Linux Headed For Smartphone Domination?

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has published a summary of research findings from Zelos Group that predicts that Linux is going dominate the smartphone market, beating out both Symbian and Microsoft. Zelos says that Linux scored highest on the two criteria that matter most to OEMs and carriers: openness and low cost. Microsoft scored lowest in these criteria. The article says Zelos believes Symbian beats Microsoft due to the flexibility of its licensing terms, and Microsoft prospects will be stymied to an extent by its desire to strictly manage how its brand is used. The conclusion: Linux will be the preferred operating system for connected devices."

Comments

Potential Bias

[Interruach]

We all point out how such studies are biased when Microsoft release them...
Surely there's a chance that LinuxDevices has a bit of an interest in this?

Tech history 101

[rockclimber]

the best system does NOT alway win in the market.

the domination of a market depends on marketing, lobbying, cash and quality of the product.
so, linux has 1 out of 4. not bad, but still a long way to go

Re:Tech history 101

[RoLi]

If you compare Symbian, Linux and Microsoft:

Symbian - pros

• Large user base
• already established on the market
• large software library (but mostly via Java)

cons

• Licensing costs
• Couldn't really lock the market because most development is done in Java, not natively in Symbian

Linux pros

• Easily developed on PC
• Easily modified
• More secure because the codebase has been tested on the Internet in production environments for years
• A big software library (through Java) and a even bigger library on the PC that can maybe be modified to run on the smartphone (depending of course on the application
• No license costs and also no license hassles. What many Winlots forget is that one of the big advantages of Linux is that you can start right away you don't have to buy and wait for development kits/licenses.
• Linux is already used in the majority of embedded-systems projects that use an OS. Since many cellphone-makers also make embedded systems, standardizing on Linux could offer benefits.

cons

• Relatively new on the market.

Microsoft - pros

• It's from Microsoft, so it gets loads of gratious advertising, marketing and hype from everybody including Slashdot

cons

• Since Microsoft's stance toward Java is very uncertain and doubtful, you have pretty much no native applications at all
• Microsoft's Java (aka .NET) hasn't been established on the market at all, there aren't many applications on the market. And the few that have been written are for the most part web-driven database frontends, not really anything that could be useful on a cellphone.
• Currently all cellphones running with Windows/Stinger/whateveritscalledtoday have either been shut down before market introduction because of quality problems or haven't sold very well because of quality problems
• Because of the general weakness of Microsoft cellphones, Microsoft is likely to discontinue them in a couple of years, just like Windows/Alpha, Hailstorm, the HomeR project and many many other Microsoft projects. We are not talking about IBM which supports their products virtually forever. Microsoft has shown many times that they don't care when their customers are stranded on an unsupported platform

To sum up, the outlook for Linux looks very bright. Because most advanced cellphone apps are Java-apps and not Symbian-apps, Linux will be able to replace Symbian cellphones without much problems. Even if that weren't the case, the smartphone market is still young and small, Linux also could prosper without Java-compatibility.

Flexibility

[xot]

I think the flexibility that Linux provides to the manufacturers is the key factor in its being the OS of choice. Any OS that the hardware makers can use to their advantage to make the product more robust n fast will definitely be ahead in the race.Seriously doubt an Microsoft OS will give that kind of flexibility or 'openness'.

Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, right now, the market is pretty much dominated by Symbian - at least it is here in the UK, the three main phones running it being the Nokia 7650, and Sony Ericsson P800 and P900. O2 and Orange both have PocketPC and Windows Smartphones.

How Linux fits into this is kinda interesting. For a start, there aren't (m)any smartphones on the market that use it yet (there are actually more Windows Smartphone models out there). Secondly, in the smartphone market, it will be the second generation of smartphones - the ones that appeal to people who buy for ringtones and interchangeable covers - that will drive the market, and I don't really see smartphones being that mainstream.

To put it simply, the smartphone market - and it's user's needs and requirements - are incredibly fragmented. It's an area like cars and stereos; market saturation is so great that I don't think any specific OS will 'win out'.

There will be many winners. For corporations needing .NET stuff on phones, it'll be MS, for mainstream, maybe Linux (but what flavor?), and for your PDA-stylee smartphone lover, probably Symbian or something similar. Either way, one mans smartphone capabilities is another mans excessive baggage...

Re:Well....

[jodonoghue]

I'm working on porting a real cellular protocol stack to Windows Smartphone as we speak.

Despite being no fan of Microsoft desktop products, I have to say that in many respects, Smartphone is a very well thought out product. They have a slick, and very well designed UI, a decent set of apps, and a kernel which is relatively easy to get to work on a new platform.

I agree with the poster who complains about the MS build system (dreadful), but it does the job, but the kernel itself really does have some good things going for it.

Symbian is a great operating system platform, but porting an existing protocol stack (written, as they nearly all are, in plain old C) to Symbian with its 'C++ from the ground up goodness' (polymorphic device drivers, anyone?) is an enormous task - there are something like 10,000 source files in the system I'm dealing with, and the thought of doing a Symbian port is, frankly, terrifying.

