Nokia, the world’s largest producer of mobile phones, announced this week plans to fully acquire Symbian, the developer of the very widely-used S60 smartphone operating system, before the end of 2008. Further, Nokia announced plans to make Symbian an open source platform under the control of a non-profit organization, to be called the Symbian Foundation. Motorola, Sony Ericsson and NTT DoCoMo, all of whom also make Symbian-based phones, will also contribute technical assets. Other Symbian Foundation members will include AT&T, LG, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that only T-Mobile expects to release a new mobile phone using Google’s Android open source mobile operating system before the end of 2008.  Sprint Nextel, China Mobile and AT&T, who all intended to release Android phones of their own this year, will most likely have to push their Android offerings into 2009, as a result of unexpected development delays.

Why should salespeople care about Symbian?

Nokia’s move is clearly meant to counter Google’s attempt to standardize the interface of mobile handsets under their open source platform — one that they control.  Nokia, as the largest producer of phones, can’t afford to let Google eventually dictate how phones should operate — even if it means taking a short-term financial hit to start it’s own open source mobile operating system initiative.  And the Symbian Foundation, with its impressive list of initial members, certainly has enough clout to compete effectively with the emerging Android platform, even if a revamped, standardized Symbian operating system isn’t available until 2010, if all goes as expected.

Google is finding that working with large mobile carriers can be challenging, as they each require significant support with integrating Android into their systems and devices.  Meanwhile, many software developers are creating some pretty cool applications for the Android platform, but without compatible phones in the market, no one will be able to run them.  This will not make the application developers happy — not at all.

These two latest developments are just the most recent maneuvers of behemoth competitors in the quickly escalating War of the Phones.  What this means is that sales professionals should consider several factors in their all-important mobile communications and computing platform choices, as follows:

• If you must buy a mobile phone before the end of 2008, consider an iPhone 3G.  If you can’t switch to an iPhone carrier, such as AT&T in the U.S., you might want to stick with a reliable Blackberry (such as the 8830 on Sprint and Verizon), and get as short a contract term as possible.
• If you plan to buy a mobile device in the next year, try to hold out until the first half of 2009, and look at the (hopefully) new Android phones, which will (hopefully) be available from several carriers.  If they perform as well as the initial demonstrations indicate, and if they are priced competitively, they may be the best alternative to an iPhone as an integrated mobile communication and computing platform.
• If you plan to hold on to your current mobile phone at least until 2010, either because you don’t care about the advanced features of the new generation of mobile devices, or because you are locked in with a long-term contract to your current carrier, don’t sweat it — new Symbian-based devices should be starting to appear, or at least start to be demonstrated.  Then you can select the platform you feel is the best value: iPhone, Android, Symbian or Blackberry.
• Meanwhile, don’t commit to any long-term phone contracts through 2011, if you can, so you can have the most flexibility as the next generation of new devices emerge into the market.

In the long view, all of this is excellent news for salespeople, as it means lots of competition for advanced features and functionality in mobile communications and computing.  And that should translate into more productivity at cheaper prices — good news for sales pros, for sure.  Meanwhile, don’t make any rash decisions, and keep your options open — and don’t let the clashes of the mobile phone titans scare you.

UPDATE: for an excellent quick analysis of the major mobile phone operating systems, check out this overview at TechCrunch.

Tags: Android, Google, Nokia, phones for sales professionals, Symbian, Symbian Foundation, War of the Phones, What phone should salespeople buy?

While salespeople continue to peck away at their trusty Blackberry devices, or just make calls on their conventional mobile phones of various makes and models, three giant forces quietly accelerate towards a cataclysmic confrontation. These titanic forces shall soon collide, and the cacophony and chaos that this clash creates will stun and stupefy sales pros with a bewildering array of new choices, none of which will be immediately correct. But one will eventually emerge as the victor.

The names of the three forces are: Google, Apple and Microsoft. And the great battle that is about to begin will be known as the War of the Phones. And salespeople will be caught in the crossfire.

It’s gonna be great.

All three companies have begun to unveil pieces of their respective visions of the next great technology: fully functional, hand-held, connected computing platforms. Oh, and they’ll make phone calls, too. In fact, we’ll all call them “phones” — and the three giants will, too — but don’t be fooled. Making calls will be only one useful thing that these new devices will do.

These devices will also contain enough processing power to be genuinely useful client computers, and their interfaces will be swift and intuitive enough to make hand-held document creation and spreadsheet jockeying do-able, if not outright pleasant. Further, these devices will feature fast near-broadband or better Internet connectivity speeds, enabling practical cloud computing and collaboration, all in the palm of your hand. Coupled with the absolute requirements of email, calendar, contact management, messaging and voice telephone, the next generation of mobile devices will become the primary tool in every sales professional’s stock in trade.

Google Android

If you haven’t seen any Android phones yet, don’t worry — that’s because there aren’t any. Android is a software system for mobile devices based on the open source Linux operating system. Google is promoting Android as an open platform for the next generation for mobile computing and telecommunications, and so far, they have been successful in attracting a significant number of technology companies to begin developing and supporting Android-based devices.

