Full Article: Mobile Software Platforms – Rapid Consolidation is Forecast

Summary: New analysis suggests that only only three or four mobile handset software platforms will remain by 2012. 

AreteThis is a Guest Briefing from Arete Research, a Telco 2.0™ partner specialising in investment analysis.

The views in this article are not intended to constitute investment advice from Telco 2.0™ or STL Partners. We are reprinting Arete’s Analysis to give our customers some additional insight into how some Investors see the Telecoms Market.

Mobile Software Home Truths

Wireless Devices

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Amidst all the swirl of excitement around mobile software, some dull realities are setting in.  As the barn gets crowded with ever more exotic breeds (in alphabetical order: Android, Apple OSX, Blackberry, LiMo, Maemo, Moblin, Symbian, WebOS, WindowsMobile), there is a growing risk of fragmentation and consumer confusion.  We see some unglamorous “home truths” about mobile software getting lost in the weeds.

 

Few, if any, vendors make money from mobile software.  Microsoft makes $160 of gross profit per PC while mobile software is moving royalty-free. The few pure plays (like Opera) rely on sales of services around their software.  Mobile software only gets leverage from related services (often a single one).  These must be tightly linked to devices, e.g., e-mail (Blackberry), e-books (Kindle), music (iTunes) or gaming (XBoxLive), with resulting communities controlled by their choice of software; few services work equally well on all devices (e.g., search, YouTube).

 

AppStores are not (yet) content stores. OEMs must link themselves with cloud services (like Motorola’s new BLUR platform) or offer their own (e.g., ITunes, Ovi, etc.).  Individual developers find it hard to make money through AppStores: if even one were making $10m in sales, it would be widely publicised.  Exclusive or “sponsored” applications like navigation or content-like games should fare much better.

 

We see room for only three to four platforms by 2012.  The pace of innovation, R&D cost, and need for customisation (for hardware, operators and languages) invites consolidation.  Supporting OEMs and reaching out to developers is costly and labour-intensive; only over time might HTML5 browsers supplant device-specific applications.  No platform is so productised as to simply hand over to licensees (be they OEMs or operators).

 

Every smartphone will support one (or more) AppStores.  We do not know how many services or what content AppStores 2.0 might offer, or how they will be made relevant to consumers.  The most popular applications should work on every smartphone, even as some devices (like INQ) are optimised for versions of Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Skype and other popular digital brands and services. AppStores may help OEMs build relationships with users of those services, though both vendors and operators will try to control billing.

 

All phones are becoming smart.  So-called smartphones get attention as a growth segment in a declining handset market, but “dumbphones” (using proprietary software like Nokia’s S40, Samsung SHP/TouchWiz or LG’s S-Class) are getting more sophisticated.  The costs of the two are converging. Featurephones will soon also support AppStores and Internet services.

 

Table 1: Platform Penetration

 

’09E

’11E

 

Symb. v9.3+/S60

~110m

~240m

S60 goes mid-range

Apple OSX

~30m

~120m

Incl. iPod Touch

B’berry OS 4.5+

~40m

~80m

Doubling OS base

Android

<10m

~80m

From >10 OEMs

WinMo 6+

~10m

~50m

Transition to Win7

Palm WebOS

<5m

~15m

Limits w/o licensing

LiMo

<5m

~20m

Platform for LCHs

Source:  Arete Research estimates. 

 

Hard Graft

The costs for developing and maintaining complex software platforms are increasing.  There are no shortcuts to the sheer volume of work, especially in building on legacy code bases and supporting operator requirements, or developing language packs.  Every platform faces significant roadmap issues. Some handset OEMs are building adaptation layers to port a range of applications to their own branded UIs.  Just supporting multi-core chipsets for handling streaming or managing financial transactions needs additional processing power to deal with security and viruses.  Yet it requires software re-writes and poses power management challenges (i.e., tripling or quadrupling processing will drain batteries faster).

 

We long predicted video would become as ubiquitous as voice, i.e., with devices designed around handling video traffic.  There are a wide range of solutions to cope with streaming video, including in software (i.e., Flash or Silverlight) rather than via hardware optimisations. Apple patented technology around adaptive bit rate codecs to handle streaming in its forthcoming iPhones.  All platforms need to support over the air (OTA) updates, embrace graphics-rich applications, handle HD content, and comply with an array of USB drivers and accessories.

