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The VisionMobile blog is a space where VisionMobile analysts and industry insiders exchange views on the fast-changing mobile market and the trends that define the future direction of telecoms.
2011 Roundup: Top-10 articles from the VisionMobile blog
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[As 2011 draws to a close, we'd like to present the top 10 articles published on our blog this year. The lineup includes two infographics and five research reports, with topics ranging from open source governance to the impact of HTML5 to the winners and losers of the platform race. So, enjoy these great articles, enjoy your holidays and see you next year!]
10. From MeeGo to Tizen: the making of another software bubble
Article by Dave Neary
Just a short 1.5 years from MeeGo’s birth, Intel dumps it to shift focus to a new platform, Tizen, in partnership with Samsung. Guest author Dave Neary discusses the underpinnings of Tizen and why both MeeGo and Tizen are software bubbles
Read full article…
9. The death of Flash – 8 years in the making
Article by Francisco Kattan
Adobe’s decision to stop developing Flash for mobile browsers is the talk of the day – but the reasons behind Flash’s ultimate failure are not that obvious. Guest author Francisco Kattan discusses the chain of events that led to the death of Flash – a time bomb inadvertently planted by Adobe many years ago
8. Developer Economics 2011 – Winners and losers in the platform race
Article by Matos Kapetanakis (based on Developer Economics 2011 report)
Who is leading in the platform race – and who’s lagging behind? Marketing Manager Matos Kapetanakis examines the flow of developer mindshare and discusses how success is measured in the app era – in part 1 of our 3-part blog series on our newly released Developer Economics 2011 report (free download here)
7. [Infographic] The Mobile Platform Race – How do mobile platforms stack up?
![[Infographic] The Mobile Platform Race – How do mobile platforms stack up?](http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/VMinfo_preview.jpg "[Infographic] The Mobile Platform Race – How do mobile platforms stack up?")
Infographic by Matos Kapetanakis
We’re proud to present our latest infographic, The Mobile Platform Race, showcasing some of the most important findings and insights from our Developer Economics 2011 report (free download here)
6. Mobile Platforms: The Clash of Ecosystems
Article by Michael Vakulenko (based on The Clash of Ecosystems report)
We at VisionMobile have been researching and helping to educate the industry about mobile platforms for the last five years. In this time mobile software has evolved from the world of “open OS” to the world of complex ecosystems, network effects, app stores which are redefining the rules of telecom industry. Today we share much of this knowledge in our Mobile Platforms: The Clash of Ecosystems report – a critical analysis of major mobile platforms and their battle for dominance ( free download here)
5. HTML5 and what it means for the mobile industry
Article by Andreas Constantinou [based on HTML5 and what it means for the mobile industry report]
HTML5 has been tipped to be a game-changer, with some predictiving it will take over most mobile platforms. But what is its real impact to the mobile industry? VisionMobile Research Director Andreas Constantinou evaluates HTML5 vs apps and what it means for the mobile industry as part of our newly released report (free copy here)
[Infographic] The Open Governance Index – A new way of measuring openness
+3 rating Loading ...We are proud to present our latest infographic – the Open Governance Index, measuring the relative openness of 8 major open source projects, from Android to WebKit. This infographic presents some highlights from our full report (free download here). The Open Governance Index is authored and researched by VisionMobile, and part-funded by webinos
Feel free to copy the infographic and embed it in your website (embed codes below the infographic).
[New survey] Which are the best cross-platform tools?
+8 rating Loading ...[This week we're launching the biggest survey on cross-platform developer tools. The results will be available as a free report in Q1 2012. This report will address a segment that is rapidly developing as a convergence of factors has created both opportunity and demand for cross platform solutions.]
[UPDATE: The survey is now closed. The results will be published as a free report in Q1 2012 - sign up for our newsletter and we'll let you know once it's out]
With VisionMobile estimating that each app on the Apple App store represents an average investment of US$30,000 to develop, the attraction of tools that help developers target additional platforms with minimal additional investment are obvious. As regular updates to platforms can effect functionality in existing apps, it is not just cross platform development but cross platform app management that can tax the resources of many a developer and brings the need for cross platform solutions to the fore.
However, on it’s own HTML5 is hampered by the slowness of the standards process and is still largely a nascent solution to the problem of cross platform development. Combined with development frameworks that help deliver a native UI experience, device optimisation and wrapper solutions. The most notable of the latter solutions is PhoneGap, ‘co-incidentally’ acquired by Adobe just before it pulled the plug on the mobile Flash plug-in. PhoneGap and similar solutions allow web developers to wrap web code in a native shell, sell in the app stores and access native features. With that, the differences between web app and native are significantly reduced.
