Switched On: The last smartphone OS
By Ross Rubin 
posted Jul 21st 2009 5:00PM
posted Jul 21st 2009 5:00PM
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Palm's webOS certainly faces strong competition as it vies for attention from manufacturers, carriers, developers and consumers. But Palm was able to knock out at least one ailing offering by making webOS the replacement for the old Palm OS. For others it may not be so easy. In fact, with the barriers to entry now so high and the commitment to existing operating systems so great, webOS may be the last major smartphone operating system launched for the foreseeable future.
With webOS taking the baton from Palm OS, the number of major smartphone operating systems has stayed fixed at six. Three of them -- Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Android -- are intended to be used by handset makers from multiple manufacturers, whereas iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and webOS are used only on the handsets offered by their developer. Of course, even these "purebred" operating systems owe much to older platform technologies, with Android and webOS being built atop a Linux kernel, iPhone OS having its distant roots in FreeBSD, and BlackBerry and Android building on Java. The race to attract software to these platforms has ignited an arms race of development funds to both prime the supply pump and the promotion of app stores to lead the horses to he touch-sensitive virtual koi ponds..
Developing and maintaining a smartphone operating system is a serious and expensive undertaking that can consume a company. Producing the original iPhone caused Apple to miss the self-imposed ship date of Leopard, and third-party app support did not come until much later. Whatever Microsoft is planning in a major overhaul for Windows Mobile 7 has taken long enough to warrant the release of the interim 6.5 release that still leaves the company far behind the state of the art. WebOS development clearly took up a significant portion of the $425 million investment from Elevation Partners in Palm. And finishing a 1.0 release is just the beginning.
If a company wants third-party developers to extend the functionality and make it a real platform, that company must develop a software development kit and support developers. The webOS SDK, for example, only recently became available to developers at large, and developer reaction has supported what Palm has long said: it will be some time before deep hardware integration enables the kinds of game experiences seen on other platforms. Rather, Palm is betting on the integration of Internet information with the context of where you happen to be at whatever time. Its Web-standards app approach even seems to have tickled Google's fancy, which is espousing such development for Chrome OS even though its Android SDK is a relative babe in the smartphone OS woods.
Google may realize that the stakes have been significantly raised. It's unlikely that a startup could develop an operating system compelling enough to win over handset manufacturers at this point. While the "new Palm" has been portrayed as a startup, it still had many legacy assets, including an installed base, a recognizable brand, and -- most importantly -- relationships with major carriers in the U.S. and Europe.
On the other side of the market share pie chart, the five largest handset manufacturers have aligned to various degrees with the three licensed operating systems. Fragmenting attention with too many operating systems was one of the distractions that bedeviled Motorola before it decided to cast its lot with Android. There are also now too many alternatives to rolling your own SDK, and so we'll continue to see the evolution of "user experiences" such as Panels on the XPERIA X1, TouchWiz on Samsung devices and HTC's TouchFLO-based Sense user experience on Android and Windows Mobile. Even these mobile makeovers can require heavy investment in R&D; HTC claims it has the largest Windows Mobile and Android development teams outside of Microsoft and Google.
But maybe one of the other existing operating systems will drop out? Again, this isn't likely in the near term unless it's at the hand of a direct replacement. All have significant or growing hardware support and all have sustainable resources of money and community behind them. None of this is to say that we won't see phones or other mobile devices with other, and even open, operating systems. The arrival of WiMAX in the U.S. should open doors to products like a 4G-enabled Nokia Internet Tablet, which runs a Linux distribution called Maemo that has an active developer base. But for companies that aspire toward the kinds of high volumes that can attract the attention of premiere software developers, it looks as though the window of opportunity for a new handset operating system is snapping shut like a sliding keypad.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
With webOS taking the baton from Palm OS, the number of major smartphone operating systems has stayed fixed at six. Three of them -- Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Android -- are intended to be used by handset makers from multiple manufacturers, whereas iPhone OS, BlackBerry OS and webOS are used only on the handsets offered by their developer. Of course, even these "purebred" operating systems owe much to older platform technologies, with Android and webOS being built atop a Linux kernel, iPhone OS having its distant roots in FreeBSD, and BlackBerry and Android building on Java. The race to attract software to these platforms has ignited an arms race of development funds to both prime the supply pump and the promotion of app stores to lead the horses to he touch-sensitive virtual koi ponds..
