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You
may not have noticed yet, but there is a new battle to control software
infrastructure that will affect how you work, how you do business
and how you pay for things. In the past 20 years we've seen the
battle for the personal computer hardware, then the battle for the
operating system, then the battle for the Internet browser, now
the battle has moved to your pocket. It's the battle of the micro-browser!
In
December there was brief news coverage of a deal between mobile
phone manufacturer Ericsson and software giant Microsoft who are
forming a new venture to develop Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
software solutions. The deal is centered around the Microsoft micro-browser,
software which runs on your phone and displays WML encoded files
of information, think of it as Internet Explorer for your phone,
and the Ericsson WAP Server software, which is designed to serve
up WML Decks and respond to http requests from the phone, in a similar
fashion to Apache webserver for html.
This
announcement represented the drawing of the battle lines for the
next big software infrastructure battle and the first one of the
new century. There are several players and each seeks to differentiate
themselves from the others. This differentiation will lead inevitably
to consumer confusion. The players who have "announced"
their candidature for King of the Micro-browser are Ericsson-Microsoft,
Symbian (an alliance of Psion, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Sun, Palm,
Philips, Panasonic, Sybase and Oracle), Nokia and Phone.com.
Each
of these companies is offering something slightly different, some
of them are in palmtop devices and not just phones, some of them
are offering services and portals rather than just software but
they are all playing for the same prize - the right to take a percentage
of all your on-line transactions!
They
are also all playing the same game, by and large by the same rules:
rules which have been laid down over a period of 20 years of hi-technology
introduction and are now well understood by the hi-tech marketing
community.
The
rules of the game
First,
you must have a cool new technology that will get the technology
enthusiasts interested. These guys (mostly male) just have to have
the latest gadget, no matter how lousy it works, how difficult to
use, or how unreliable. They just want it. However, they in themselves
are not enough.
To
grow the market you need to show that the technology can be ubiquitous.
That it can grow and be useful to a larger section of society. Enter
the visionaries. People who will live with the pain of early adoption
for their own gains. They know that they can gain business advantage
through early adoption of technology. These people need to see competition
in the market place. They need to believe it is happening. Belief
in the vision is key.
The
vendors do this by creating competition for themselves. They do
this by releasing their specifications as an "open" standard
or by forming a joint venture company to develop the "open"
standard.
The
market begins to grow and compelling niche applications begin to
appear but the big prize is still out there - the Pragmatist buyer.
The gap between the Pragmatist buyer who represents the big majority
market and the visionary early adopter is known as "the chasm"
as named and explained by Geoffrey Moore in his seminal text on
high technology marketing, "Crossing
the Chasm".
The
Pragmatist buyer wants to go with the market leader because he knows
that there will be a shake out and he knows that he might get caught
with something which isn't compatible with the leading solution!
How does he know this? Well it's simple! As soon as the industry
has created all that competition by announcing an "open"
standard, each vendor immediately starts to add proprietary extensions
to that standard. This has been referred to as "innovation"
by a recent leading software vendor. The purpose of "innovation"
is to lock in the customer, stopping her from going over to the
competition and to create a fear in the marketplace that you, the
buyer, will get stuck with something incompatible. Better to go
with the market leader. So as the market begins to look like a sure
thing, the goal of the vendor is to be just a nose in front with
the highest market share, and just sufficiently proprietary to instill
enough fear in the customer that they had better stick with that
vendor and better not dare buy anything else.
The
winner is the first across the chasm with the highest market share.
Simple!
In
earlier battles for PC platform and software infrastructure dominance,
the winners have been, Intel, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Microsoft,
Lotus and Microsoft again. Now the game is on all over again.
The
Players and what they are offering
Ericsson
- Microsoft
Ericsson
have shown that they are not prepared to wait while Symbian gets
its act together. Large committees are bound to be slow. They need
to move fast. So far Ericsson have announced a WAP Server (equivalent
of a Web Server for WAP) and now they have teamed with Microsoft
who have announced a micro-browser for WML.
Their
obvious strength is the Microsoft's track record at doing just enough
to lock in the customer with nonstandard features and that uncanny
knack of getting to the front just in time to win the race.
The
weakness at the moment is back end services to offer on the front
end browser.
Motorola
- MIX
Motorola
have made a big impact quickly. They have done this by sacrificing
control. Their impressive MIX product is based on phone.com technology.