Such hybrid apps do however have their detractors, with performance and optimisation noted as a key issue for many developers still taking the native route. But several vendors of cross-platform development tools now claim their solutions that can deliver real, native apps, with performance to match for many platforms from a single-codebase.
[Take the cross-platform dev tools survey]
Indicative of a new stage in the maturity of the market, recent acquisitions in the cross-platform tool space include Strobe (Facebook), Bedrock – Metismo (Software AG), RhoMobile (Motorola Solutions), Particlecode (Appcelerator) and Nitobi’sPhoneGap (Adobe). A large number of new products have also recently come to market to fill the need for cross platform, solutions. We have identified over 50 tools that are actively supporting cross-platform mobile development. We need your help to sift through the good, the bad and the ugly with your thoughts, experiences and opinions on which tools matter. So please share your knowledge and experience, and help us to help you and your fellow developers find the right tool for their needs. Solutions on the market include:
The death of Flash – 8 years in the making
+10 rating Loading ...[Adobe’s decision to stop developing Flash for mobile browsers is the talk of the day – but the reasons behind Flash’s ultimate failure are not that obvious. Guest author Francisco Kattan discusses the chain of events that led to the death of Flash – a time bomb inadvertently planted by Adobe many years ago].
Ever since Adobe announced that it will stop developing Flash for mobile browsers, the blogosphere has been buzzing with a broad range of sentiments including “I told you so” by critics, disbelief by Flash developers, Monday morning quarterbacking by analysts, and even a petition for Adobe’s CEO to resign. Check out also the Occupy Flash and Occupy HTML manifestos from the opposing camps. Flash is one of those topics that attract very emotional responses from both its passionate developer community and its very vocal detractors. Although I am generally an Adobe supporter, I will put emotion aside and summarize, in hindsight, what went wrong. For full disclosure, I am a former Adobe employee, but this post is based only on publicly available information.
HTML5 did not kill Flash. Steve Jobs did not kill Flash. The death of Flash was caused by a time bomb planted inadvertently by Adobe many years ago.
Although Flash for mobile ultimately died because Adobe did not adapt fast enough to post iPhone changes in the ecosystem, the seeds for Adobe’s failure were planted earlier on. To understand what went wrong, let’s first review what happened before the iPhone and how those events set the stage for what happened later.
Before the iPhone – the Flash Lite era
Back in the early to mid 2000’s, there was great demand from handset makers (OEMs) who were willing to pay for Flash Lite (the mobile version of Flash at that time) and Adobe decided to collect a per-device license fee for the software. This decision set in motion the incentives and behavior that would ultimately lead to the demise of Flash in mobile, and as I explain later in this post, will also kill Flash on the desktop. Adobe’s ambition to create a platform for delivering rich internet experiences is now doomed.
A big question in many people’s minds is why Adobe didn’t just replicate the model that had been successful with PDF and the desktop Flash Player: make the runtime freely available and monetize it with increased tools revenue. Presumably this would have motivated Adobe to prioritize platform consistency over broad (but fragmented) reach. But it was not that simple.
Flatten, Expand, Mine: The three pillars of Google’s strategy
+9 rating Loading ...[Google’s strategy is all about ads, not selling services. Business Analyst Stijn Schuermans examines Google’s three-pronged strategy for making money and the key drivers for the company’s success]
Is Google a technology company? Well, sort of. Despite its geeky, engineering-driven reputation, Google is in the first place an advertisement business, as an overwhelming 96% of its revenues come from digital ads. Sure, Google produces some amazing high-tech stuff, spending $3.7 billion in R&D in 2010, but it’s all in the name of crude commerce; of connecting eyeballs to ads.
Let’s explore the three pillars of Google’s strategy that enable the company to sell more ads for more money. Google increases its reach by flattening any obstacle that stands between its ads and eyeballs. Then, Google expands its visibility to the user by providing services, creating more opportunities to show ads. Finally, the company squeezes the maximum out of those opportunities by mining user data, which allows them to understand and target users very efficiently.
This strategy works pretty well for the company, to say the least. Google ranked 92nd in the 2011 Fortune 500. The company is worth almost 200 billion USD. Last year, it reaped over $29B in revenue. If Google were a country, it would be bigger than Cyprus or Bahrain, based on GDP. Since its business is digital, it collected a net profit in 2010 of $8.5B (a healthy profit margin of 27%), despite providing almost all of its user-oriented services for free.
Let’s discuss Google’s three-pronged strategy in more detail.
