- Image via Wikipedia
n fact, with Google’s Android platform leading the news in open mobile OSses, and only two handsets out, I wouldn’t even say that the open mobile movement really started yet. Sure, there are lots of ideas out there, frameworks, and first handset implementations show up. However, even for a fast moving industry such as mobile handsets each of these handsets need to be approved by the regulator. That takes time, and I don’t see a vast number of commercial offerings available nor announced.
You might have read that Palm, after posting a hefty $500m loss and a $100m lifeline injection by Elevation Partners, announced (or should I say, “leaked”) their first open-source and Linux-based phone. ‘Nova’, though not so nova for the rest of the pack, is Palm’s best and probably last chance to get back into the smart phone market. Otherwise this Nova might become more of an imploding supernova for Palm. The San Francisco Chronicle has a good summary about Palm’s situation.
Mapping open source into mobile: who, where and how (Source: Vision Mobile)
egarding Open Mobile Operating Systems, Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile has taken the effort to map different open source efforts and developments into the mobile area – a great posted, where I grabbed the picture on the right from.
But he, too, claims that
2009 will be the year of maturity for how open source can be used as a tool for cheaper, faster collaborative software development, which reduces barriers to entry and breeds innovation.
think together with the ongoing economic crisis, we will see a lot of innovation happening in 2009, that’s for sure. But I really think regarding open source in the mobile world we’re not yet at the “Slope of Enlightenment” within the technology hype cycle – the number of innovations prove that. And I don’t think that just because it’s the mobile industry we’re talking about, open source will here suddenly leapfrog the peak of inflated expectations as well as the trough of disillusionment. I do think that the mobile involvement into open source will accelerate developments, but the fact that all the reports about 2009 being the year of maturity is kind of the perverse proof of the hype just beginning.
And as I said before: where are the failures that close down, where are the M&A activities? Let’s hope that Palm will not become the first proof of that development.
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