The Mobile Web Tablet

Motorola seems to be betting on Android:

“The most significant of these may come from Motorola. One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team. That is a huge commitment that shows how big a bet Motorola is making on Android.”

Motorola has not been committed to one OS or the other before, maybe this is a shift in their strategy.

The move towards open platforms is about nothing else than cutting the cost and speed of innovation. No manufacturer can afford not to go open.

This is a huge change compared to just a few years ago, when open source was a forbidden word. The big question now of course is what OS will prevail and become the Windows of the mobile world. The fact that there is no clear contender should tell us that this war will last for quite a while.

Then again, things move so swiftly that in one or two years time the playing field can be completely changed. Regardless of the underlying platform, one thing is certain: the web will be the true winner.

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The pieces of the Google Phone, gphone, puzzle is coming together. After acquiring Voice 2.0 company GrandCentral a couple of months ago they now extend to microblogging and presence with the acquisition of Jaiku (similar to Twitter but more mobile oriented).

I’ve said it a before: good mobile 2.0 services requires good web services in the back. Well, Google is building one heck of a backbone of services to complement their upcoming phones (or phone OS). Interesting to see what they come up with in the end.

Anyway, congratulations to Jyri and the rest of the Jaiku team!

Updated: Techcrunch UK has more.

Tim O’Reilly has a good overview of Jaiku here. This sentence sums up why this is related to the GPhone:

This is the way a phone address book ought to work. I continue to think that the address book is one of the great untapped Web 2.0 opportunities, and that the phone, even more than email and IM, and certainly more than an outside-in, invitation-driven “social networking application” represents my real social network.

My own company, GlocalReach, will solve a slightly different problem in another circle of intimacy but the address book in the phone is definitely one of the untapped goldmines of social networking. The established manufacturers are fumbling with more or less closed and slow moving solutions like Wireless Village that no one uses.

Jaiku was founded in February 2006 and Twitter the month after. Wireless Village has been in standardization groups for years. Google, on the other hand, is an acquisition machine not wasting time eating salmon sandwiches in standardization meetings (believe me, I’ve been to them) but in stead letting innovation happen outside the company and pick the right time to devour integrate it.

I bet there are at least five times as many people working with acquisitions than with standardization at Google. I also bet there are fifty times as many people working with standardization than acquisitions at companies like Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Motorola.

Should they change? I don’t know. The telecom way of standardizing everything is not a winning strategy if you want to be innovative. It might be good for a lot of other stuff, like building huge wireless networks or come up with platforms that other can innovate on, but not for innovation.

It boils down to the question: what kind of company do you want to be? The innovative kind or the standardizing kind? The application or the platform? If you’re a successful application, you’re going to end up becoming the platform anyway so I’d say the choice is easy. Just ask Microsoft.

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Trying to connect some dots…

I’ve written about the internet as the mobile OS a couple of times. What I mean by that is that most mobile applications we will be using will be to at least 80% based on a strong web service as the backbone. What we see in the phone will be a simple and thin GUI-layer. Widsets, Opera Mini and Mobile Gmail are all examples of this.

Java, Flash Lite or even XHTML will be perfect for most of the things we will want to do with our phones. As soon as the problems with fragmentation has a solution that is good enough, things will explode in the mobile service space. Unfortunately, that might take a few more years.

I’ve also written about what Bill Gates summarized as:

“The phone is going to be the PC, and the PC is going to be the phone.”

PCs are getting smaller and phones are getting more capable. Is the iPhone an up-scaled version of the iPod or a down-scaled version of a MacBook? I’d like to say the latter. Soon enough you will have full scaled PCs in your pocket running Windows, OS/X or Linux.

If we take those two observations and try to draw a conclusion from them, that would be that we’re moving towards a point where all mobile devices more or less share the same software stack. We’re not there yet, but it’s pretty clear that’s where we going. The platform war is already here.

Another conclusion it’s tempting to draw is that since all our devices share the same software stack, we will only need one device. Let’s put everything in the mobile phone (or whatever you want to call it) and you won’t need an MP3 player, camera, small laptop, car keys or credit card.

This conclusion, however, is wrong.

Why? Well, now we’re (finally) getting to the title and the point of this post, which is: the interface is the device.

The interface is not just what’s shown on screen. It’s the entire design and behavior of the product. Where the buttons are placed. Its size. How you carry it. How it turns on (and off). A good camera is not a good MP3 player. A good stopwatch is not a good mobile phone. A good word processor is not a good SMS-tool. And so on.