Pillar 1. Flatten
The first pillar of Google’s strategy is to crush down anything that stands between consumer eyeballs and Google’s inventory, i.e. the ads that Google’s advertiser customers are providing. That is, any friction for users to be exposed to the ads should be removed.
For example, Google provides two operating systems, both immensely complex technologies, at low or zero cost to the world: Android (for smartphones and tablets) and Chrome OS (for netbooks and set-top boxes). Of both operating systems, open source versions are available for anyone to access, develop and build derivatives from.
Google provides OS’s like Android for free, because its goal is to commoditize the devices they will run on. They allow OEMs to make high-quality, low cost devices, which can then be delivered at a very affordable price to the mass market. If more people own and use smartphones and tablets, the reasoning goes, this gives Google more opportunities to reach those users and serve them ads.
In the same context, Google took a very active stance in the net neutrality debate. There the intention was to ensure optimal access of users to the network. It would not be good for Google’s business if operators would impose restrictions of artificially increase the cost of network access.
[New Report] Mobile Platforms: The Clash of Ecosystems
+21 rating Loading ...[We at VisionMobile have been researching and helping to educate the industry about mobile platforms for the last five years. In this time mobile software has evolved from the world of “open OS” to the world of complex ecosystems, network effects, app stores which are redefining the rules of telecom industry. Today we share much of this knowledge in our Mobile Platforms: The Clash of Ecosystems report - a critical analysis of major mobile platforms and their battle for dominance - free download here].
Mobile platforms are at the center of the epic battle between Internet and telecom giants. The competition is not just about technology, performance, user interface or openness. Today’s mobile platforms win and lose by the strength of their ecosystems of developers, service and content providers.
In the report the Mobile Platforms: Clash of Ecosystems (free download here) we break down Android, BlackBerry OS, BREW, iOS, Symbian, Windows Phone and webOS across key elements such as history and origins, owner agenda, ecosystem adoption, market penetration, technology foundations and application development experience. Clash of Ecosystems is part-funded by webinos, a project aiming to deliver an Open Source Platform and software components for web applications across mobile, PC, home media (TV/set-top boxes) and in-car devices.
The report dives into several key trends underpinning the era of mobile platforms and ecosystems – designed to help developers, software companies, entrepreneurs, enterprise CIOs, brands, handset makers and operators to better understand the dynamics of mobile platform competition on intersection of economics and technology.
Smartphones go mainstream, but the devil’s in the details. Just two years ago, smartphones were viewed as expensive toys for geeks and Apple fan boys. No longer. Smartphones have entered the mainstream in developed markets, and are taking a growing proportion of device sales in more cost-sensitive markets around the globe. In the third quarter of 2011, smartphone shipments penetration surpassed 29% globally, although this figure varies widely from nearly 65% in the USA and over 50% in Europe to 19% in Asia-Pacific, 17% in Latin America and 18% in Africa/Middle East.
The leaders, iOS and Android, are driven by economics of demand. Handset sales are driven not by hardware features (“what the handset can do”) but the user interface and applications available (“what you can do with the handset”). Much like any smartphone platform, iOS and Android are driven by economics of demand, where the demand generated (incl. the number of applications) has a far stronger effect on sales than pure supply chain efficiencies. As of October 2011, iOS and Android are leading the way, with over 500,000 and 300,000 applications, respectively. The rest of the platforms trail far behind with order of magnitude less applications: BlackBerry has 35,000 applications, Windows Mobile 30,000 applications and Symbian 25,000 applications.
The elusive long-tail of mobile shipments
+1 rating Loading ...[The era of smartphones is upon us, as penetration increases from 11% in 2008 to over 25% in 2011. But what of the remaining three quarters of the market? Marketing Manager Matos Kapetanakis talks smartphone numbers and takes a look at the elusive long-tail of feature phone shipments]
Click on image to download the full watchlist
Dawn of the smartphone era
Smartphone penetration continues to accelerate, growing from a paltry 11% in 2008 to 20% in 2010 and climbing to 27% in H1 2011. Feature phones continue to make up the bulk of mobile shipments globally, but the revenue potential of each segment is a different matter altogether. As an example, the average selling price for Nokia’s feature phones was 39 Euros versus 144.5 Euros for their converged devices.
Another parameter, namely profitability is much in favour of smartphone vendors. HTC has comparable revenues to Nokia’s successful feature phone segment, with two times the profits and profit margin, despite having six times fewer shipments. The gap is even larger in the case of Apple, whose profits are nearly 20 times those of Nokia’s feature phone segment, despite having less than a third of Nokia’s shipments.
