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The Man Behind the Google Phone
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times is running a story about Andy Rubin, Google's resident gadget guru, and one of the primary architects of the gPhone. You won't find any new technical details about the gPhone in the story, (Google is planning an announcement on Monday about its future mobile plans.) but the story about Rubin gives some clues that indicate that Google plans to do more than merely develop an operating system for cellular phones. One clue to the gPhone is that after Rubin left Apple he joined General Magic, the company co-founded with Mac pioneers Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld that developed Magic Cap in the 1990s, a PDA precursor years ahead of its time that included a cell phone and email. The Times speculates that Google may also be planning to replay the strategy that Microsoft used to bulldoze Netscape in the mid-1990s by 'cutting off' Microsoft's air supply by giving the gPhone away to handset makers and to put Microsoft Windows Mobile out of business. If the strategy works, it will be because Rubin and his team have successfully developed a vision of the smartphone of the future and a strategy for getting it accepted by the public and by the carriers."
Andy's an old timer from the Bay Area BBS scene...I believe he used to run Spies on the Wire...he still has the domain as his personal page. www.spies.com. I believe I had an account there at one time or another. Glad to see he is still doing well.
Any old Spies members feel free to speak up...
You're right in aspiration, but the hyperbole here really gives me pause. It isn't that "you can't do anything" with the iPhone; it's that the iPhone doesn't enable you to do what you want on a "smartphone." The iPhone - like virtually all Apple products, from Mac OS X (and Macs) to the iPhone and iPod - is aimed at the average consumer, while attempting to hit enough high notes for the geeks to be satisfied. The Apple of late has been largely successful in this regard.
We all want the iPhone opened up as a development platform, and that's in the works. It probably still won't be the completely open ecosystem you desire, but that's just not Apple's way. Apple is extremely good at doing things its way, but unfortunately that means certain (many) people will be disappointed. That's understandable, but don't go around saying you can't do anything with it. That's flat-out false. It does a remarkable number of things really well, and for most people will provide a great deal of entertainment and utility. The implementation of its web browser alone was worth the price of admission for me. I do miss Flash on occasion, but I really respect Apple for focusing on standards-based web development as the initial "SDK" for its first mobile device. A toy? This device makes the mobile web usable for real people. It is not a toy.
I'm ecstatic at the thought of a future 1-3 years from now when most iPod users (and all iPod newcomers) are walking around with devices capable of truly accessing the web. As a web developer, that inevitability is reason enough for me to appreciate it.
It's also worthwhile to note that Google really is going after Microsoft - and not Apple - with its device (whatever it ends up being). That's how I read it, at least. Google and Apple have much to gain from one another, although neither absolutely needs the other, as is the case with most of the great partnerships. I apologize for coming off like an Apple fanboy, but as someone who has come to rely on having an iPhone in his pocket, I couldn't not say anything."The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Magic Cap offered some interesting ideas but didn't offer a mobile phone--it produced a PDA OS. The General Magic company (mostly Apple employees spun off in an internal battle between Magic Cap and Newton) ended up licensing its technologies to Microsoft in 1998, which turned Windows CE from a laugh-out-loud joke into a mild embarrassment.
Microsoft didn't start shipping a phone product until 2002, the same year the Handspring Treo arrived (which combined the older Visor+phone back pack.) There were no real PDA phones in the 90s.
The Egregious Incompetence of Palm
The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile
Google is very unlikely to produce its own phone, and if it did, it would be nothing like Apple's iPhone, because Google is good at very different things. It has no experience in consumer hardware, retail, and couldn't even beat YouTube at serving videos.
The Great Google gPhone Myth
When reading continues flow of articles talking about iPhone that and gPhone this, I just get a feeling that what is the point? What's new? What's revolutionary? And when I think about it more, all I get it is pretty much nothing. The only explanation that I can find for this phenomenon is that as US lacks behind the rest of the world both in available cellular networks and phone models, and so anything new, even if it's been available for the rest of world for years, seems exciting. I can understand this from the consumers as they don't know any better, but why is the same true with the management of international corporations that should have a larger view on the matter?
I can understand that Apple wants to break into mobile phone businesses and deliver a phone with their touch. I can't understand why Google would ever want to do that. Google is concentrated on information and information deliverance business, they are not an hardware company. For Google it would be better to make an integrated Google mobile suite of applications, starting from blogging and imaging tools to email and calendars. Then they would work out a deal with leading smart phone vendors, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson, so that they would include the package with their phones including an Google icon in the main menu of a phone. This way Google, if they wanted it enough badly, they could make an world wide penetrations to mobile markets quick and effectively. Also if for some unknown reason, Google would really want an phone carrying their name, they could just re-brand a phone from one of their partners.