 

It is also not clear whether application downloads are a novelty or a mass market phenomenon. Discovery and recommendation engines need to be improved on most platforms, and marketing must focus on what applications offer. The gap between legacy platforms and an over-the-air customisable user experience is a wide one, and will not be resolved by AppStores, fresh UIs, or moves to go open source. Widget and webkit technologies could bring similar UXs across multiple devices.  Most developers will not need access to lower layers or optimise applications for specific hardware.  Over time, HTML5 browsers could supplant device-specific applications (e.g., GMail runs on an iPhone as a web application, as does WebOutlook on Android), but OEMs are unlikely to embrace this approach.  This also does nothing to extend billing or allow for collection of detailed customer analytics.

 

At the same time, operators’ selection criteria are moving from form factors to user experiences.  Operator UX teams now number in the 100s of staff, even if they fake a fragmented approach: Vodafone-subsidised devices currently support Android Market, Blackberry AppsWorld, OviStore and iPhone AppStore, and runs its own developer programme (Betavine). Few telcos develop native applications, but mostly use ones that run in Java, Webkit, Widgets, etc. Only a few (e.g., Verizon Wireless) offer customised UI.

 

While Apple and Google get the most attention (as pioneers of the AppStore concept, and for providing a shop-front for the open source community), Nokia and Microsoft have pivotal roles to play.  Both offer unprecedented scale (in handsets and computing software), even if both are fast followers.  We do not see Nokia’s commitment to Ovi or Symbian wavering. Though Microsoft’s successive versions of WindowsMobile failed to get traction beyond 10-15m units p.a., we expect a renewed push around Windows7 in 2H10. The MSFT/Yahoo search deal could be a blueprint for closer collaboration with Nokia. With its resources (a $9.5bn R&D budget) and assets (enterprise installed base, XBox, HotMail, and Bing), Microsoft could offer handset OEMs revenue share deals. LGE already committed to ship 50+ Windows models by 2012.

 

Figure 1: Product Differentiation?

arete%20mob%20soft%203%20nov%202009.jpgSource: Arete Research.

Content, Not Applications

An AppStore is not a content store, yet.  The next battle will be to add intelligence and filtering to AppStores, and tightly integrate content with platforms (as with iTunes, Kindle, Zune HD, or Comes With Music).  There are limits to how many applications consumers are likely to use, whereas there is a wide range of content to access via mobile devices.  To handle this, mobile devices also need integration with home CE/PC products. Samsung, for one, aims to provide “three screen” offerings spanning TVs, PCs, cameras, and handsets. There will be efforts by Sony, Apple, Samsung and others to make a single harmonised software platform that spans a wide range of video-capable devices.

 

Figure 2: Putting Software at the Centre of a CE “User Experience”

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Source:  Arete Research.

 

With multi-radio (e.g., 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth) integration and voice recognition, mobile devices could become a control point to reach “virtualised” content.  This is a longer-term “cloud computing” angle to mobile software, handling access to and storage of personal content.  OEMs will need to offer tight integration with cloud services, or offer their own “stores of content.”

 

Apple and Google designed platforms with PCs in mind, and drew developers from the vastly larger desktop world.  They benefit from programming in AJAX, whereas Symbian uses a range of older object-oriented languages.  Yet in both handset and PC worlds, OEMs, not developers, create devices.  They are the gatekeepers for software and AppStores, managing the flow of any OTA updates that might alter the UX.  Adobe has provided a good model, with regular updates of its popular Flash and Acrobat software.  Yet user expectations of handset stability will get re-set if devices regularly need updates like PCs do.

Too Much Choice?

The number of companies vying to become the platform of choice is staggering, and itself a problem. Beyond the ones we discuss below, we can add Intel (with its Moblin effort), Palm’s WebOS (which remains device-specific) and the range of Linux variants (like the Nokia-sponsored Maemo, LiMO, and components developed under the OMTP).  The latter shows how limited group initiatives have been: OMTP involves VOD, TMOB, TI, TEF, AT&T, and others, but all of these compete for exclusivity with operator-subsidised devices that will never be OMTP-compliant.  None of the above options are yet mass market (i.e., likely to top 10m+ units in ’10).  Just to confuse matters further, there are other applications environments (e.g., BREW) as well as “component” vendors like Opera, Access, and Adobe.  We look at leading platforms below:

 

Apple’s OSX

Apple excelled at innovating around the UX and using animation to mask some of the iPhone’s early weaknesses (lack of multi-threading, slow image processing).  Apple’s marketing anticipated the market’s direction with its focus on applications, and Apple’s PA Semi unit will help it be first to market with multi-core processing (supporting streaming video).  Apple is still attracting developers with the clarity and simplicity of its SDK, and by testing and proving in each layer of stack via PC products.  We expect OSX to be extended to CE products, and also for Apple to bring AppStores to the PC.

