Closed vs. Open Phone Systems [Archive]

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Ed Hansberry

01-02-2009, 02:01 PM

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2008/12/30/how-palm-could-lose-everything.aspx' target='_blank'>http://www.fool.com/investing/high-...everything.aspx</a> </div>The Motley Fool posted an article a few days ago on how Palm could lose everything (haven't they just about done that already?) and what they must do to survive. The main reason I am posting this is the Fool has some research showing that closed systems are crushing open systems in the marketplace. Closed systems are represented by Nokia, Apple and RIM, where the own the operating system and do much if not all of the hardware design. Open systems would include Palm, HTC and Motorola where the software is purchased from a third party, like Microsoft or Google.This is the exact opposite of the PC world where only Apple owns their own OS. All other PC vendors buy from Microsoft or use a flavor of Linux, and despite all of the media attention on Apple, it is <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/14/apple_snags_nearly_10_of_us_pc_market_in_third_quarter.html" target="_blank">still below 10% of US share</a>, though it is growing, especially in the consumer space.Years ago when MS got into the phone OS business, they hoped to repeat their desktop success in the mobile device world and to date, aren't even close, while newcomers like Apple and very focused developers like RIM own the top positions. Do you see this trend continuing? What can the open system vendors (MS, HTC, Palm, etc.) do to turn this around? Should MS release their own phone? I know one of the things that really frustrates users is when there is a problem with their Windows Mobile device, Microsoft won't even talk to them. It is the carrier's responsibility to service the consumer, and speaking from experience, in all but the easiest of solutions, the carrier immediately responds with "wipe the devices memory and let's see what that does." That response simply says "I have no clue about this OS we've put on your phone, so just reset it." If MS sold a phone, I suspect they'd be far more inclined to help the user than their OEM partners are.

Fritzly

01-02-2009, 03:40 PM

whydidnt

01-02-2009, 04:20 PM

You answered your own question: MS needs to handle directly the OS updates and make them available to customers as they do for the Desktop OS.
What is happening is a classic example of poor industrial planning and, much worse, a denial attitude that does not want to acknowledge the problems in order to avoid criticisms.

I don't disagree with this statement, but I think it goes deeper than that. The issue isn't just OS updates. It's that MS can't control the entire user experience the way Apple, Nokia and RIM can. They are dependent on their OEM/Carrier partners to do so, and because of this, the experience is different from one WM device to the next and often less than satisfactory. Too many times the OEMs have released underpowered devices with too little memory to run the OS.

Microsoft's model works in the PC world, because most hardware is generic, and there is a hardware abstraction layer in the OS that enables people to upgrade as necessary, provided a driver is available. This means end users can improve their experience without dependence upon MS, HP, Dell or whoever they bought the PC from. However, with WM, you have very little opportunity to fix things on your own. In my opinion the closed hardware/software model we see from Apple, etc. is superior. It makes it so much easeir for them to make sure everything works, and those things that don't can be addressed directly.

The trade off is in flexibility of the software, but for these devices, the market is speaking, and people are willing to give up software flexibility for an improved overall experience. Microsoft is going to continue hitting it's head against the wall until they wake up and realize that the entire experience needs to be better managed. Either by creating their own "Zune-phone" or implementing much tighter control over hardware/updates/add-ons. If they don't do either the brand will flounder.

virain

01-02-2009, 04:21 PM

Unlike desktop version of MS OS, that is marketed directly to consumer (you can assemble computer yourself without much of a knowledge how it works and spare parts available in any computer store), WM is marketed directly to OEMs. So here's conflict of interests. Consumer wants reliable, responsive, useful and inexpensive device, while manufacturer wants to increase its bottom line selling as much devices as possible and that means keep them more affordable, and solution is to sacrifice performance by using less expansive, hence less powerful and less reliable parts. HTC is a perfect example. Market device on great screen resolution or more powerful processor, but saving money on drivers, memory, or any other auxiliary (headphone jack for example).
In case of mobile devices you can't just go to the store and pick up all the parts you need to assemble your own. I am absolutely against proprietary software running on proprietary hardware (iPhone, Nokia, etc..) So, I believe the problem can be solve by either better control over hardware requirements for OEMs but if MS tighten its grip on them too much OEMs will go for Google Android or something else.
Or releasing WM OS directly to consumer, same way you can buy Vista or XP in any store now. With release of OS to consumer, market will take its natural course. Manufacturers of all the RAMs, ROMs, processors, screens etc.. will release their product directly to consumer (it is good to sell to HTC for $50 but to sell it to regular Joe for $150 is even better), New small "underground" shops that make Mobile devices will grow like mushrooms, some of them will become big and powerful corporations at the end (remember history of Dell), increased competition will leas to cheaper end product and at the end consumer AND MS will be biggest winners.
Yes, you can say that Smartphone is more complicated than your desktop PC, but there are more than enough professional people who CAN build the device, but doesn't have resources. And they could offer them to cunsumer much cheaper than HTC, Asus, Samsung or any other big OEM

