The Mysteries of Consolidation
Been thinking a lot about consolidation these days. For many years as different players entered the mobile space, we have been told by analysts that the market will consolidate to a clear winner, and just one or two viable alternatives. I heard that when Palm had several licensees like Handspring, Sony, IBM. I heard it again when Microsoft’s Pocket PC platform began to gain some traction against Palm, and other players were trying to emerge in the PDA platform.
And you hear it these days as well, that the mobile smartphone market will consolidate to one or two main players.
But why does it seem that just the opposite is happening? For us, supporting HanDBase on the Palm OS and Pocket PC platforms in the early days was a challenge enough. Now over the years we’ve added Nokia’s S60, Windows Mobile Smartphones, RIM BlackBerry, and iPhone to that mix. And now there are three other looming platforms that may take hold- Palm WebOS, Google Android and Nokia’s Maemo.
In the world of open standards, open source, etc, why is this happening? I think the main reason is that manufacturers want to own the software and hardware. They feel if they have control over all aspects they can deliver a well integrated product. It worked well for current market leaders RIM, Nokia and Apple, so everyone else follows suit trying to do the same thing.
And in some cases it does appear to be working- there are some really beautiful, functional and well integrated products shipping and soon to ship. And all seem to support developers with SDKs and developer toolsets. With each of these platforms supporting popular web standards like the WebKit browser, many web based apps run well on all platforms as well.
So then, what are the downsides to all of this reverse-consolidation? From our perspective, it’s third party software. Just because manufacturers supply an SDK doesn’t mean everyone will develop every key app for it. And even if they do, can they really afford to treat each equally even though some have a relatively small percentage of their customers on there?
Facebook and Google are two great examples of this..
Facebook is still wildly popular and probably one of the all time top downloads for mobile devices. But while their iPhone app is cutting edge, they only recently released one for Google Android and is decidedly less full featured than it’s iPhone counterpart. And while they were there at the big Palm Pre announcement, there has yet to be any official facebook app on the Palm Pre (see here).
Google has a bunch of apps that they’ve released as either native apps or web optimized apps depending on the platform. Google Latitude is just one example, while Google Voice is another story altogether.
These are big companies, some with thousands of IT and programming staff, and they can’t keep up with the deluge of platforms to support. How is a small company with a staff size you can count on one hand expected to keep up?
This is the dilemma we and many other small programming shops are facing these days. Open source and freeware has driven down the acceptable cost you can charge for an application on a mobile device significantly, and this affects how much potential revenue one can bring in on a given platform. So smaller developers typically choose just one or two platforms to support and focus on and leave these other platforms alone, much to the chagrin of customers using the platforms they passed on. Or they deliver a very basic app on most platforms and can’t spend the time/resources needed to make the app truly wonderful on each of them, much to the chagrin of every customer. Or they deliver a web app that runs on every platform’s browser, but doesn’t feel like a real app and has awkward pauses while loading screens or limited integration with the features of the device.
Eventually it could be this, third party software, that leads to real consolidation in the market. While big companies can create their own platforms and even support developers, it’s the developers who can’t support all of these platform choices. And not just the small developers, but even the larger ones. And eventually customers won’t want to buy the devices that don’t get the attention from their favorite software makers. Something will have to give eventually!
What do you think about this? Do you think that all of these companies can truly succeed simultaneously? If not, which ones will fail and why? What is a developer to do? Looking forward to your comments!
As I struggle to adapt my perfectly functional Palm OS apps to their new home on my new Blackberry I gain new respect for the programmers struggling to keep pace with all the foibles of these various platforms. If my Palm could communicate with the outside world like my new BB I wouldn’t switch but I am amazed at how much more straight forward and intuitive the Palm OS is compared to the much newer Blackberry 5.0 platform.
I rely quite heavily on HanDBase to document my daily (billable) activities as a Physician. So far, I am unable to get the Blackberry to work with my relatively straightforward Data entry. I will keep trying & am still optimistic but to do this sort of trouble-shooting with 5 other platforms – with all the wrinkles different users can add to the mix, must be enough to make you want to tear your hair out.
My hat goes off to you & all these frustrating variations on the theme.
-evan
Hi Dave,
This is a very interesting article indeed and the timing is very appropriate for me.
You are quite right, developers and software houses do face a huge dilemma! I have been doing some work in this area for the business I work for.
We want to develop a solution that anyone in the business can use, this is where the problems start, people in the business use different mobiles and therefore different operating systems.