Google’s Android

For a two-year-old platform, Android got ample OEM support, following up its G1 (a.k.a. the Android Developer Phone) with subsequent releases Cupcake/Android v1.1, with the Éclair release being v2.0. Android aims to be binary forward compatible, i.e., existing applications written for G1s will run on new devices without modifications.  Developers create Android Virtual Devices with the SDK to run applications for a range of devices. Development and emulator debug time is far shorter in Android compared with Symbian.

Despite OEM support, Android’s governance remains fuzzy.  Android is open-sourced licensed, but not an open source project: a small (~300 staff) team controls the developer ecosystem and Android Market distribution. It has not productised source code or offered post-sales software management tools, and has limited support for operator-compliant packs, libraries of hardware drivers, and language variants. Some developers say Android is slow to respond to change requests and to accept code modifications.  In exchange for access to Android Market, Google requires OEMs to bundle Google Apps and supply usage analytics from devices.  One key commercialisation partner, WindRiver, was bought by Intel, while another, Teleca, started an Android Feature Club to resolve common integration issues.  Android’s end-game is unclear: is it a hedge against Microsoft or Apple controlling end-devices?  A Trojan Horse for Google services?  Or will it become an independent company with license fees?  If operators don’t need devices “with Google,” then Android may fragment into many custom UIs.

 

Nokia’s Symbian

After a decade under a shifting set of parents, the rump of Symbian was bought by Nokia and made an open source project, including Nokia’s own S60 UI.  Symbian/S60 was initially developed for phone functions, and saw limited traction for downloads under cumbersome tree and branch menu structures. Many developers feel Nokia/Symbian offers too many choices (native Symbian code, J2ME, FlashLite, Web runtime and Python), each with limitations and compatibility issues. The S60 browser is based on webkit, but lacks HTML5 support.  Nokia’s decision to open source Symbian/S60 has stalled its development, as Symbian re-writes and tests third-party software in its 40m line code base.  It will be difficult to make major improvements to Symbian (i.e., to support multi-core processors) during this process.

 

When Nokia ships Direct UI in mid ’10, Symbian will effectively break its backwards compatibility.  Whether it also moves to a completely new release (v.10 from v.9.6) is still open. This may alienate developers that have to re-develop for a new platform and comply with Nokia’s new Direct UI (based on QT).  They also must resolve whether Symbian horizon is sufficient as a publishing tool, or if Nokia can get other OEMs to use OviStore, which still lags rivals on many fronts.  Nokia hopes Symbian will present a credible alternative to Android in mid-2010 when it is fully open source/EPL licensed, with Nokia assuring a large market.

 

Microsoft’s Windows

Windows Mobile 6.5 traced a long evolution from the Pocket PC OS, but still uses an older WinCE 5 kernel.  Microsoft recognised its failings by bringing in new management for Mobile, acquiring Danger (designers of the Sidekick device), and engaging LG as a mass market OEM alongside long-term supporter HTC.  We see 6.5 as simply a stopgap solution until Microsoft brings the innovation seen with its ZuneHD UI and leaner Win7 platforms to mobile.  Microsoft is also offering its software in a reference design called Pink, and may tweak its long-held license fee model with PC-like terms (rebates, discounts and marketing support). This may gain traction among Chinese OEMs, after Taiwanese and US OEMs failed to ramp WinMo to volume.  It is too early to rule out a now-dormant Microsoft, given its scale in computing and revival with Win7.

RIM’s Blackberry OS

In a world moving more “open,” RIM keeps its OS development in-house, stressing the need for security and compression. Yet RIM must evolve the BlackBerry’s UI and bring more developers to its AppsWorld platform, as well as open up its charging model beyond PayPal to embrace operator billing. BlackBerry’s application environment works on a J2ME framework with proprietary extensions, which adds fragmentation and compatibility issues. However, the security and bandwidth compression so valued by enterprises may limit performance for consumers, as applications traverse its NOCs via RIM’s proprietary browser.  RIM’s premium pricing still relies on its messaging franchise, which faces challenges from ActiveSync and efforts to bring push e-mail to mass market price levels. Rivals may not match Blackberry’s UX, but some segments may be less sensitive to RIM’s security and delivery than the price of handsets.  While RIM stresses incremental upgrades for its AppsWorld, we hear they are undertaking an extensive OS re-write to support new multi-core chipsets.

