data, Linux, and increasingly Google's Android flavor of Linux, is making a big push on smartphones.
To fuel this, Google has been upping its commitment to developers, most recently with an upgrade to its Android Market, but also pushing its handsets into an ever-widening array of handset manufacturers and wireless carriers, most recently Sprint.
I've suggested that the only way to beat Apple's iPhone is with a big commitment of resources. Google appears to be doing this, but in an intelligent way: it is trying to attract a wide community of developers to share the burden of beating the iPhone.
InfoWorld's Neil McAllister thinks it's not working, but I'm more sanguine. So long as Google invests marketing and development resources to Android, the open-source operating platform has a good chance.
And, importantly, so long as Google remains committed to mobile, there's a very good opportunity for other mobile open-source players to draft on its momentum. An entire open-source industry has grown up in the shadow of IBM's original $1 billion commitment to Linux.
The same can happen in mobile, and this time it will be Google's turn to lead.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Apple is currently king of the smartphone world. The iconic iPhone has doubled in market share since 2008, rising to 10.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009 from 5.3 percent in 2008, according to Gartner.
But Apple may be in for a Microsoft moment. Just as a steady stream of well-heeled competitors like IBM, Red Hat, and Oracle are aligning themselves with Linux as a way to undermine Windows in servers and desktops, so, too, are crowds starting to form around Google's open-source Android in the smartphone market.
Linux: the bete noir of proprietary operating system vendors.
Samsung, LG, Motorola, and others are placing increasing stakes on Android. Indeed, BusinessWeek reports that Motorola has "one bullet left in its gun" and this bullet is Android. It can't afford to let the "iPhone killer" draw blanks. "Motorola's handset business depends on Android," as ZDNet's Larry Dignan suggests.
Importantly, Android is growing in the area that defines the iPhone's success more than anything else: applications. BusinessWeek's Stephen Wildstrom says that "Android is now a contender" in large part due to its growing array of third-party applications:
The Android Market is surprisingly well-stocked, considering the relatively small number of Android phones in use....[W]ith support from Google and from handset makers desperate to come up with something that can mount a serious challenge to the iPhone, Android could become a major player.
And not a moment too soon. With Apple iPhone margins as high as 60 percent by some estimates, the market already seems ripe for an open-source competitor to bring prices down while improving choice. I love my iPhone, but as Android-based phones become smarter and slicker, I just might change camps.
It appears that I'm not alone. The "droids" are popping up everywhere:
As with Linux in the server market, the smartphone industry is filled with second-place competitors. Most of these have a strong interest in banding together behind a Linux-based solution, in this case Android, though there is also momentum for Linux-based LiMo and non-Linux Symbian.
It may take a soup-to-nuts, integrated solution like the iPhone to create a market, but it takes an open-source solution like Android to foster choice and lower costs.
Game on.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Google's still-nascent efforts to dominate the mobile market, already reeling from Apple's surging iPhone platform, were dealt another blow on Thursday when Intel and Novell announced that they will collaborate to promote Intel's Moblin operating system, a rival Linux distribution for mobile devices.
Whereas Google is initially targeting smartphones with Android (though an Android-based Netbook has apparently been released), Intel is targeting Moblin at Netbooks.
Additionally, Android and Moblin aren't simply two different Linux distributions, in the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are. Android and Moblin use Linux in different ways, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open source technologist, suggested to me:
Moblin is Linux for mobile devices, (and its) first focus is on Netbooks. Android is an (operating system) for phones that uses a Linux kernel...very different.
Novell's Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing, said in a follow-up conversation:
Moblin 2.0 is the first open-source Linux software stack and technology framework designed from the ground up for the Netbook device type. Essentially, Moblin plans to start at the Netbook layer of the stack, and then work its way down to the smaller mobile devices. Given Novell's strength in delivering desktops based on Linux, it made sense for us to collaborate closely with Intel to deliver the optimal user experience on Netbooks.
Given Apple's rising dominance in smartphones and Symbian's lingering power in other mobile devices, this seems like a smart, strategic move. The Netbook market is still wide open, with Apple currently disdaining to enter it and Microsoft bleeding cash to hold its ground against Linux.
