The SmartPhone War!!!

Over the past few months, the world has been hearing a lot about how various smart-phone manufactures are trying different things to the top and especially how Android has been making big strides in terms of market share. This article will try to dig deep into various facts & forecasts based on various publicly availabe information and try to present a comparitive analysis and probable strategies for these orgs.

First off, lets look at facts and figures to establish the movers and shakers in the industry....

The above report can also be accessed here
Another report released by Gartner can be accessed here

Now that we have established the premise-data lets dig into how every smart phone makers are placed currently.

1. Rest of the world
Lets leave out Nokia, RIM, Apple & Google and start with the fringe players, whom I call as the Rest of the world. More or less every fringe mobile manufacturer - Samsung, Motorola, HTC etc have moved to Android OS platform. These fringe players were depended on Symbian & Windows initially, latched on to Android with open arms and successfully too. These fringe players are primarily hardware manufacturers and don't have any great inclination to deploy software teams to challenge Android or iOS. They will continue to manufacture phones with multiple OS's, with Android garnering a lions share. Some of them have already tasted success like Samsung Galaxy, HTC legend & Motorola Milestone. My view these firms will focus on maufacturing quality hardware and leave the software to the experts.

2. Nokia
It is still the leader in the market in terms of number of handsets sold and the market share for Symbian. But its an obvious loser in the high margin smart phone market. After the success of I-phone, Nokia still went on its egoistic sojourn due to its market leadership and ignored touch phones for a quiet a while. Its first serious attempt at a high value smart touch phone has been the recently launched Nokia-N8. Symbian is still the OS of choice for Nokia, but Symbian releases have not tasted success even in the non-touch market. Series-4 OS has been successful. Series-6 OS has been a failure and Nokia went back to upgrading the Series-4. Its OVI store is still a dud compared to stores of Apple & Android. It is fair to assume that Nokia has lost the mobile-OS war.

Now Nokia is in a dilemma if to become a pure play hardware manufacture and cater to multiple OS or continue to be egoistic and try to build a OS from scratch in a market that is already stabilizing. It has to act fast in an industry where innovation plays a key role and building something like a good OS from scratch at this point of time would be pointless. Adopting open source quality OS (like Android) would be prudent. Why? Free quality OS and cost cutting. If not, the other option I can think off is to sell themselves off or collaborate - most probably to/with Microsoft, who are badly in need of manufacturers for their recently launched Windows 7 Mobile OS. Time will tell...

3. RIM
RIM is an interesting case in hand. It is still in the top-3 in the smartphone OS market share (details here), but for how long? It has its command over enterprise segment mainly because of its security features, but is that enough? There is sufficient hint that iOS & I-Phone are enhancing their security footprints and Android may not be far behind. Then what happens to Blackberry?

RIM has a task in hand to make Blackberry more cool and appealing. They have to move from the enterprise segment into the mainstream. We can see some steps already in that direction through ads like the Blackberry boys. They still lag way behind in terms of applications. Iphone app-store and Android market are exploding with new apps daily. Blackberry needs more apps, more innovation and low pricing to decide its success going ahead. But its a giant task, and I can only see downside for RIM from here, but as I say time will tell the answer.

4. Apple
The leader - Apple. They have had been the de-facto leaders for the past few years. Android is their first serious competition in the past few years. I-Phones sell with the highest margin due the deadly combination of an in-house ultra cool hardware and software. Apple's pros has been its cool impression, innovative launches and a dynamic visionary at the helm. But more recently Apple has been facing tough times, be it through the antenna problems or even as simple as the liver transplantation of Steve jobs. For me the biggest problem Apple I-Phones may face could be the pricing. Android phones have a wide range of pricing starting as low as $99. Apple IPhones are still expensive.

With Android breathing fire through an array of manufacturers, what could be IPhone's next move? Could it go the I-Pod way where there is I-Pod and there is the rest? That may not happen in the smart-phones world, since a free Android and a quality hardware (like say a Samsung Galaxy) could be a win win for both Samsung and Google and customer (who gets a cheaper phone). Does Apple iOS become open source and Apple focus on hardware? That may not happen either. Knowing Apple, it would strive hard to handle its proprietary stuff as much as possible. Seeing all this, I believe Apple would go for a low cost version of an I-Phone very soon to counter the low cost Android phones.

One thing that Apple has not done well is its sales outside US and inside US(some say). For example, in India, owning a I-Phone is still cool than owning a Samsung-Galaxy-S. But markets like India are price sensitive and the same approach of selling an I-Phone through a service provider may not work. Apple has a huge opportunity outside US to expand its wings and sell more, but a location sensitive sales approach is definitely required. Inside US, AT&T has been its choice of operator and its move to include Verizon is a step in the right direction to have more I-Phones sold.

Apart from the 2 options mentioned above, Apple could very well surprise the world with a new generation I-phone with path breaking innovations that could well defy the competition in more ways than one. Knowing Apple as we have seen, this option could very well be a possibility. But as I say, time will tell.

5. Google

Google arrived with a bang. It is called the Android. It's business strategy to make money is completely different than Apple and others. Its primarily a software player with some glimpses of hardware foray through the Nexus-One and Nexus-S. But these forays are basically to showcase and popularize Android as the OS of choice than anything else. Google will make the Android stronger in the days to come and slowly move out of the hardware reseller soon. It has nothing to lose in this smart phone market, but made sure it plays a role as a mover n shaker in this segment. A lot of smart phone manufacturers are heavily dependent on Google & Android in their success and hence that explains how Google is sitting pretty in this segment. It will not be a surprise if Google announces the take over of a pureplay phone hardware player in the near future to get a share of profit by selling hardware as well - But very unlikely!!!

Google will push Android as the OS of choice with more innovations and will try to play the role of an all round player in all segments of industries like credit cards, mobile banking, ticketing etc Google services will get wider and wider and will just be a part of every humans' every day life very very soon. Google will be like the air you breathe. Just an exaggeration.

Time will Tell!!!

Notes: Feed back welcome. Consciously ignored Microsoft. Want to gauge Windows7 mobile for some more time.

Update (February 13, 2011): My first prediction on the Nokia-Microsoft collaboration comes true. Its good, with Nokia's expertise in hardware and MS's expertise in software there could be a new offering, and option for the customers. Lets wait and watch what is lying ahead of us in terms of offerings from this partnership