Historically, we have developed for Windows Mobile – this has been our mobile operating system of choice. However, we are reliant on our mobile phone provider to supply and support this OS. More recently, the amount of Windows Mobile devices has reduced and we are left with only a couple of these devices to choose from. To complicate this, these devices are way to ‘consumer’ than ‘business’. We now face a challenge, we don’t have the resources to develop for all available Operating Systems.
The Operating Systems that we have to choose from are S60, Windows Mobile, Android and Apple.
So, I decided to look at market data on mobile phones and their operating systems to try and see where the market is going. From a very well known market data company, I have used the following data to make some decisions:
41.4 million smart phones were shipped in Q3 2009, with Nokia, RIM and Apple & HTC commanding over 80% of the market.
In Q3 of 2009, in terms of operating system market share, Symbian 46.2%, RIM 20.6%, Apple 17.8%, Microsoft 8.8%, Google 3.5% and others 3.2%
It should be noted that Android would probably increase their market share over the next few months since it is a fairly new OS in the market place.
We need to develop for the largest market and not the smallest, so in order to ensure our developments have as much longevity as possible, and we are not developing for an OS that would have fairly little uptake, we are thinking about developing for S60, and Windows Mobile (we don’t use RIM and the iPhone has only just become available on our provider). For all the other Operating Systems, we are thinking about developing a Web app. Not ideal, but much better than nothing!
So, in answer to your questions, I think you are absolutely correct in saying that developers will choose a select number of Operating Systems to support, and in my opinion it will be the ones that get market share. Therefore, the mobiles that get least market share will either fall away or become a niche market.
I would think that developers would concentrate on Symbian, RIM, Apple, Microsoft and Google.
Now, to the million-dollar question – what is a developer to do? I guess if I were running a commercial business, I would have to focus on developing for the masses (those with the highest market share). There is a huge amount of cost in developing for a new OS, and potentially not enough recovery of cost. Yes, this may disappoint some people, but not as many of the current customers who would potentially be put on ‘hold’ whilst new developments are underway. I am sure more revenue would be generated in improving current developed systems.
Finally, there is another theory – how many people buy a new mobile that has a new OS, then shout for apps to put on it. A developer then goes off and develops for it, only to find that those users who shouted for apps have then gone on to another mobile with one of the main Operating Systems (Apple, RIM, Windows Mobile etc) because they are fed up with waiting for the apps!
Anyway, they are my thoughts…..for what they are worth. Would be interesting to see what others think?
@Boyd Neal
One thing to be wary of with Symbian is reports like that generally lump all flavors of Symbian together. S60 is the most popular platform for usable apps however this is also the S40 platform which you can write Java apps for but it’s much less usable. They probably don’t still lump UIQ in there as it’s really not Symbian any longer. However if you are planning on supporting Symbian you’d want to see what the S60 market share is. Additionally, there have been rumors that Nokia is going to stop making S60 devices and move to the Maemo OS, the one on the new N900. So while Android marketshare might increase Symbian may decrease in the coming months.
These of course are other hurdles for Developers to have to worry about.
David Devaney, Jr.
I am just so glad that I may live long enough to be able to access live data on a mySQL database backend from nearly anywhere and view that data on a handheld, regardless of brand.
When that happens I will feel vindicated for having held on to a Palm TX for so long.
I am continually amazed at the platforms you providers of other professional applications support in order to remain in the game. I came form the Palm OS and made extensive use of HanDBase. From there to the Windows Mobile platform and after experiencing operational difficulties with HanDBase, moved to Excel spread sheets. After my wife’s death, I started using HanDBase on her Centro and was determined to get back to HanDBase on a routine work-related basis. I spent a short period of time working out the issues (28 databases) and succeeded in doing so. Back to HanDBase for Windows for tracking my work related activities and for the most part am very satisfied with it.
Any platform I look at must support HanDBase, Microsoft’s Excel and Word, and similar applications. My fear: the decision to no longer support a platform.
David, it is amazing what you and your staff are accomplishing in making your users happy.
I’m sorry to hear you will not be developing for Android. Not having HanDBase is the one thing that keeps my Droid from being perfect. I’ll keep checking back in case you change your mind and/or hope that someone else will step up to the plate with something similar. I loved my Treo, but the Droid leaves it in the dust. Stability, speed. It’s got it all. Except for HanDBase! Drat.