August 7, 2008: Symbian vs. Android vs. LiMo vs.?
Vodafone Group recently announced that CEO Arun Sarin would be retiring from his post in the near future, but two of Sarin's most recent speeches (at Mobile World Congress and the last CTIA show) will continue to resonate throughout the industry in the years to come. Sarin challenged the industry to whittle down the number of platforms or operating systems currently supported for mobile phones.
"We have to narrow the range of operating systems," Sarin said. "We have 30 or 40 operating systems right now, if we had three or five operating systems, then that would be a good thing. Let the marketplace decide whether its Symbian, Microsoft, Android, LiMo or Linux 3.0 or whatever it is," Sarin said. "But we cannot have 30 of these."
Nokia has made moves recently to strengthen Symbian by buying out its other investors. Some analysts believe that Microsoft has tipped its cap and hinted that Windows Mobile may be on the outs in favor of a web-based OS it's been working on. Google is on the cusp of releasing an updated Android that insiders say rights many of the wrongs from the first release and LiMo continues to add supporters to its growing list. By mid-2008, Sarin's challenge remains wholly intact: There has yet to be a shakeout.
During the Mobile World Congress keynote, Sarin also gave some advice to carriers: Don't carry phones that will have unsupported platforms in five years. "There will be that phone manufacturer who says 'I can provide this for you and I can provide a little bit of differentiation with our operating system,' but in the near term, it is seductive to go down that path because you will win in the short term. When you win in the near term, you lose in the long term because you are stuck and cannot go with innovations."
Hard to say which platforms Sarin is referencing, but the challenge remains--whittle it down.
Our weekly columnist and Rethink Research analyst Caroline Gabriel has tackled the OS challenge in this week's Mobile Internet Watch. Read on to learn why Google said it has no plans to join LiMo and more.