Of course this all with gPhone could be just a byzantine styled political battle with the telecoms where Google tries to intimidate telecom operators to open up more and develop their services and offerings. Thought bringing a new phone to the markets doesn't actually do this. The only way for Google to open up US mobile markets would be to make Congress and FCC open up the mobile networks for other companies and thus allowing virtual operators to enter the stage.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
I did say "as I read it," and to respond to your question, I'd say based on what I see as them still having plenty to gain from one another. Apple can afford to hit with a higher-priced device because it's profitable in that niche. Google needs a device that really can reach everybody while being as cheap as possible to produce, because they're not going to make money on the hardware itself. The side effect of this is that Google can release an open device and instantly get the support that might be necessary to tackle the business markets Apple has traditionally had difficulty with.
Together these two companies could rule the mobile phone market, and would be large enough to tackle Windows Mobile and the other major players. Obviously this is speculation, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that Google would be better off opposing Apple in this instance. And don't forget, Apple's official stance on the iPhone is that it isn't a "smartphone." It's not competing on the same terms. Literally and semantically.
> It isn't that "you can't do anything" with the iPhone; it's that the iPhone doesn't enable you
> to do what you want on a "smartphone." The iPhone - like virtually all Apple products, from Mac
> OS X (and Macs) to the iPhone and iPod - is aimed at the average consumer, while attempting to
> hit enough high notes for the geeks to be satisfied. The Apple of late has been largely
> successful in this regard.
Reminds me of the last days of the "academic Internet". The phone companies were arguing that the anarchistic Internet where everybody could set up a service was fine for geeks, but that the average consumer would just be confused, and therefore were better off with the Phone Company's strictly controlled data network with Phone Company approved services.
The truth is that the Phone Company or in this case Apple, no matter how smart they believe they are, cannot duplicate the inventive power of a free market. That is why Apple lost the battle of the PC market to the plain IBM architecture (which they eventually adopted), and why the Phone Companies lost the battle of the data networks to the "academic and geeky" Internet.
Apple did win control of the music player market for now, but then again these devices doesn't need to do much beside playing music.
... but all ideology aside, Windows Mobile (while bloated) is actually a fantastic product, when it's configured right. In terms of business oriented features (and 3rd party development), it does actually make the iPhone weep.
Can Google make it so I can press my touch screen two or three times while tethered and be sharing a HSDPA link to my laptop via bluetooth or WiFi? Can they make it so I can debug my apps in an emulator or deploy them over USB for real device debugging in an IDE on my PC? Can they even promise I'll be able to run two apps at once?
We're talking first generation software from a company that doesn't really *do* commercial grade operating systems against a platform based upon an operating system that's well and truly hit it's stride now from a company who's used to developing them. Windows Mobile 6 is when MS finally got it right and I doubt Google will do that for a while yet. Hell, the iPhone has a brilliant interface, but systems wise it still isn't going to compete feature wise with Windows Mobile.
Free or not, there will be no suffocation - Windows Mobile is a tiny cost of a phone that is given away free or sold in monthly installments. In most countries, the phones are subsidized against a carrier contract anyway. It's not a market that Microsoft can be suffocated in.
You are right that Microsoft makes all of its money elsewhere. However, its profits are all related to selling an OS and applications for PCs, and that market is mature. PC sales are not going to explode again, they're going to migrate into more mobile devices and other form factors.
Microsoft sits in an enormously powerful position, but its platform needs to grow and diversify. That's why it's been spending billions for over ten years now to develop WinCE, first to create a Newton-like small PC, then to copy the Palm Pilot hand held, and finally to get into mobile phones. It hasn't captured more than a tiny fraction of the smartphone business in the last half decade.
In Q2 2007, Microsoft software only shipped on 6.1% of the 26 smartphones sold (1.6 million). Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in a day and a half, netting 1.3% share of the entire world's smartphone business for the entire quarter. It then sold 1.1 million phones the next quarter. That's bad news, because Microsoft only makes a bit of OS licensing revenue; Apple earns hardware profits, retail profits, and service shares on every phone sold.
Microsoft's inability to create a workable mobile strategy isn't an isolated problem. It also couldn't develop a workable strategy behind PlaysForSure/Zune, WebTV/Ultimate TV, Xbox gaming, and other initiatives that attempt to clone the Windows PC monopoly licensing business in other arenas.
Add all those efforts together, and Microsoft managed to burn through $6 billion in consumer product revenues and then destroy another $2 billion in net loss (pulled from its other businesses). That's the real problem: the company has proven it has nowhere to go. It continues to try to leverage the only products it can sell Windows PC/Server/Office as tools to push sales of its products rejected in the open market.
If Google were to offer a free or very low cost alternative to run on WinCE platform devices, it would not only scuttle Microsoft's revenues from mobiles and kill its ability to sell them at all, but would also expand Google's search business into mobiles. Google could even pay phone makers to ship its product, funded by ads.
After proving how easy it is to yank away Windows Mobile from Microsoft, Google could then launch its own linux distro and do the same thing on low end PCs, and serve as the desktop for web/email users with Firefox + OpenOffice. Microsoft would subsequently collapse, unable to maintain its monopoly position and unable to adapt.
You know, like a dinosaur.
Microsoft's Outrageous Office Profits