 

Down to Earth

This space gets too much attention for the revenue it directly generates.  Mobile software is a means to an end, and the end is selling devices and Internet services.  The cost of development will narrow the number of platforms by 2013, but not before the sheer number of options bewilder consumers who know about them and frustrate others wishing to get simple access to specific content. Given how rapidly key hardware costs are falling, and how sophisticated mid-range software platforms are becoming, all phones will become smartphones of some sort. Who wants to own a dumbphone?

 

AppStores will evolve to offer a range of content and services, with a major battle brewing over billing and data on consumer usage.  Every device will support some AppStores and work with a range of Internet brands and services.  Some content will be packaged and tightly linked to specific devices.  The Holy Grail in all this mobile software will be its extension to ranges of other CE products.  There is ample reason to scoff at the hype around mobile software — for its marginal economics and inevitable fragmentation — but no doubt as to its future role as a control point for more valuable content and Internet-based services and brands.

 

 

 

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Full Article: Nokia and Symbian – Missing an Opportunity?

The recent purchase of Symbian by Nokia highlights the tensions around running a consortium-owned platform business. Obviously, Nokia believes that making the software royalty-free and open source is the key to future mass adoption. While Nokia is busy buying Symbian, the competition has moved on and offers a lot more than purely handset features. The team at Telco 2.0 disagree and believe the creation of the Symbian Foundation will cure none of the governance or product issues going forward. Additionally, Symbian isn’t strong in the really important bits of the mobile jigsaw that generates the real value to any of the end-consumer, developer or mobile operator.

In this article, we look at the operating performance of Symbian. In a second we examine the “openness? of Symbian going forward, since “open? remains such a talisman of business model success.

Background

Symbian’s core product is a piece of software code that the user doesn’t interact with directly — it’s low-level operating system code to deal with key presses, screen display, and controlling the radio. Unlike Windows (but rather like Unix) there are three competing user interfaces built on this common foundation: Nokia’s Series 60 (S60), Sony Ericsson’s UIQ, and DoCoMo’s MOAP. Smartphones haven’t taken the world by storm yet, but Symbian is the dominant smartphone platform, and thus is well positioned to trickle down to lower-end handsets over time. What might be relevant to 100m handsets this year could be a billion handsets in two or three years from now. As we saw on the PC with Windows, the character of the handset operating system is critical to who makes money out of the mobile ecosystem.

The “what? of the deal is simple enough — Nokia spent a sum of money equivalent to two years’ licence fees buying out the other shareholders in Symbian, before staving off general horror from other vendors by promising to convert the firm into an open-source foundation like the ones behind Mozilla, Apache and many other open-source projects. The “how? is pretty simple, too. Nokia is going to chip in its proprietary S60, and assign the S60 developers to work on Symbian Foundation projects.

Shareholding Structure

The generic problem with consortium is typically not all members are equal and almost certainly have different objectives. This has always been the case with Symbian.

It is worth examining the final shareholder structure which has been stable since July 2004: Nokia – 47.9%, Ericsson – 15.6%, SonyEricsson – 13.1%, Panasonic – 10.5%, Siemens – 8.4% and Samsung – 4.5%. At the bottom of the article we have listed the key corporate events in Symbian history and the changes in shareholding.

It is interesting to note that: Siemens is out of the handset business, Panasonic doesn’t produce Symbian handsets (it uses LiMo), Ericsson only produces handsets indirectly through SonyEricsson, and Samsung is notably permissive towards handset operating systems.

SonyEricsson has been committed towards Symbian at the top end of its range, although recently is adding Windows Mobile for its Xperia range targeted at corporates.

Nokia seems almost committed though has recently purchased Trolltech — a notable fan of Linux and developer of Qt.

The tensions within the shareholders seem obvious: Siemens was probably in the consortium for pure financial return, whereas for Nokia it was a key component of industrial strategy and cost base for its high-end products. The other shareholders were somewhere in between those extremes. The added variable was that Samsung, Nokia’s strongest competitor, seemed hardly committed to the product.

It is easy to produce a hypotheses that the software roadmap and licence pricing for Symbian was difficult to agree and that was before the user interface angle (see below).

Ongoing Business Model

Going forward, Nokia has solved the argument of licence pricing — it is free. Whether this passed to consumers in the form of lower handset prices is open to debate. After all, Nokia somehow has to recover the cost of an additional 1,000 personnel on its payroll. For SonyEricsson with its recent profit warning, any improvement in margin will be appreciated, but this doesn’t necessarily mean a reduction in pricing.

