Mobiledevworld.com | Mobile Developers Community

The passing decade in the cellular market featured overwhelming growth in the penetration of mobile phones and outstanding breakthrough in their capabilities. Ten years ago, there were about 700 million mobile subscribers, while today there are about 4.6 billion, representing a global penetration rate of 67%. Out of the 1,136,401 mobile phones that were shipped in 2009 (according to Ovum estimations), 181,276 were smartphones, representing 16% of the global market. Most of these smartphones are equipped with a large TFT display (preferably touchscreen), 3.5G and WiFi connectivity, GPS, camera, Bluetooth and more. Smartphones today come with a variety of applications, such as a Web browser, email client, navigator and most importantly, an app store that allows the user to download applications that were developed by 3^rd party developers.

The mobile phones of 2000 seem pre-historic in comparison with the modern smartphones of 2009. 10 years ago we had 2G phones, which enabled voice calls and SMS with limited interoperability between different networks. They had a small monochrome display which was capable of displaying few lines of text and simple graphics. They had few built-in applications, such as an alarm clock, calculator and primitive games (Snake!). These applications were provided by the device manufacturer and there was no way in which 3^rd party developers could develop apps for these phones. Personal Device Assistant (PDA) represented a different class of mobile devices in those years. The popular PDAs, running operating systems such as Palm OS and Windows CE, offered an SDK for application developers. However, these devices were not connected to a wireless network, so the applications were bound to an off-line mode. During the course of the following years, mobile phones and PDAs have converged into smartphones.

In November 2000, Ericsson R380, the first Symbian phone was released. However, this phone was not open for 3^rd party application developers. In the same year, Nokia introduced the 9210 Communicator. It was running Symbian OS 6.0 and was one of the first smartphones with an open operating system.

In 2001, another major breakthrough occurred with the announcement of the first GPRS phones. GPRS, a 2.5G cellular network technology, introduced packet switched data over GSM. It enabled mobile applications to access the internet through the cellular network. The first connected application was the WAP Browser, which initially provided limited access to the Internet, mostly within the walled garden of the operator.

In the same year, the first mobile phones with MIDP 1.0 were announced. These phones had a built-in Java Micro Edition (J2ME) run-time environment that enabled the development and deployment of applications for mass-market mobile phones. This technology changed the rules of mobile applications development, as developers no longer needed tight relationship with device manufacturers. The first deployments of J2ME-enabled phones were by non-GSM operators such as LG Telecom, NTT DoCoMo and Nextel. The first GSM phones with MIDP 1.0 included devices such as Motorola Accompli 008 and Siemens SL45i.

In 2002, Nokia introduced the first S60 phone, the 7650. This phone included new features that were not seen in the GSM market before, such as color display, VGA camera and MMS. It supported native application development with the S60 SDK as well as J2ME applications. In the same year, RIM introduced the Blackberry 5810. This was the first Blackberry device for GSM/GPRS networks. Originally a two-way pager, this device has evolved into a smartphone and quickly gained popularity, especially in the business sector. Another smartphone platform that has emerged at the same time was Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS with the introduction of Orange SPV that was manufactured by HTC. This phone was running Microsoft Smartphone 2002, which was based on the Windows CE core and featured a removable SD card. Another platform that debuted in 2002 was Qualcomm’s BREW, which enabled the development of applications for BREW-enabled devices, mostly in the CDMA market.

In 2003, J2ME has been adopted by all major device manufacturers, while many mobile phones with MIDP 1.0 were introduced, especially in the GSM market. In the same year, mass market commercial 3G services were introduced, and enabled a wide range of mobile applications.

In 2004, J2ME has been upgraded with the introduction of MIDP 2.0. This was a major step forward, which opened new possibilities for application developers. One of the first phones that supported MIDP 2.0 was Motorola V600. In the same year, the first cellular phones with WiFi support were introduced. One of these phones was HTC Blue Angel that was released under several brand names.

In 2005, Motorola released the RAZR V3, the popular clamshell phone that sold more than 110 million units over the RAZR’s four-year run, and brought Motorola to second place in the mobile phone market behind Nokia. Unfortunately, Motorola failed to repeat this success and lost its market share dramatically during 2008.

In 2006, 67% of all smartphones shipped worldwide were running the Symbian OS, and most of them were Nokia’s S60 phones. In the same year, Nokia announced the N95, which became extremely popular since its release in 2007.

In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, and sold 6.1 million units over five quarters. Although these numbers are relatively small, the iPhone started a trend with its revolutionary multi-touch UI and swept the entire market. The iPhone SDK was officially announced in 2008, and allowed developers to develop native applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple has redefined the value chain by creating the App Store and allowing developers to easily sell their applications directly to end-users without the mediation of operators. The application gold rush has begun as the number of apps in Apple’s app store grew rapidly, which led to the launch of many other application stores.

In 2008, Google entered the arena with its open-source, Linux-based OS for mobile devices – Android. Unlike Apple, Google released the Android SDK to developers before the first device was shipped. Google also launched the Android Market for distributing Android apps. The first Android phone was T-Mobile G1, which was manufactured by HTC. Many other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and announced Android devices, including Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson. Although Nokia reached a market share record of 40% during 2008, its dominance in the smartphone market was in jeopardy. In an attempt to challenge Android, Nokia acquired 100% of Symbian shares and announced the open Symbian Foundation.

