CommWeb: "Microsoft Touts Mobile Progress in Europe, but Sceptics Remain "

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.commweb.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=18200466' target='_blank'>http://www.commweb.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=18200466</a><br /><br /></div>This is an article about Microsoft's efforts in Europe, and how two new European carriers have adopted Windows Mobile solutions. But here's that part that made me raise an eyebrow:<br /><br />"Microsoft continues to promote to the mobile industry proprietary Microsoft technologies originally developed for the PC environment, including Windows Media, MSN services, instant messaging and Digital Rights Management (DRM). However, with mobile phone penetration in the global market far greater than that for PCs, there is a growing resentment among Europeans at Microsoft's efforts to call the shots. They wonder, for example, why PCs should define mobile systems and services."<br /><br />The carrier culture is an interesting one - they prefer to exist in walled gardens, and for years tried to keep their customers off the Internet and inside their billable realm with technologies like WAP, SMS, and MMS. What's interesting here is that Microsoft has tooled the Smartphone OS to be as friendly as possible to carrier technologies - the latest Smartphones today have support for SMS, WAP, and MMS. But they also offer Internet technologies like email, HTML Web browsing, instant messaging, and rich WAV/WMA ringtones - many of which use GPRS/1xRTT, which drives up carrier ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). Yes, IM is a debacle right now, with competing IM clients struggling for dominance, but ultimately consumers have the ability to install other IM clients on their Smartphone and use whatever service they wish. There's no "lock in" from Microsoft here.<br /><br />What do you think? Do the carriers have legitimate gripes with Microsoft, or is this a case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome?

[possmann]

NIH all the way! If you ask me, anytime carriers "loose" control or feel like they are loosing control over their revenue stream (customer base) they are going to bash whatever is infinging on their turf. Carries are not going to move to the way of the PC - providing a service (like an internet provider) and hardware (like a PC manufacturer) and simply let MS take over the operating system.

Personally I would really like to see that model start to develop. I could care less about being locked into or paying for a T-Mobile specific service. I want to be able to use their carrier wave/connection for what I want to do - not what they force me to do via their specific restrictions on the phone OS - be it Symbian or MS...

Man I am having a rant sort of a morning here... :lol:

[Amnesiac]

NIH! That knife cuts both ways. This simply isn't about Europe vs Asia vs US. (Oh and by the way I think you'll find the web is a European invention anyway...ask CERN & Tim Berners-Lee! ;-)

The IT world "standards" are far less "standard" than those in the telco world. So the things you percieve as being standard are simply not. Web pages are a prime example - they don't even work between versions of the same company's browser or OS etc etc etc. The limited iteroperability that is there now is very recent - phone technology has been around for decades and is much more backward compatible, reliable and interoperable.

"Carrier Grade" the IT industry is not. If you picked up your telephone and is was as (un)reliable as your PC or you couldn't phone someone in your town because they used a different phone manufacturer or a different hardware supplier you'd be understandably peeved.

The thing is the telephone companies have with their standards sets managed a level of interoperability between equipment and standards that the PC world cannot match. While in some markets (notably the US) there are a number of radio standards that make handsets not transferable between carriers & the allocation of radio frequencies mean handsets need to switch bands at least you can still make a call between T-Mobile and Verizon, or Vodafone and "3" etc etc.

So to address the points raised:
1."Content".
I'm not even sure its about Walled Garden content vs protecting revenue streams. If you consider that every phone company has a legal, contractual & financial obligation to pay hard cash to other phone operators when a call goes from their network to the other network (the interconnect charge) you can see that a virus that did to phone contact lists what PC virii do to email could bankrupt an operator in a day!

Given this I would say that in many ways they are understandably very conservative about the unreliable PC technology.

2. Handset Lock-in
You are no-more locked into a handset manufacturer than you are a PC manufacturer. Indeed one could argue less so. Also the fact that you KNOW the difference between Symbian/Smartphone/etc makes you very different from the majority of cellphone owners. They just want to communicate with their business/friends/family and access some additional content. The operator wants to service this majority market - so they pick common services that will run on as many handsets as possible.

Also, interestingly in the UK sales on the "3" UMTS network picked up when Nokia (rather than NEC/Motorola) announced a handset which although it didn't provide a lot of the functionality of the network or the other brands was familiar. This was what many were waiting for. If you didn't know then working out which of Nokia's OSes is running under the covers can be quite hard becuase they try to make the UI comfortable and familiar accross their range of handsets.

3. Phone OS
I don't really have an axe to grind on this one. I work in both the IT and Mobile industries & where the two meet. It always amazes me people get so evangelical over brands or OSes. Its a tool folks...like a hammer or a wrench or... In my experience the Nokia UI is the best, but the new SE phones have copied and caught-up both in UI and phone ergonomics. Of the other mfgs I have only owned a Motorola and I thought the UI was very fiddly, but, I know of people who swear by (& not at) it.

The worst I've used is the MS Smartphone OS, its clunky, it crashes it sucks battery and while improved in 2003 over 2002 isn't reliable enough for me to be comfortable with. I've tended to use a bluetooth handset and bluetooth or irda on the laptop or PDA to use the phone as a modem when using data. With bluetooth the phone can be on my belt or in my bag and it works fine with the PDA. This I think is the best solution in many ways & have the handset as the connector to the wide-area network and use bluetooth as your personal network for your devices & then pick the appropriate device for the job at hand.

My view is that the religious rubbish over OSes in the PC world is a fatuous as the handset owners is/was. I hope the phone industry sticks to its strict adherence on interoperable standards so that I can keep buying from anyone who makes the best product that adheres. Competition is what keeps things improving. At the moment MS are IMHO behind the curve, and even if one day they dominate the market in the way Nokia currently do they still may not be making the best phone for me.

For the record I own a number of Nokia handsets running a number of their OS versions. A number of SonyEricsson's (with a P900 on order... its backlogged) an MS SmartPhone2003, and I daily come into contact with Blackberry and users of it. I also had a Palm PDA & I've had 3 WinCE based PDAs. There are about 8 PCs in my house running Linux/XP/2K/OSX/Longhorn etc etc so I don't feel particularly partisan and I'm picking the tool that's best for the job for me. Your milage of course may well vary!


A.