The website looks great and the short flash movies give you an indication
of the direction that their product is heading. Looks like Voice
Browsing is a big part of it.
Symbian
Symbian
is playing a bigger game and arguably has the moral high ground.
It represents the official "open" standard and its Psion
developed EPOC operating system is meant to be the one all the partners
will use. Ericsson have shown that they are quite happy to have
a foot in both camps. Symbian is not just about phones, it's also
about PDAs and other palmtop devices which perhaps we haven't seen
yet.
Wireless
PDAs will essentially be in competition with WAP Cell Phones for
your remote internet access. If WAP is to succeed, it must offer
adequate access and applications, otherwise the consumer will switch
to PDAs for wireless net access and keep their phones just for talking.
The
Symbian initiative is arguably about a longer term strategy. The
strength has to be the large number of partners and the interest
in PDAs. The weakness, the large number of partners and the spread
of the effort. Many partners have their own competing initiatives
e.g. 3Com have Palm OS.
Nokia
So
far Nokia have announced their WAP Server 1.0 and WAP Toolkit. They
are in the server and the browser market. They would also like to
be in services and it's no secret that Nokia have been actively
chasing startups and anyone else who will sign up to be a WAP ISV.
More
recently, IBM
announced a suite of products to support the Nokia effort.
With Microsoft in the Ericsson camp, it was only a matter of time
before IBM got involved with someone else. At this time IBM appears
to be offering only a suite of software tools. However, Lou Gerstner
has publicly stated that the Internet is all about transactions
and he wants a slice of that business. Perhaps these IBM development
tools is the slight-of-hand which IBM requires to get developers
onboard and applications developed using their software then they
switch those developers to using their (IBM) servers, portals and
transaction inter-mediating services. It is only speculation at
this time.
Phone.com
Phone.com
is the startup with the big ambition. If they win the battle for
the micro-browser then they stand to be the Microsoft of the early
21st century. Phone.com is arguably the best placed in the race
so far. They have the browser, they have the server, they are in
PDAs as well as hand phones, they already have a growing suite of
software products around the UP. brand which will be easy
to start customising and they are already into services offering
a portal site for service vendors.
Phone.com
can potentially offer application developers something the others
currently can't or won't - the ability to deliver on both WAP and
Wireless PDA platforms. This may prove compelling for many application
/ service providers.
All
the rest are playing "catch up" with Phone.com.
Consumer
Affect
So
how does all of this affect the consumer? Well the obvious observation
is short to medium term chaos in the market. A lot of beta software
which will be bug ridden. The unspoken rule of the game is "ship
it now". Microsoft, particularly have shown that you can beat
the competition by getting product out there. Don't wait for quality.
IBM learned that lesson the hard way when Microsoft ate their lunch
on PC operating systems. So in the short term, those technology
enthusiast WAP phone owners are going to have to be patient and
do a lot of rebooting.
The
second observation is that selecting your phone vendor is going
to get more complicated and changing your vendor could start to
get difficult depending on what services you like or need to use.
If any of those services is using a proprietary extension to WML
then you may be stuck with that vendor.
Could
the phone run more than one micro-browser? Perhaps the answer to
flexibility in the services game is to have a phone with switchable
software! Well frankly that's unlikely unless some cheap Taiwanese
clone cell phones start appearing. It is currently not in the interests
of the vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola to let you switch
browser. They want to control your pocket device and they will.
End
Game
So
how will it all shake out? My guess is that despite all the sound-bites
about human factors and usability, these devices will remain a pain
to use. They will, as seen before, be taken up by the early adopter
market of apologists (see
Alan Cooper). This will hold back the mass market take up. However,
with globalisation there are at least a few hundred million potential
apologists around. The winner, who has the most apologists signed
up, will still declare victory. However, uptake will have been restricted
and the vendors and service providers will know it.
Meanwhile,
I believe that the palmtop market will continue to mature and telephone
hardware will continue to get more advanced with bigger and bigger
screens and better and better interfaces. By the time the market
is ready to declare a winner, I think the phone as we know it will
have been passed by and PDAs will be the thing.
The
winner therefore, is not likely to be the player with the nose in
front when WAP threatens to break into the billion units sold, but
the player with the most compelling solutions in the PDA market.
Maybe,
just maybe, that's why Ericsson have wisely put a foot in both camps.
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