Pony99CA

01-02-2009, 10:44 PM

The main reason I am posting this is the Fool has some research showing that closed systems are crushing open systems in the marketplace. Closed systems are represented by Nokia, Apple and RIM, where the own the operating system and do much if not all of the hardware design. Open systems would include Palm, HTC and Motorola where the software is purchased from a third party, like Microsoft or Google.
I don't agree with the Fool's definitions. Open and Closed to me mean the source code, and Windows Mobile isn't "Open" (Android is).

I'd call things Loosely or Tightly Controlled. Apple and RIM tightly control the experience by developing both the hardware and software (I'll leave Nokia out for now because they're moving Symbian to open source). Microsoft loosely controls the experience by developing the software, but only setting minimum requirements on OEMs who develop the hardware. Google may control Android even more loosely (although I don't really know).

I suspect Palm's Nova will be tightly controlled, at least initially. Whether Palm will market the OS to other OEMs remains to be seen.

hewlpac

01-03-2009, 12:36 AM

Pony99CA

01-03-2009, 01:37 AM

Unlike desktop version of MS OS, that is marketed directly to consumer (you can assemble computer yourself without much of a knowledge how it works and spare parts available in any computer store), WM is marketed directly to OEMs. So here's conflict of interests. Consumer wants reliable, responsive, useful and inexpensive device, while manufacturer wants to increase its bottom line selling as much devices as possible and that means keep them more affordable, and solution is to sacrifice performance by using less expansive, hence less powerful and less reliable parts.
But that's also true in the PC world. Microsoft certainly markets Windows to OEMs, and they have the same self-interests as Windows Mobile OEMs.

The fact that a user can buy and install Windows is a difference, but I'm not sure how much that factors in to the equation. Most users don't build their own systems, and I suspect very few upgrade (with both XP and Vista, I think the recommendation has been not to upgrade, but to get the latest if you're buying -- or building -- a new system).

I also don't believe the real issue is generic parts as whydidnt said (PCs can have several different flavors of x86 processors from various chip makers like Intel, AMD, Via, etc.; Windows Mobile devices can have several different flavors of ARM processors from Samsung, Qualcomm, etc.), but limited resources. In older PDAs, maybe there wasn't enough memory to build a robust abstraction layer, so that's why OEMs have to build parts of the OS themselves. Think of it as people programming in Assembler in the bad old days vs. memory-intensive object-oriented frameworks today.

Are we at a point where we can take the next step in making the system less dependent on OEMs and carriers? I don't know, but I certainly hope so.

Steve

Pony99CA

01-03-2009, 01:38 AM

It is real simple - People want their phones to work. Microsoft based phones need to be rebooted each day (sometimes more often) to function and that gets real annoying! Closed systems are perceived as more reliable.
I don't recall having to reboot my Motorola Q every day. Now that I run Sprite Backup, it does get rebooted every day, but it's not any more noticeable than having to unlock the phone each morning (just like if the password timeout expired).

I agree that people want their phones to be reliable, but they should realize that the more the phones become like traditional PCs (including installing unknown software), the less reliable they'll be.

Steve

Ed Hansberry

01-03-2009, 03:14 AM

I don't agree with the Fool's definitions. Open and Closed to me mean the source code, and Windows Mobile isn't "Open" (Android is).
Don't think "open" and "closed" refer to source code only. For example, I think the universe is a closed system, not open. That has nothing to do with the source code of the universe.

saurabh0105

01-03-2009, 05:08 AM

I think the bottomline is that, all the OEMs want to increase number of Handsets per user and make money. They dont want to give us the chance of continuing the Hardware with an upgraded softwares. Microsoft is a party to this. Otherwise how in such an Advanced world, microsoft has been unable to find a SOLUTION to a simple task of tweaking its own HOMEGROWN OS to users demands.
Hope sane minds take over that job soon.

Dr. Saurabh Bhardwaj

kdarling

01-03-2009, 07:17 AM

It is real simple - People want their phones to work. Microsoft based phones need to be rebooted each day (sometimes more often) to function and that gets real annoying! Closed systems are perceived as more reliable.