Android is a very interesting operating system for mobile devices. Google’s Andy Rubin, who heads up the Android development project, recently demonstrated a prototype at a San Francisco developer’s conference:

Observers of the prototype demonstrations have commented that the initial versions of Android devices offer many of the user-friendly interface functions found in the popular Apple iPhone, with speedy connectivity and computing power.

Apple iPhone

The user interface of the Apple iPhone is revolutionary. If you haven’t experienced it, you can see an overview here: iPhone Guided Tour. The intelligent multi-touch screen and gesture-based commands make the iPhone a truly unique and highly intuitive user experience. There simply isn’t anything else like it on the market today. As a result, Apple has sold nearly 10 million units since the iPhone was first introduced last year.

Microsoft Windows Mobile

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system has been around since 2003, but it has been upgraded and improved steadily over the years. Recently, Microsoft demonstrated a touch screen interface for mobile devices, which included multi-touch and motion-based commands, similar to the popular iPhone interface. Industry analysts speculate that this is part of the next release of Windows Mobile, planned for the latter half of 2009. Microsoft’s leaders, Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, also recently stated that multi-touch screen interface support will be part of the future Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft is selling a lot of Windows Mobile devices already. In fact, a Microsoft spokesperson projected a 50 percent growth in sales per year over the next two years, which translates to almost 60 million units sold between 2006 and 2009.

Who will win?

We said that we expected one of the three behemoths to emerge victorious from this clash of titans, and we think we know who it will probably be. At least, we are willing to speculate as to who it should be. And we can justify our conclusion based on one simple principle: maximum customer freedom.

With an open architecture, more developers can produce applications and add-ons for a mobile device much more cheaply and easily. As a result, in a mobile device based on an open architecture design, users should have enormous flexibility in configuring that device to their specific requirements and tastes, and at attractive prices — in fact, in many cases, enhancements and add-ons will be free.

But an open architecture can only succeed if it garners enough support from developers and manufacturers to create enough devices with enough options to interest large market segments of potential buyers. As a result, many open architecture initiatives have been relegated to niche markets, or failed outright.

Google, however, is doing everything right, so far, in establishing Android as an open architecture with a broad base of manufacturer and developer support. And they’ve built into that architecture the potential for further extensibility and enhancements, all at an individual user’s option. Further, the demonstrations of the early versions of Android phones have been very impressive — if the final released versions perform this good in real-world use, and if they are priced competitively, they will be very tantalizing indeed. For these reasons, we think Android could eventually be the mobile device platform that everyone, especially sales professionals, will want to have in their hands — when those devices begin to appear “in the second half of 2008″, according to Andy Rubin.

Before the folks at Google start popping the champaign corks, however, a lot of things have to go right. And meanwhile, their competitors are not going to be sitting idle.

First, Android is behind in the race. Apple’s new 3G iPhone will do very well, if it is released early this summer as many experts predict. The new iPhone should include improved Internet connectivity speeds, ability to receive “push email” from Microsoft Exchange servers (a “must have” for corporate acceptance), and support for third-party add-on applications. The iPhone user interface is indeed a leap forward in user friendliness — it’s intuitive nature simply makes the iPhone the most fun device to use. And for these reasons, despite fairly high anticipated introduction prices, the iPhone should quickly capture a respectable share of the market.

Apple has some challenges, however. Although Apple will soon support third-party developed applications, they do so under some heavily controlled conditions — Apple will almost certainly require its approval of all applications and require sale exclusively through it’s iTunes distribution system. To be fair, Apple is trying to protect users from unpleasant experiences with badly written software, which is good. What is less good, however, is that these restrictions could become a significant barrier to many third-party developers, and thereby reduce customer choice — which will look more obvious if Android successfully attracts many more third-party developers. Still, the iPhone should enjoy several months of virtually no comparable competition, and with the new 3G capabilities and a broad array of worldwide carriers supporting the device, the newest edition could capture a huge market share in the summer and fall of 2008.

Microsoft is so far behind that it’s hard to imagine how they might catch up with their more nimble competitors in this race. While Windows Mobile is selling a lot of devices, and there is a lot of speculation that the next version will incorporate a much richer user interface, it will be at least a year before we see any new devices on the market that take advantage of these capabilities. By then, the iPhone and Android phones will have carved out large and highly defensible shares of the next generation mobile device market.

And what of the old reliable Blackberry devices, from RIM? Will they be able to hold off the onslaught of these new platforms? Are salespeople so addicted to their “Crackberries” that they will be unwilling to switch? Certainly it seems that RIM is counting on this, and hoping that all interlopers will stumble and fall. Meanwhile, RIM’s next generation of Blackberry devices appear to be solid, incremental improvements over the previous versions — but while they are faster and have more capacity, they really don’t offer anything radically new in their interface or extensibility — at least, not yet.

Perhaps some other player will emerge in the next generation mobile device market that we haven’t yet identified — perhaps Nokia, who still sells more mobile phones than anyone, with a revamped Symbian-based operating system. Or the once venerable Palm – although that seems very unlikely, given their recent track record of development mis-steps.

We think it likely that one of the three giants now entering the fray will eventually dominate the next generation of advanced mobile devices, although we expect the lead to change at least twice, and perhaps three times, over the next two years.

It will be fun to watch.

Tags: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, mobile devices, mobile phone, Nokia, Palm, sales tool, War of the Phones, Windows 7, Windows Mobile