I once tried to use my Sony Ericsson K800 to take the time and listen to music while running. It was useless. The UI paradigms completely clashed. The poor little K800 wanted so much to be a good phone and a good MP3 player and a good stopwatch that it simply failed to be all at the same time. Now try to add GPS, TV, video recording and one or two games to the mix. What you’ll get is a useless feature soup. Because the interface is the device.

On the other hand, I might very well imagine that my GPS, my camera and my mobile phone share the same software platform and even underlying hardware. Being able to install java midlets on my digital SLR would be great! I might even consider using it as a mobile phone in emergencies. But it will never replace my mobile phone device. Because the interface is the device.

Am I opposed of all the new features in mobile phones? No, the mobile phone may be quite good as a jack of all trades. But it will be a master of none and you will soon get tired and irritated in using it for something it wasn’t specifically designed for. Because the interface is the device.

Can more than one feature never mix in the same device? Of course they can. For example, a mobile phone can be quite a good music player if you have a good headset (because the interface…) and it was designed to be used that way. A laptop or tabletop PC can do many things. Even they are limited, though, as everyone who’s tried to use their PC to watch TV will tell you. It’s too noisy, takes time to boot (you don’t boot a television, you just don’t), isn’t very good to use with a remote control, bluescreens (crashes) every now and then and consumes too much power. The PC simply wasn’t designed to be used for watching TV and so it fails.

Because the interface is the device.

Another conclusion from all this: the mobile 2.0 revolution is not just about mobile phones. We need to get every device manufacturer out there to open up their products and make them internet connected. The phones are not enough. Maybe I’m well in to Mobile 3.0 when I say this, but every device out there need to share the same platform and become connected. From DSLRs to washing machines.

Because, and I think I told you this before: the interface is the device.

(Hm. I think I will have to return to this subject. Too long post and I don’t think I made my point clear enough. Oh well, that’s why you have a blog. )

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David Beers runs the blog Software Everywhere and has some really interesting thoughts on the Palm Foleo:

For Hawkins, it’s the smartphone that is the new PC. The Foleo is just the piece that completes the vision.

It’s a long post but well worth the read if you’re interested in the next big paradigm for computing in a post-PC, post-internet, post-mobile world.

I agree with what he writes. There’s something happening in the “black hole” of the market between the laptop and the mobile phone: 5 to 10 inch displays, sub $1000 price (even $500) and full connectivity options.

It’s an extremely interesting battle ground because the winner might very well end up with both sides of the hole under their control.

If, for example, Microsoft and Intel manages to squeeze Windows and x86 into 5 inch notebooks that are fuel cell driven, flash card in stead of hard drive and instant on/off then what we have is the smartphone platform of the future. Bye bye, Symbian.

If, on the other hand, Nokia, Motorola and SEMC manage to upscale their mobile phones to full keyboards and larger screens, then why do I need to buy a Windows laptop?

Definitely an opportunity for new players to take a place. Palm is doing the right thing. It’s a gamble though, but what choice do they have?

Anyway, it’s fun to follow what happens. Can’t wait to get my hands on one of those Foleos.

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Two observations that point in the same direction: the OS of your mobile doesn’t matter. It’s the internet compatibility that makes all the difference. First an old post by Nokia Linux web tablet product manager Ari Jaaksi:

“Today, we run Linux, X, Gnome, Flash, and friends on Nokia N800. Our big idea form the start was to run –as closely as possible– a desktop Linux stack. Others will start to do the same and I predict that mobile software will thus eventually die. All we need is software that runs everywhere.”

Then we have the announcement from Apple about how third party applications will be basically mobile widgets running AJAX. Thomas Bailey comments:

“I speculate that the other announcement of Safari coming to Windows and apparent lack of an iPhone SDK may be loosely related – notepad and a browser is all that is required once you move away from using table spaghetti for layout and design. In providing a web runtime which closely reflects the phone and making it available on Windows, a much larger potential developer base can be leveraged – could Safari be the SDK when used in conjunction with an “iPhone profile” ?“

Bailey (and Apple) is on to something here. There will be an application platform that bridges the PC world and the mobile world and a significant part of that platform will be the internet. The question is who will drive this platform? Can many different platforms co-exist? If Apple is to be truly successful, I would have to be able to run their iPhone mobile widgets on other devices as well. The iPhone might be a huge hit, but it will not be that big. So, when will we see the APIs available to javascript on an iPhone publically available and ported to other devices?

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Java will be (is) one of the core platforms for mobile applications. MIDP2/CLDC is the current flavor of Java and has been around for a few years but it’s rather restricted. Even though Mobile Service Architecture, JSR 248, will bring more power to the platform in the form of new APIs, there are still fundamental issues that must be resolved. One of those issues is the poor UI-libraries in MIDP2.

