UPDATED 11:00 EDT / FEBRUARY 21 2012

Breaking the Walled Garden Effect of Mobile OS Wars

One thing that greatly affects a consumer’s choice is the operating system used in a mobile device.  Right now, people can choose from Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, HP’s webOS, Samsung’s Bada or Microsoft’s Windows Phone.  But for end users, the OS doesn’t matter nearly as much as access to one’s content across devices.  And with such an array of mobile operating systems currently in play, consumers are getting stuck in walled gardens.  Similar to how social networks and web portals had to learn to play nice, so too will the mobile OS’s, leveraging standards like HTML5 for ubiquity, and apps for cross-platform distribution in a market that’s begging for some level of consolidation.

Let’s take a look at how the two players are doing and how recent changes could affect an industry of warring platforms.

Apple’s iOS

Apple’s primary objective is to make all their devices connected, and that’s actually a good thing.  They recently unveiled the new Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, which uses more iOS features to make the Mac and iOS experience more streamlined.  This promotes exclusivity, which can have either negative or positive impact on Apple.

Pro: more people would want to use it because it promotes familiarity in all their products.

Con: Apple devices don’t really play well with other devices, they are just not compatible. You can’t even use Apple’s Bluetooth to send or receive files from other devices.

Google’s Android

This is the OS for the people, since it runs most mobile devices across the globe.  But if the Google-Motorola Mobility is approved by all concerned regulators, this could greatly rattle the mobile world.  For starters, if Google owns Motorola they would now have devices to test and deploy their own OS, making necessary adjustments that will leave other OEMs on the sidelines, waiting for Google to give them some love.  Second, since Motorola is a manufacturing company, Google can now offer devices priced cheaper than competitors, diminishing their reliance on third parties.  It could really centralize their efforts across devices, solidifying the hardware and software branches.  Android’s a pretty open system now, even incurring support from rival device makers like RIM.  But some fear that the Google-Motorola merger could result in a very closed system.

Mere weeks after Android 4.0 was released, we hear word of Android 5.0  Jelly Bean, which might be released sometime during the second quarter of this year and there’s a huge possibility that a Motorola device wold be the first to get the update.  And Google could be building out its own walled garden to match Apple’s, with rumors that Android 5.0 could be incorporated in Netbooks and Notebooks.

The problem with this is that they can turn into Apple, they might really go full-on exclusive to Motorola, which will leave a lot of OEMs hanging. A good opportunity for other OS makers?  Or more fragmentation in a mobile world already riddled with varied languages, marketplaces and monetization schemes?

Microsoft, RIM and others

If Apple and Google are inevitably closing themselves off with OS-specific device networks, other OS makers could take this opportunity to open source, taking Android’s place.  This is not far-fetched, as RIM already opened their doors to Android app developers, as well as voicing plans of open sourcing.  They want more collaboration between them and the two major game players, iOS and Android.

Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive Meg Whitman even stated that the Google-Motorola deal could end up in Android as a closed-system.  And if there were plans of discarding webOS before, Whitman’s now sure of the opportunity to extend HP’s reach by open sourcing webOS by December of this year.  HP also launched their own browser, Isis, which means that they are slowly carrying out their plan for distributed software, always ready for integration with their own devices as well.

“We decided to contribute WebOS to the open source community and this will take three to four years to play out,” Whitman said, according to ChannelEMEA.com. “I think there is room for another operating system. iOS is great but it is a closed system. I think that Android may end up as a closed system because of [Google’s] relationship with Motorola.”

Samsung already has their own OS, Bada, and if Google does go exclusive, they can either focus on developing Bada and making it open source, or collaborate with Microsoft, or evenfocus on Tizen.  They have a lot of options.  And since they have proven that their devices can challenge Apple’s head-on, it won’t really matter what OS they have as long as they perform as well as the top device and offer support for existing app marketplaces.

As for Microsoft, they have proven that they do play well with others in the PC sector, so their Windows Phone is expected to go the same route.  News of Xbox Live coming to iOS and Android device clearly shows that they want their products to be available for everyone, not just Microsoft patrons.  And this is what people is looking for. This is just a small step in Microsoft’s larger plans towards extensive software distribution in the mobile realm.

“While the Xbox Live experiences and games always work best on the Windows platform, we understand that some Xbox fans may be using other types of devices,” said a Microsoft spokesman during the January annoncement.  “To satisfy that need, we are working to extend a few of our Xbox experiences and titles to other platforms.”

The growing diversity within the mobile sphere has lent itself to a frightfully competitive marketplace, where “vendor lock-in” proves beneficial to Apple, and open-source paves the way for revolution.  But in the end, something’s gotta give, and 2012 will be an important year in the evolution of our mobile ecosystem.


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