Developing and maintaining a smartphone operating system is a serious and expensive undertaking that can consume a company. Producing the original iPhone caused Apple to miss the self-imposed ship date of Leopard, and third-party app support did not come until much later. Whatever Microsoft is planning in a major overhaul for Windows Mobile 7 has taken long enough to warrant the release of the interim 6.5 release that still leaves the company far behind the state of the art. WebOS development clearly took up a significant portion of the $425 million investment from Elevation Partners in Palm. And finishing a 1.0 release is just the beginning.
If a company wants third-party developers to extend the functionality and make it a real platform, that company must develop a software development kit and support developers. The webOS SDK, for example, only recently became available to developers at large, and developer reaction has supported what Palm has long said: it will be some time before deep hardware integration enables the kinds of game experiences seen on other platforms. Rather, Palm is betting on the integration of Internet information with the context of where you happen to be at whatever time. Its Web-standards app approach even seems to have tickled Google's fancy, which is espousing such development for Chrome OS even though its Android SDK is a relative babe in the smartphone OS woods.
It's unlikely that a startup could develop an operating system compelling enough to win over handset manufacturers at this point. |
On the other side of the market share pie chart, the five largest handset manufacturers have aligned to various degrees with the three licensed operating systems. Fragmenting attention with too many operating systems was one of the distractions that bedeviled Motorola before it decided to cast its lot with Android. There are also now too many alternatives to rolling your own SDK, and so we'll continue to see the evolution of "user experiences" such as Panels on the XPERIA X1, TouchWiz on Samsung devices and HTC's TouchFLO-based Sense user experience on Android and Windows Mobile. Even these mobile makeovers can require heavy investment in R&D; HTC claims it has the largest Windows Mobile and Android development teams outside of Microsoft and Google.
But maybe one of the other existing operating systems will drop out? Again, this isn't likely in the near term unless it's at the hand of a direct replacement. All have significant or growing hardware support and all have sustainable resources of money and community behind them. None of this is to say that we won't see phones or other mobile devices with other, and even open, operating systems. The arrival of WiMAX in the U.S. should open doors to products like a 4G-enabled Nokia Internet Tablet, which runs a Linux distribution called Maemo that has an active developer base. But for companies that aspire toward the kinds of high volumes that can attract the attention of premiere software developers, it looks as though the window of opportunity for a new handset operating system is snapping shut like a sliding keypad.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
/\ Great bunch of readers you have here Engadget. You must cry yourselves to sleep at night.
And people wonder why more and more companies simply pander to the lowest common denominator.
This, people is why companies (Gaming, movies, television, etc) have simply switched to making products for "casuals". Because anything with substance is met with much the same reaction as the first 4 posters here.
Good article, Engadget. I don't agree with all of it, but very well thought out and written nonetheless.
In a way it makes perfect sense. When linux first started its grass roots movement everyone said that the idea would fail because windows and apple had such a stronghold on pc operating systems. It took a long time to gain momentum and break out into the world as a recognized alternative to the big two even though it still has a long way to go till it captures the hearts and computers of the general populus. The netbook dual boot is a great way to do this.
As with the smartphone market it may seem crowded at the moment with no chance of adding more, indie developers still have a chance in the long run if they push hard enough over a longer period of time. Whose to say a new "blackberry" idea won't develop and grow in the near future?
Linux belongs on servers and in embedded form-factors. For further information see its desktop marketshare.
@Mark
shut up i would continue but i'm tired of having linux arguments.
This article is worthless - states the obvious and doesn't draw a clear conclusion.
This article assumes no future growth in the smartphone market. As long as smartphones continue to proliferate, as well as the number of consumers buying, I don't understand why there will be no capital for OS development.
Given the narrowing window of planned or incidental obsolescence in the consumer technology market, these OSes will expire at some point.
No, the article assumes there will be no new OS entries in the smartphone future. I could possibly see Moblin being pushed to handsets, but for the most part, I agree. You basically have 6 major OS's in the mobile OS market. WebOS being the new kid on the block, there's just not much of a need in the forseeable future for a 7th OS. WinMo, Symbian and Android will be plenty sufficient for various handsets in general, while the phone specific ones like WebOS, iPhone and Blackberry will stay inside their little garden and do exactly what they are designed to do.