The UI library in MIDP2 is basically designed for the lowest common denominator of devices that can run MIDP2. They are very simple (with the possible exception of the powerful CustomItem) and there’s not that many GUI components available for a developer. Add to that the fact that different manufacturers have implemented the library in different ways making it almost impossible to create a MIDP2 application based on the UI libraries in MIDP with a consistent behavior between the devices on the market.

No wonder all of the most successful java applications are written using an empty canvas with home made GUI components on top. That’s also the reason we see great new SDKs and UI libraries such as TWUIK to save developers the effort of writing their own UI classes.

There are a few initiatives on the way to remedy the situation. The successor to MIDP2 is MIDP3 (duh), there’s the Advanced Graphics and UI Optional Package (AGUI, though any API with the word “Advanced” in them should be avoided, the same goes for “Optional”) and there’s the open sourced, Eclipse-based eSWT, one of the components of ERCP.

Now, one should be aware of the fact that the MIDP3 API and the AGUI API are both defined by the Java Community Process (JCP). eSWT, on the other hand, is not. It is an open sourced community effort including IBM and Nokia. Sony Ericsson has always been committed to the JCP, so the silent announcement on the eSWT mailing list is noteworthy for more reasons than one. Gorkem Ercan writes:

Yesterday, we have received the first welcome mail to dsdp-ercp-dev list from SonyEricsson. They are now working to get eSWT to their mobile phones. Moreover, they have started to participate in the project as well.

The path mobile Java takes will have huge consequences for how the mobile web will look in a few years. Remember, this is an application platform that’s already in over a billion mobile devices. Unfortunately it’s a far from optimal ecosystem, making it difficult to distribute applications. There’s just so much creativity waiting to be unleashed the moment this ecosystem becomes more fertile. We will see an explosion of innovation that will mirror how the PC industry boomed during the 80s and the internet during the 90s.

The big difference is that, even though the PC became popular in the 80s, the mobile phone count is approaching 3 billion. This number will make the PC boom of the 80s look like a firecracker next to an atomic bomb. (There were ~48 million IMB/PCs sold during the 80s – the entire decade. That many phones are sold in about 2.5 weeks world wide, assuming a number of ~1 billion/year.)

So, watch history unfold and keep your eyes on where mobile Java is going. MIDP2/CLDC is sort of like MS-DOS was for the IBM/PC. We’re still waiting for Windows to come along. When that happens, the telecom market will be changed forever. The announcement by Sony Ericsson is a small but significant piece of the puzzle in what will become the mobile web framework of the future.

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…the internet!

Yes, that’s right. Not S60, UIQ, Linux, iPhone OS, PalmOS, Brew or Windows Mobile. No, the net is what will provide the core of any mobile service of the future.

I know I’m contradicting myself somewhat compared to what I wrote the other day about Java and JSR248, Mobile Service Architecture becoming the framework for mobile applications. I still believe this to be the case.

However, the functionality a generic “mobile 2.0″ application requires from the native phone OS is rather limited. The bulk of most services will be on a web server. Google Maps Mobile, Widsets, Opera Mini or Gmail are all good examples of extremely capable mobile applications supported by a strong web service. These are all java applications, but as web browsers in mobile phones grow more capable we will see XHTML or Flash Lite-based applications. Widgets, if you like that term.

Even hardware intense applications such as video players or camera-integrated applications can be written with a simple API such as JSR234 (advanced multimedia) and/or JSR211 (content handler API) in Java.

It’s really only a thin slice of the mobile application market that requires full access to the native OS. If you absolutely feel you have to have this access, considering how full blown PCs are available the size of PDAs, I’d almost like to say: do it in Windows Vista in stead!

The majority of mobile applications will be web, web, web (by that I mean it will run on a web server) and then maybe some Java, XHTML or Flash Lite on top. Developers used to developing for the PC web browser might think of them as thin clients. Mobile phones on the other hand are ultrathin clients. This means the server has to do more work and there has to be two different GUIs to the same service: one thin and one ultrathin.

The problem with todays phones is not about access to the native OS, but rather how the web or downloaded applications are second grade citizens within the phone GUI. This, however, will change.

Nokias recent move to integrate a widget platform in S60 is a sign of exactly what I’m talking about. Sony Ericssons multitasking java and standby midlets are some other and so is the Apple iPhone. Good and useful widgets are really just a small window to a much larger web service.

So forget the mobile OS-war. Any phone that has a mature java environment and/or a good web browser or a widget environment can be used to build great mobile services. The underlying OS really doesn’t matter.

To paraphrase Clinton: it’s the web, stupid!

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