Smartphone platforms: Google vs. Apple
First, let’s take a look at the two leading players, Android and iOS. The vacuum left behind by Symbian’s timely demise has been filled primarily by Android and, to a lesser extend, Apple’s iOS. In H1 2011, Android gobbled up nearly 45% of the smartphone pie, leaving approximately 20% for Apple’s iOS and 12% for RIM’s BlackBerry OS.
Apple has enjoyed a healthy increase of iPhone shipments in 2011, already reaching past the 50M full-year figure for 2010 in the first three quarters of 2011. Despite the initial disappointment of not being a brand-new iPhone, the iPhone 4S managed to get 4 million sales in just one weekend – that’s more than Windows Phone manages in an entire quarter. However, in an increasingly price sensitive smartphone market, there is a limit to how many iPhones can be sold.
Despite being the number one smartphone platform, Android is not guaranteed a smooth sailing. Apple’s lawsuit barrage on Samsung, the biggest Android vendor in terms of sales, has exposed the platform’s Achilles’ heel, namely patents. The large arena of this high-stake drama will not be set in Germany or Australia, but the large smartphone markets, like the U.S. Google’s acquisition of Motorola (don’t miss our full analysis) has indeed armed Google with fresh patent ammunition, but might alienate the big Android vendors.
Smartphone platforms: The best of the rest
But what of the other platforms? Windows Phone continues to fail to impress users, with sales being disappointing, as Ballmer himself recently admitted. Nearly eight months after the much-vaunted Microsoft-Nokia deal, Windows Phone is faced with lukewarm results, being outsold even by Samsung’s bada platform. In H1 2011, Windows Phone barely reached 4M shipments, while bada shipments climbed to nearly 8M. WP7’s growth, after it replaces the zombified Symbian as Nokia’s main smartphone platform, is still uncertain, but the longer it takes for Nokia WP devices to hit the shelves, the more market share will Nokia lose. In H1, even if Nokia were to magically replace all Symbian handsets with Windows Phone handsets, Microsoft’s platform would still be far behind Android, with just half of Android’s shipments.
From MeeGo to Tizen: the making of another software bubble
+8 rating Loading ...[Just a short 1.5 years from MeeGo's birth, Intel dumps it to shift focus to a new platform, Tizen, in partnership with Samsung. Guest author Dave Neary discusses the underpinnings of Tizen and why both MeeGo and Tizen are software bubbles].
This illustration is our first go at a comic strip - like it? Feel free to copy it
Eight months after Nokia embarrassed Intel by withdrawing support for the MeeGo project, Intel has followed suit. On 27th September, Intel and Samsung announced the birth of a new mobile platform called Tizen. After only 19 months, MeeGo has been left parentless, and appears to be on life support. Tizen is, in fact, a successor of the Samsung Linux Platform, a reference platform of the LiMo operator consortium, with some components taken from the MeeGo stack.
Given that LiMo and MeeGo have both failed to set the mobile computing world alight, and Android has a four year head start, can we expect better things from their offspring? What has changed with this announcement? Is this Intel’s last chance to have a stake in a credible smartphone platform? And what should Samsung, Intel and the Linux Foundation do to give their new platform a fighting chance at success?
The Birth of Tizen
Last year, when reviewing the progress which MeeGo had made in its first few months, we reserved judgement on the project, on the grounds that it was “too early to be able to tell how the final product will compare to iOS or Android”, but we noted that there had been some growing pains between Nokia and Intel.
Those growing pains stretched to breaking point earlier this year, when Nokia finally gave up on MeeGo and turned to Windows Phone to revitalise its smartphone products. Intel was left looking for a heavyweight consumer device partner to come in and lend credibility to their claim that MeeGo was no longer a one-man show. Rumours that LG would be joining the project failed to materialise. Finally, Intel ran out of patience, and partnered with Samsung on a new platform, Tizen, to be based on SLP (Samsung Linux Platform), a platform which Samsung have previously provided to the LiMo Foundation to be used as a reference plaform for its members.
While the move has obviously been in the planning for months, Samsung were perhaps encouraged to partner with Intel on the back of the news that Google has acquired Motorola Mobility in August – a view supported by their recent settlement of an Android-related patent dispute with Microsoft. In addition, as LiMo members, most notably Vodafone also ran out of patience, SLP was left as a platform without a home.
MeeGo on Life Support
How does MeeGo fit into the big picture now? High profile participants like GENIVI, China Mobile, Asus and Acer have committed to shipping MeeGo devices. Will they be based on the unreleased MeeGo 1.3, or the previous 1.2 release? Or will these companies move en mass to Tizen?
visionmobile 2005-2012
visionmobile 2005-2012