Why would anyone want to bother with a new smartphone OS? It's going to be hard to trump Android... it will be incredibly hard to beat the iPhone and apps, WinMo 7 looks like it will be a major improvement and Symbian is well, Symbian ;) So if I was building a new handset, I would definitely consider Android as my first option for the OS. I sure as shit wouldn't be wasting a lot of time and money trying to create a new OS from scratch... because after all, the last thing I would want, would be another fiasco like the Samsung Instinct!!!
"No, the article assumes there will be no new OS entries in the smartphone future."
Maybe it was unclear, but by growth I meant "the entire market." More consumers, using more phones, meaning more money for carriers, meaning more money for manufacturers and developers. As the pie gets bigger, it is possible for new competitors to emerge.
There is also the technological innovation factor -- if smartphones change in some way, whether it be ergonomics or hardware or what have you, their operating systems might have to change too. Which means new OS development.
I just don't understand why the author thinks there will be no more OS development. Palm didn't get the last drop of venture funding capital, and to us techies there might seem to be a saturation of OSes, but there are hundreds of millions of mobile phone users out there and I see no reason why competitors will not (or cannot) emerge.
Also take into account that many people don't know what the "6 major OSes" are, let alone three. Most people I know understand what the iPhone is but they couldn't tell you if it was running OSX or whatever, let alone what Symbian or WebOS is (many of them haven't even heard of the Pre). Moreover, when people choose to switch phones, they're only choosing one carrier and one phone and one OS at a time, so I don't foresee any brand fatigue except for the early adopter technophiles who have to try everything that's out there.
I see where the author is coming from, I just don't think there is any empirical or historical evidence to back up his assumptions.
Also "foreseeable future" is dubiously vague. The reader has no idea what that timeframe is, let alone what a meaningful timeframe would be between WebOS and a potential new competitor.
Slow news week?
In a crowded field that includes two OSes with momentum(iPhone OS, Android), one from the largest software developer in mankind's history, and one from a cellphone stalwart Nokia, the Palm OS doesn't stand a chance.
And yet, many would argue that Palm OS is the best out of the bunch.
I don't think you understand. The PalmOS isn't being licensed to other companies like winMo and Android. It's success is likely blackberry OS and is intrinsincally linked with the success of palm hardware. It will definately stand a chance if palm keeps chugging out quality products.
@Penguin
Um, Sony Clie? Handspring (although handspring was later bought by Palm)?
BlackBerry FTW
No to be picky... but the Darwin kernel (OSx and iPhone OS use it) has its roots off the FreeBSD kernel, NOT the NetBSD kernel..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29
Not only that but Palm has said that they would be willing to license the webOS to other companies.
Also, I really hate it but it's webOS, NOT WebOS.
I thought it was FreeBSD. I actually started reading these comments just to see if anyone noticed that.
It is NOT FreeBSD based either!
Actually the whole history behind the OS and kernel is very confusing.
It's more true to say it *was* based upon the BSD definition, and was replaced by Mach and XNU. Darwin is *not* the kernel, XNU is.
If you really want to hear the interesting story about the XNU kernel in Mac OS X you should view the video/read the document from Chaos Computer Club (Berlin):
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2007/24c3-2303-en-inside_the_macosx_kernel.html
Okay. I read this article thrice, and I don't get the idea behind it. Smartphone OSes are important? Android and WebOS have their work cut out for them? What, what what are you trying to tell us O wise one?
The smartphone OS environment has reached its carrying capacity. This blogger believes that no new smartphone OSes will appear in the near future.
I actually think one of the current ones will be pushed out of the market. Developers will not want to support more than a handful of OSes.
Although youtube comments tend to be the worst on the web, Engadget's aren't far behind, which is a right shame because the articles / news bits themselves are quite good.
How long until one of the major players buys Palm to have webOS. The software is easily worth what the company is if you can get it on quality handsets... Next Question, would we see it an an indictment against its engineers if windows were to buy Palm in order to attain webOS? Maybe another computer company that wants into the market buys Palm (Dell?)
