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By Kim Yoo-chul The competition for the lion's shares in mobile operating platforms (OS) ― the critical system for handsets ― is further heating up as mobile majors even telecom carriers are drastically realigning their "game plans" amid the industry's massive shift to software. For general consumers, such competition is quite inspiring as the race to get ahead in this field is helping mobile tech improve all the time, making it possible for gadget users to enjoy enhanced digital experiences. But the competition is not good for mobile tech companies as even an untouchable player might see its leverage power being stripped away.
Top-tier handset makers Samsung Electronics and Sony-Ericsson have just cancelled their plans to utilize the Symbian OS. ``Again, Samsung Electronics has no plan to introduce digital devices that use the Symbian OS as the benchmark operating system,’’ said a Samsung Electronics spokesman, adding the world’s No. 2 handset maker will only accept after-sales services. Officials at Sony-Ericsson also reconfirmed its complete departure from the foundation. The closure of the foundation doesn’t necessarily mean an imminent extinction of Symbian from the market, however, officials and analysts say this is a ``good example’’ to represent the harshness of reality in the industry.  ``Nokia was too late to respond to provide better experiences. It spent less money on content developers and the Finnish player was too lazy to enhance its user interface (UI) systems,’’ said Soh Hyun-chul, an analyst at Shinhan Financial. In contrast to Nokia, Apple and Google of the United States are sailing down stable tracks gaining steady popularity of their own systems, though Apple is slightly better in terms of customer numbers.  Although handset majors are backing up Google’s open-based Android systems to take up more shares in the highly-lucrative and rapidly growing smartphone market, phone vendors are increasingly fostering efforts to better develop their own mobile OS system. ``Amid the uncertain future of Nokia, Apple and Google are emerging as winners amid smartphone popularity as they are controlling their own systems backed by numerous third-party developers and telecom carriers. But those two American companies may feel uneasy as the moves for the development of further OS are strengthening,’’ said a Samsung Electronics official. Samsung, SK Telecom's ambitious plans While the market will probably be organized eventually, it seems quite hard to identify what platforms will make the bigger cut, therefore, it does make sense to be open and give consumers a wide array of choices. More importantly, carriers are thinking that this rivalry will eventually be good for them, helping them reassert their power, which has been checked by the emergence of the iPhone. However, debates are ongoing over the efficacy of various platforms. For example, Google Vice President Andy Rubin claimed that the world doesn’t need another smartphone platform as telecom carriers may prefer to see fewer operating systems, eventually, for simplicity’s sake. Currently, there are some 20 mobile OS, however, only five platforms ― Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, Window Mobile and Android _ each have over a 5 percent of market share, according to the U.S.-based market research firm Gartner. ``This competition between Apple, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Palm and Symbian and even others has cornered me to ask if we have `too much platform competition’ in the segment. That’s good from a consumer perspective, however, app developers must now craft their offerings for so many different platforms,’’ said Lee Jong-su, a media critic from a Seoul’s Hanyang University. No matter what the situation is, Korean handset and telecom majors are applying quite ambitious plans to develop their own operating systems, though the outlook is not too positive. Samsung Electronics, which only trails Nokia in the handset industry, said it will launch a smartphone that uses its own Bada platform as the benchmark source within this year. Bada means “ocean” in Korean. Samsung developed it and has been putting more of its resources into inviting content developers to expand usage. ``Samsung is still backing Google, but we will take our own initiative by sharpening the Bada platform,’’ said Shin Young-june, a senior Samsung spokesman, adding it has begun getting some results in Bada phones. Shin, however, declined to comment on the selling amount of Bada phones outside the Korean peninsula. Samsung earlier said it has a plan to sell 10 million units of Bada phones for all of this year and added the company will double the amount sold in 2011. ``Samsung is not at the level to compete with the top five mobile OS systems, however, it has the aim to boost its mobile OS capability based on the firm belief of the `economies of a scale’ of its handset business,’’ said an Samsung executive, asking not to be identified. The nation’s top carrier SK Telecom also said it will open up its mobile platform to third-party developers to create its own mobile OS that could compete with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. This is the first time that SK Telecom clarified its intention for its own mobile OS, though the plan was not completely welcomed by market analysts mainly due to the lack of a clear road-map. ``Google is expected to continue the current upswing, overcoming Apple within the next few years, while Samsung Electronics’ plan to sharpening Bada needs to be fine-tuned. Reaching a consensus to agree on a standard between carriers seems out of focus for the time being,’’ said a senior SK Telecom executive. ``It is truly surprising that we have this many developer platforms in play within the smartphone sector. I am still of the belief that things will eventually be realigned to three major platforms, therefore, I don’t forecast this degree of competition to last forever,’’ according to the executive. | ||
| yckim@koreatimes.co.kr | ||
Monday, November 1, 2010
Mobile OS competition heating up amid 'Android frenzy'
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