The other (non-technical) problem is that Symbian seems to be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by becoming increasingly dominated by Nokia (which is great if you're Nokia, not so good if you're anyone else). If the platform had remained true to its original promise of being a real consortium, it would probably have a much more successful future ahead.

Linux is a great option at the low end, but there is no decent smartphone UI (QTopia is more aimed at pen controlled devices), so you'd have to roll your own, which takes away from the standardisation aspect of having a 'real' OS. FreeBSD is even better, to be honest because (I wish it weren't so, but this is business reality) corporates are often scared of the GPL.

In any event, the way thing look in Europe, all any smartphone really has to do is be a decent platform for Java - operators aren't interested in supporting multiple platforms, and Java already has some traction. SavaJe seems, from what I can tell, to be basically that, but you could certainly roll a similar UI in Java for an embedded Linux kernel and have a great solution.

As the main story points out, this is a very price sensitive market. Symbian and MS Smartphone basically cost about the same, and enough to make a free platform highly attractive. It's the lack of a suitable, standardised, UI which causes the problem.

The OS is one of the smallest pieces of the puzzle

[John_McKee]

Yes, Linux is open, and it is free, but there aren't any distributions designed for cellphones that are open and free. When you license Sybian or Windows for Smartphone, you get EVERYTHING. You get a reference design for the hardware, a GUI, interfaces for common chipsets, LCD drivers specific for cellphones, etc, etc. Yes, I am aware that Motorola has released a Linux smartphone, but all of the important stuff is still closed source. When you use Linux you get an OS. That's it. A Company has to decide if building the rest from scratch is less than just licensing an OS that already finished the hard stuff. I am betting it often won't be.

Viability???

[Tarwn]

I find it very odd that "openness" and "cost"" were valued over business viability. I'm not questioning the decision (yet), but it looks odd to me that all points in the article lead to Linux. In my mind I always believed OEMs were after business viability first (they can always overcharge later).

Re:Did anyone else NOT see this coming?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Linux is still a long way off dominating embedded, dpeending of course on what you mean by embedded. Most embedded designs still use inhouse RTOSs or no RTOS at all and most run on CPUs not supported by Linux or even uCLinux (the MMU-less version of Linux).

I think Linux is a long way off dominating the desktop, mainly because Linux systems are relatively difficult to work with (eg. installing a hardware driver for a camera etc is beyond the capability of Joe Sixpack). This is not a problem in more restrictive systems (eg. servers and embedded systems) where Joe Sixpack does not have to fiddle.

Embedding Linux is way easier and more productive than, say, Windows CE. I do development for both and after doing some Linux stuff, WinCE work is just so depressing.

Compare: change 1 line of kernel code and get running.

Linux: 9 seconds compile etc to build a new kernel image. 6 seconds ethernet download and boot. 15 seconds total.

WinCE: Build 10+ **minutes** to do a full build because the partial build does not work reliably. 3 **minutes** to ethernet download/boot.

Class: who's going to get more work done in a day?

Not anytime soon!

[Atomic Frog]

Those guys at Zelos don't know the market then.

- Openness is desirable, but guess what, Symbian is essentially "open" to the phone developers. Linux has no advantage there.
- Low cost. Yes, developers want low cost, but here's where the Zelos guys miss the boat. Low cost means the TOTAL, OVERALL cost, including missing market opportunities from slower time-to-market.
Ask LG and others why they licensed bits of their software from Nokia.

What costs you is the time to develop the product, NOT per device licensing costs. This is NOT a personal computer market where the OS license cost can make up a large percentage of the cost.

Symbian works, it's good enough, it's from a consortium of the mobile phone makers, so it's relatively open and has easy licensing costs. Add to that the base of existing developers, it's hard to see how Linux will crack the market unless some extra whizz-bang functionality is added on the phones that Symbian can't support.

Plus, almost no user cares what OS their phone runs.

I had a chat with one of the prod. development managers from Nokia. He doesn't like the Windows-based products for mobile phones, but it _isn't_ for the reasons the Linux zealots expect. It isn't cost, and he didn't even mention "closed-source".

what a ludicrous question...

[torpor]

linux is headed for ____ domination. no seriously. i don't see the linux kernel, and its toolsets, and its entourage of libs, and its knowledge-pool, stopping any time soon. look how far it has come in 10 years. where will it be in 5?

if there is one lesson to learn, it is that the power of people is unstoppable. it is a humble kind of peace indeed, two random computer geeks at different corners of the globe working on 'scratching an itch' together, but it is peace.

so, linux on ____ device is pretty much irrelevant as a question, the question is "where won't linux be getting its huge?", but then ... the answer to that question isn't so fun to fantasize about, alas ...

Re:I dunno..

[RoLi]

Maybe I'm not as easily entertained as the average Slashdot moderator, but I really don't understand why the same old jokes get modded up to 4 or 5 "funny" for months or even years.

2002: Post "In Soviet Russia" joke - +5 Funny guaranteed
2003: Post "I for one welcome.." joke - +5 Funny guaranteed
And now the SCO-699$ licensing jokes... in every thread even remotely related to Linux. Maybe even several times...

-1 Redundant, please guys.