From the Fierce Wireless newsletter,
Symbian's David Wood paints a wonderful picture of a mobile phone open standards movement.
This first bit doesn't sound unlike the old standy "Write Once, Run Everywhere":
"The real power of open phones arises when the third party experimentation that is carried out for add-on services on one phone can be re-used for add-on services on other phones. This allows an enormous third party development ecosystem to form. These third parties are no longer tied to the fortunes of any one phone, or any one phone manufacturer. Moreover, applications that start their lives as add-ons for one phone, can be incorporated at time of manufacture in subsequent phones, including phones by other manufacturers. "
On the money. I'm in that ecosystem, and there ain't a whole lot of oxygen to share (yet). I also know from practical experience that any real "Write Once, Run Everywhere" is more dream than reality. The form factors and capabilities vary so greatly on cellphones that developing and designing for maximum portability inevitably results in a lowest-common denominator approach.
Wood continues:
"The degree of success of an open phone platform is closely linked to the degree to which the functionality of all lower levels of the software and hardware stacks in a phone can be accessed, modified, and augmented by add-on software and hardware. Java makes a good start. MIDP v1 allows modest access by add-on MIDlets to phone functionality, and MIDP v2 takes the situation further. However, for the foreseeable future, a native programming language such as C++ will remain the best way to access many of the lower level or deeper aspects of the on-board functionality. Native programming interfaces greatly multiply the overall opportunity." (emphasis added)
And here is where the rubber meets the road.
Symbian is undoubtedly the best OS for the phone. All others are either too dumb and simplistic -- like an overzealous LED display -- or overblown (MS Phone). Features, ease of use, years of experience in the field, have got Symbian years ahead of the competition in terms of pure quality, stability and ease of use.
Symbian should take page from their foe in Microsoft -- and work very aggressively to make Symbian the defacto OS on phones. Indeed, this is the implicit message in Wood's article. Remember when your computer was either an Apple or a IBM PC compatible? It's not an IBM PC compatible anymore -- it's either a Dell or Gateway or Compaq -- or more often referred to by OS, simple "XP" or "Windows 2000". Give the licenses away for free to handset manufacturers, but brand the phone with an "Symbian Inside" strategy...make sure that consumers realize that it's not Nokia that makes the phones great (although there are many aspects of their hardware that are great), but the OS itself. When a consumer buys a PC, they check to see what OS comes installed. When you buy a phone, you're really just guessing -- figure that you'll have to suffer through a night of reading the tiny manual to figure out how to get your phonebook to work again.
Oh, and the other strategy from Microsoft that Symbian needs to look at? The famous Ballmer scream: "Developers, developers, developers". Wood says "...for the foreseeable future, a native programming language such as C++ will remain the best way..." This makes me cringe. What forseeable future? Does this signal a unwavering stance on C++ as the Symbian development environ? No commitment to an abstraction layer, java or otherwise, that could more easily enable the open standards noted earlier? Or towards anything -- like VB, Hypercard, whatever -- that would allow a widening of the developer base?
Symbian IDEs and compilers that will work for C++ will still require upfront investment, both in terms of buying software and a Symbian specific learning curve. Legions of geeks and developers with more time between classes and late night Playstation sessions are going to get energized by toolsets and emulators they can download and use for free, not by slogging through a horrible Borland IDE.
Of course, I'm biased. I think that the open standard is here -- J2ME and PJava. Symbian does play ball with Java, but as a VM it lives on top of their OS, and lives quite nicely upon other OS's as well. Symbian is heads-and-shoulders above the rest -- and throwing their entire weight behind a full, robust java support and access to onboard functionality wouldn't strengthen rivals as much as continue to propel Symbian to the center of the ecosystem of openness he describes.