Though Ubuntu made the first forays for Linux in the Netbook market, could it be Novell and Intel that end up dominating it?
Maybe. Maybe not. The one sure thing, at least for now, is that Microsoft may win the short-term Netbook war, but it still needs a long-term, winning game plan for mobile.
The mobile market is fascinating because it is uprooting long-held beliefs about how and where to compete in software. Intel, Google, and Apple, each fiercely contending for dominance, share a common strategy: they're investing in the operating system but planning to make their money elsewhere (Atom chips, in Intel's case; advertising and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Google's; hardware and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Apple's).
Such strategies stand in stark contrast to Microsoft, which persists in trying to monetize its mobile Windows platform.
Small wonder, then, that Microsoft is losing the mobile battle. It's fighting with the wrong ammunition.
Back to Google. While it seems clear that Intel's Moblin initiative is an attempt to fend off Google's looming Android threat, there's probably enough time for Intel and Novell to stake out a strong position in Netbooks that Google will struggle to overcome.
Regardless, the one player left out in the cold in all this activity is Microsoft. Google, Novell, Intel, and Apple are each putting hefty resources into winning the mobile market, but doing so in a way that undermines Microsoft's traditional approach of licensing only the software. Microsoft's Xbox experience suggests that it can do hardware right, but will it be able to catch up if it starts chasing its competition?
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
While Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco thinks Dell's move into smartphones is a good idea or, at least, the way it's going about it. I can't agree. Has he forgotten Dell's MP3 player?
The rest of the world certainly has.
In the smartphone market, as Capobianco notes, Dell is planning to do an open-source Google Android-based phone and a Windows Mobile-based phone, which he thinks makes sense:
I think it is a smart move. They do not take risk, they do not expose themselves too much, they will pick the winner later. The only risk of not making a move is not making a move. If the market moves too fast (it always does) they risk to be defocused and have to jump on one bandwagon quickly, dropping the other one. Motorola has done exactly that. But they are desperate. Dell is not.
It's true that Dell's open/closed approach is a less risky way than to pick one platform and go to market with only one, but the alternative is for Dell to realize that its track record in markets outside industrial enterprise markets is terrible and to stay out completely. Dell's MP3 player was worse than uncool. It was Soviet.
Now it wants to compete with the iPhone and Blackberry? Not a chance. Dell lacks the DNA. The company has always been a low-cost aggregator of others' technologies. It ha never demonstrated a penchant for design or technology innovation, both of which are key attributes of both Research in Motion and Apple. In this club, Dell can't compete.
Like Microsoft, Dell needs to look in the mirror and learn how to work with what's there, rather than veering off into foreign markets in which it has no savvy and no experience. Few are going to relish hearing, "Dude, you're getting a Dell smartphone!"
If you've yet to watch Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's recent Churchill Club comments on everything from server virtualization to search to the mobile market, you're in for a treat. Ballmer is at his best, ripping on everything and everyone...except Microsoft.
Indeed, it's when Ballmer hits rewind on history to argue that Apple will lose in all the markets in which it is currently thriving--including smartphones and laptops--because it's not enough like Microsoft that he hits peak form:
Asked about smartphones, Ballmer said Nokia, Research In Motion, and Apple will all lose out as the market expands over the next five years, because they design their own proprietary hardware and tie it closely to their software.
Nokia leads the smartphone market today with about a 30 percent share, he said. "If you want to reach more than that, you have to separate the hardware and software in the platform," he said.
In other words, he thinks the same strategy that helped Microsoft become the leader on the desktop--licensing its OS for use by other hardware makers--will let it win out on smartphones. Long term, he said, the battle will be between the Symbian OS (which is now open source), mobile versions of Linux, and Windows Mobile.
I have some sympathy for this view, having argued that Google's Android is weakened by its lack of control over hardware (and boy, is its current hardware ugly). But this is a problem for the next few years.
Will Microsoft's strategy to separate hardware and software win long-term? Maybe. indeed, probably. But "in the long run," as John Maynard Keynes famously said, "we're all dead." Microsoft's mobile business may not be around long enough to be able to gloat over the iPhone's diminished fortunes because, well, those fortunes are rocking right now.
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