It also seems obvious that Nokia will also control the software roadmap going forward: it seems to us that handset operators using Symbian will be faced with three options: free-ride on Nokia; pick and choose components and differentiate with self-build components; or pick another OS.

We think that given the chosen licence (Eclipse — described in more detail in next article), plus the history of Symbian user-interfaces, and the dominance of Nokia, all point towards other handset operators producing their own flavours of Symbian going forward.

Competition

Nokia may have bought Symbian, even without competitive pressures, purely to reduce its own royalties. However, the competitive environment adds an additional dimension to the decision.

RIM and Microsoft are extremely strong in the corporate space and both share two features that Symbian are currently extremely weak in — they both excel in synchronizing with messaging and calendaring services.

Apple has also raised the bar in usability. This is something where Symbian has stayed clear, but is certainly not one of the strengths of S60, the Nokia front end. The wife of one of our team — tech-savvy, tri-lingual, with a PhD in molecular biology — couldn’t work out how to change the ringtone, and not for lack of trying. What do you mean it’s not under ‘settings’? Some unkind tongues have even speculated that the S60 user interface was inspired by an Enigma Machine stolen to order by Nokia executives.

Qualcomm is rarely mentioned when phone operating systems are talked about, and that is because they take a completely different approach. Qualcomm’s BREW would be better classified as a content delivery system, and it is gaining traction in Europe. Two really innovative handsets of last year, the O2 Coccoon and the 3-Skypephone, were both based upon Qualcomm software. Qualcomm’s differentiator is that it is not a consumer brand and develops solutions in partnership with operators.

The RIM, Microsoft, Apple and Qualcomm solutions share one thing in common: they incorporate network elements which deliver services.

Nokia is of course moving into back-end solutions through its embryonic Ovi services. And this may be the major point about Symbian: it is only one, albeit important piece of the jigsaw. Meanwhile, as we’ve written before, Ovi remains obsessed around information and entertainment services, neglecting the network side of the core voice and messaging service. Contrast with Apple’s first advance with Visual Voicemail.

As James Balsillie, CEO of RIM, said this week “The sector is shifting rapidly. The middle part is hollowing — there are cheap, cheap, cheap phones and then it is smartphones to a connected platform.��?

Key Symbian Dates.

June 1998 – Launch with Psion owning 40%, Nokia 30% & Ericsson 30%.
Oct 1998 – Motorola Joins Consortium

Jan 1999 – Symbian acquires Ronneby Labs from Ericsson and with it the original UIQ team & codebase.

Mar 1999 – DoCoMo partnership

May 1999 – Panasonic joins Consortium. Equity Stakes now: Psion – 28%, Nokia / Ericsson / Motorola – 21%, Panasonic – 9%.

Jan 2002 – Funding Round of £20.75m. SonyEricsson tales up Ericsson Rights.

Jun 2002 – Siemens Joins Consortium with £14.25m for 5%. Implied Value £285m

Feb 2003 – Samsung Joins Consortium with £17m for 5%. Implied Value £340m.

Aug 2003 – Five Years Anniversary. Original Consortium Members can now sell. Motorola sells stake for £57m to Nokia & Psion. Implied Value £300m.

Feb 2004 – Original Founder Founder Psion decides to sell out. Announces to Sell 31.7% for £135.5m with part of payment dependant of future royalties. Implied Value £427m. Nokia would have > 50% control. David Potter of Psion says total investment in Symbian was £35m to-date, so £135.5m represents a good return.

July 2004 – Preemption of Psion Stake by Panasonic, SonyEricsson & Siemens. Additional Rights issue of £50m taken up by Panasonic, SonyEricsson, Siemens & Nokia. New Shareholding structure: Nokia – 47.9%, Ericsson – 15.6%, SonyEricsson – 13.1%, Panasonic – 10.5%, Siemens – 8.4% and Samsung – 4.5%.

Agree to rise cost base to c. £100m/per annum and headcount of c. 1,200.

Feb 2007 – Agree to sell UIQ to SonyEricsson for £7.1m.

June 2008 – Nokia buys rest of Symbian with Implied Value of €850m (£673m) with approx. payout of – Ericsson – £105m, SonyEricsson – £88.2m, Panasonic – £70.7m, Siemens of £56.5m and Samsung £30.3m. Note, Symbian had net cash of €182m. The price quoted by Nokia of €262m is the net price paid by Nokia to buy out the consortium not the value of the company.