The fact is that cell phones have not gone through the reckoning that PCs experienced 20-30 years ago. We are only at the beginning of smartphones for the masses, right now it is first movers and early adopters. With the iPhone we are just starting to see past feature phone owners coming to the realm of smartphone capabilities (and data plans)
4G will be the revolution. And with the way the AT&T, Verizon and Sprint work, I doubt that the best software will win...
"Palm's webOS certainly faces strong competition as it vies for attention from manufacturers ..." huh, what?
"...webOS are used only on the handsets offered by their developer" right. so how does the opening sentence of the piece, quoted above make any sense?
I need Web Os......With (1) A Larger Keyboard & (2) A Larger Screen.
Imagine Web Os or Android on a Touch Pro 2. Itd Be a Done deal. Otherwise im not buying a phone with a screen basically the same size as my HTC Touch. Its not a knock on Sprint, i just wish Palm had thought of that(Just Have HTC build your phones). But hey, maybe a Pre 2 or somthing will include those improvements.
Penguin, I think your point is very valid. I think Palm, especially with all of their former-Apple talent, is smart enough to find a middle ground between Apple and Microsoft/Google (One phone vs as many as we can partner with). I think Palm itself will pump out the Pre and Castle form factors and perhaps one or two others and ensure good quality and cross compatibility.
However, I think Palm in the future could certainly have the chance to play in HTCs playground. HTC could bring a great deal to Palm in hardware and software customizations. Palm has already stated they're not "married" to the idea of WebOS being strictly on their hardware. I think if they allow someone like HTC who will analyze it inside and out and develop quality hardware/software packages and not just pump out garbage like Motorola... I think they may have a business model that takes from the best of both Apple and Microsoft/Google/RIM.
Regardless, the more competition the better for all of us. I am glad to see all of these OSs and companies competing, look at how Apple and HTC quickly responded to the innovations Palm put out, look at how all the companies are working on mimicking Apple's success with the app store, etc. The next few years should be very good to us gadget fiends because none of these companies are going to be able to slack on development like Microsoft and the old Palm did for so long.
Isn't Symbian S60 getting kind of old now?
Back in the 80's, in the 8 bit days of home computers, we had dozens of systems and that was fine in those early days when those machines were standalone toys. With the switch up to 16 bit, and enough power to do more complex things, they PC world had to standardise and get a bit boring... It shrank down to PC, Amiga and Mac, and then just PC and Mac.
And I think the same thing will happen here. We're in the early days, and phone software is still fairly simple applets, but eventually developers won't want to have to rebuild their software for 6 different Operating Systems that have quite fundamentally different programming environments. You can't even write a bit of generic C or Java logic and port that between OS's.
Customers will eventually have their obvious choices. There'll be perhaps 3 OS's that have the bulk of the apps. And it will get boring, just like the desktop computers did, but practical.
Errrr....confused. Which is Android built on? Java or Linux?: "with Android and webOS being built atop a Linux kernel, iPhone OS having its distant roots in NetBSD, and BlackBerry and Android building on Java"
both, actually. android is built atop a linux kernel using java.
Interesting article, but I would have enjoyed some more forecasting or prediction of things to come etc.
Also, I double 2nd the idea of HTC and Palm getting cozy. That'd be AMAZING: HTC Build with webOS.... I'd probably part with some big bucks, a la people dropping 6 bills when the 1st gen Iphone came out, if what I envision the phone would be like based on some of their better offerings!
Lazy asses saw more than a paragraph of text and freaked out. Engadget needs more articles rather than just product announcements.
It bears mentioning that Palm is a tiny company, a thousand employees I believe. This is evident in webOS.
While some of the rationale for using web standards can be explained by ease of development, the real story is leveraging open technologies. On top of the Linux kernel the the only newly developed piece is the window manager. Apps in themselves utilize the browser as a runtime environment, automatically taking advantage of widget framework and application sandboxing.
Without the browser, these would've been significant undertakings that Palm did not have the resources to develop from scratch. It was also the timing of WebKit maturation and the hardware necessary to support the increased overhead of running in a browser.
In a sense Palm had to launch webOS now. It couldn't have done it earlier. The latest state of hardware and open source software let Palm leverage a whole OS with very limited resources. I am impressed by the shrewdness of webOS, not least of it is the building on top of WebKit courtesy of Apple.
Was there a point to this article?