Challenges to Microsoft

The Symbian project and the mobile Linux consolidation present greater challenges for Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating systems. Microsoft executives last week repeated the mantra that mobile Linux remains fragmented, despite LiMo's coalescing support, and despite the fact that Symbian is not Linux-based.

"This ultimately impacts software developers, as they become an increasingly important part of this value chain," says Scott Rockfeld, the group product manager for Microsoft's mobile communications business. "In a fragmented industry, they have to create their application multiple times for the multiple flavors of the operating system that are out there. There are more Linux consortiums that come and go than there are Linux phones."

"LiMo will beat Windows in the midtier products and probably be more favored in the MID form factor," predicts ABI's Carlaw. Windows Mobile will continue its healthy presence in the high-end smartphone market.

But it won't be alone there. Despite the focus on Linux and open source, the most successful mobile platforms so far have been proprietary, says Mark Lowenstein: the original Symbian operating system, Windows Mobile, and most recently the spectacular success of Apple's iPhone and the growth of RIM's BlackBerry smartphone business.

RIM, for example, just announced another successful fiscal quarter, shipping about 5.4 million devices in that period, adding 2.3 million net new BlackBerry subscribers, bringing its total account base to over 16 million users, the vast majority of them reaped during the past 15 months.

Lowenstein is the managing director of Mobile Ecosystem, a consulting firm. In his just released June newsletter, he argues that "proprietary is here to stay." Devices such as iPhone, BlackBerry, Sidekick and others show, he says, that "the tight integration of hardware, software, and applications delivers a superior user experience." These more closed, more limiting alliances between carriers and vendors like RIM or Apple or Microsoft, will face their first big test in 2009, when Android, LiMo and similar open projects have a chance to gain traction, according to Lowenstein.

"One thing is for sure," says ABI's Carlaw. "They are all likely to be part of a very interesting market long term."