I never had a WM Smartphone (no touch) that needed rebooting. I mostly rebooted touch WM phones only if I was trying out new software and hacks.

Apple got clever with the iPhone, and had it crash back to the Home screen when something goes wrong. They also don't let apps run in the background, in an attempt to crash less often. Unfortunately, while that gives the appearance of being more stable, it also means that users must go without software such as turn-by-turn nav apps.

There needs to be some middle ground.

Kirkaiya

01-03-2009, 07:36 PM

I don't agree with the Fool's definitions. Open and Closed to me mean the source code, and Windows Mobile isn't "Open" (Android is).

I'd call things Loosely or Tightly Controlled. Apple and RIM tightly control the experience by developing both the hardware and software (I'll leave Nokia out for now because they're moving Symbian to open source). Microsoft loosely controls the experience by developing the software, but only setting minimum requirements on OEMs who develop the hardware. Google may control Android even more loosely (although I don't really know).

I suspect Palm's Nova will be tightly controlled, at least initially. Whether Palm will market the OS to other OEMs remains to be seen.

I definitely agree that the Fool's definitions are too broad and vague to be very meaningful. If anything, I'd say that the iPhone's hardware and OS are "tightly coupled" (along with RIM), while WinMo is only "loosely coupled", like Google's Android.

But - Android is open-source, and has already amassed a large number of active developers - especially considering that real hardware (the G1) has only been available for a few months. It's tough to see Palm's Nova competing with the hype that Google can bring (and the $$), but it seems unlikely. If they're smart, they'll provide a very comprehensive SDK and coddle whatever few Palm developers are left, and really try to lure more to the platform. Plus, since it's Linux under the hood, there are a ton of apps that can be easily ported (or might run "as is").

I think that Apple's model will work in the near-term (closed source, tightly coupled), and that the Android model can also work well (open source, loosely coupled), but that Microsoft's model (closed source, loosely coupled) is at the root of many of their problems. If Nova is open source (Linux), tightly coupled, it might have a shot.

"Open source" isn't a panacea, but in some areas, open-source software dominates: web-servers (Apache), set-top boxes like TiVo (Linux), low-end net-books (Linux again).

So Android is a bet, made by Google, that the same benefits open-source brings to *some* markets will be brought to handsets as well. And I think they have good (and increasingly so) odds of capturing a big chunk of the market for a few simple reasons:

(1) Unlike desktop OS'es, there is so single near-monopolistic market-leader. Nokia's share of the smartphone market has fallen below 50%, the iPhone, Blackberry, and WinMo devices all have double-digit market share, and the brand-new G1 is selling well.

(2) The smartphone market is just exploding compared to the desktop or notebook markets. Given this huge growth, even capturing 5% or 10% of the smartphone market will mean millions and millions of Android handsets.

(3) Smartphones are evolving at a frantic clip. Six or seven years ago, the category barely existed. The latest smartphones, on the other hand, are sporting powerful 32-bit CPUs, hi-rez displays, and general purpose operating systems that provide an ecosystem for software. This fast change lends itself to the thousands of people that contribute to open-source projects.

Micrsosoft, Microsoft.... what can you do? My advice: hire a few, brilliant people who truly "get" the future of MIDS/smartphones, and task them with developing what you need to create. Then hire the developers, architects and engineers that can make that vision reality. Make Windows Mobile 7 the LAST ITERATION of that line, and get it out the friggin door by next summer.

The future/vision version of the Microsoft smart device aka "MID" (or whatever) could either have a stripped-down kernal based on Windows 7, or not; but it needs to be a quantum leap more capable than the current iPhone, Android competition, and it needs to ship in Q1 of 2010. A lot can be done in 15 months - you've got the money, just hire the talent, starting with the vision of what you want the end to look like.

Otherwise - I think WinMo will drop below 10% share of smartphones by the end of this year, as Android, RIM, and Apple eat it's lunch.

Pony99CA

01-05-2009, 11:38 AM

Don't think "open" and "closed" refer to source code only. For example, I think the universe is a closed system, not open. That has nothing to do with the source code of the universe.
I know the terms didn't refer to source code (the original article made it more or less clear what they meant); I just thought they were poorly chosen (as Kirkaiya also mentioned) and that, when used around geeks in conjunction with operating systems, people tend to think of "open source". That's why I didn't like their terminology.

By the way, the closed/open universe absolutely has to do with the source code of the universe (also known as the Laws of Physics). :)

Steve