In 2009 Palm made a comeback with the Pre, running the new Linux-based OS, webOS (not be mistaken with the old Palm OS). Nokia probably realized that Symbian is not attractive enough, and released the N900, running the Linux-based Maemo OS. Samsung joined the Linux camp by releasing two Linux Mobile (LiMo) phones for Vodafone. Samsung that supported numerous smartphone platforms eventually decided that it needs its own proprietary platform and announced bada, yet another open mobile platform…

As the decade ends, we are witnessing an increasing number of smartphones running on many different platforms. Time will tell which of these platforms will prevail.

4 people like this post.

Like 

In an introduction to the review of Nokia N900, Mobile-Review provides very interesting insight about the roadmap of some smartphone platforms:

Nokia has decided to put aside its favorite S60 platform and switch to Maemo. Taking into account the growing smartphone market and transformation of ordinary phones into feature-rick monsters most phone makers realize the necessity of having a flexible and open platform, which will help creating true mobile powerhouses. The S60 used to be such a platform for Nokia up until 2007. It seemed to be almost the ideal platform for mobile devices, as it was simply design for this purpose. But that’s exactly the weak and strong point about the S60 at the same time. The market will require vertical OS, which can be applied in cell phones, communicators, laptops and MID devices, i.e. various device types with different architectures, performance levels and so on. And suddenly it becomes apparent that S60 is not up to the task – the only way it can be tailored for the company’s current needs is through a total reconstruction. Had Nokia had an army of developers, plenty of apps and related services for its S60, they would have to center everything around S60. Thankfully (or not!) there is a modest number of developers, programs and software for the S60. In other words, the resources they command are sufficient, but not excessive. The company is willingly sacrificing them, keeping both S60 and Maemo in the service boat at the same time. In addition all key SDK will need to have the ability to work with Maemo in future, allowing developers to migrate to this platform and attract new ones. In fact even Apple developers get an opportunity to create programs for Nokia’s platform in a quick and easy-to-learn fashion, which is definitely a huge advantage.

Microsoft made an unspoken decision to tweak Windows Mobile 7 and then try to migrate to a more “mature” OS. That is, they decided to ditch the idea of a mobile version, keep Windows CE and promote the next Windows 7.5/8 version (scheduled for release in 2012) for mobile platforms . Currently the development of Windows Mobile family is either stopped or frozen.

Since Samsung didn’t have clear-cut favorites in terms of platforms back in 2007, they opted to invest substantial amounts of money into a whole bunch of operating systems. At the same time strategy-wise they had no doubts that mobile devices in 2010 would become convergent devices. Samsung is viewed as the potential driving force for the Symbian Foundation, as their motivation to roll out competitive S60-powered devices seems unqestionable on the surface. However Samsung have managed to see things through, and are now working on a vertical Linux-based solution of their own, using their proprietary TouchWiz interface to tie up various platforms and prepare themselves for the upcoming Linux-powered devices.

In these circumstances the S60 platform will be driven by only one factor – price. By autumn of 2010 most phones will become significantly cheaper, as Maemo-based flagship devices will take the center stage, rivaled by Sony Ericsson’s S60 smartphones, making it the only vendor fighting for a piece of the smartphone market with S60. The fact of the matter is that they don’t have the resources to develop an own Linux-based solution, although the truth is they are negotiating with some players, in an effort to find a compromise and come up with a vertical OS of their own. Without much luck, though.

This situation leaves a huge time lag that will work to Nokia’s Maemo smartphones advantage. In fact, only Nokia and Apple will have similar solutions in 2010-2012 that will enable them to beef up their shares in this segment. While Samsung have almost let their chance slip, through various marketing moves they’ll probably manage to mitigate the negative consequences. Already today widgets are spreading not only among mobile phones, but also netbooks and this integration of UI will go even further, but it’s still not a scalable vertical OS. LG, in turn, don’t stand a chance on this field – they haven’t fully grasped where the market is headed and the outlines of the industry’s future still appear vague to them. Sony Ericsson are going through a tough period in their history, having wasted two years of priceless time and the re-organization initiated by the new management will take another year, so they won’t be able to get back in business until mid 2010, with first results expected only in 2011-2012, when Google, Nokia and Apple will have the market covered. For the first time the companies integrate services, software and devices in a vertical line, so technically we can call this market vertical. That’s the main distinction from the past, the paradigm is changing these days. The market lines up in a vertical, various devices get tied together by one single OS and differ only in terms of specs and size.

5 people like this post.

Like 

TamsS60 – the S60 blog recently had a chat with David Wood, the “Catalyst and Futurist” of the Symbian Foundation, and he’s managed to set the record straight about how S60 as we know it will be phased out over the next few years to make way for a new development stack. From Symbian^4, Qt will become the preferred programming environment for many parts of S60 app development. Qt is widely regarded as a productive, elegant set of class libraries, with a great deal of active community support. The current “S60 Avkon” APIs for the UIs of applications will be phased out. This means that most current S60 applications will break except for low-level things that aren’t using Avkon UI elements. That’s a big deal and a bit of an issue considering the huge installed based of S60 users and apps.

0 people like this post.

Like