Clash of the Titans

(Originally published on infoSync) I recently read a very good article on .NET at OS News, which attempts to filter out most of the hype and focus on what .NET can really do and is about in the long term, even mentioning that Microsoft is doing research on computer architecture where the device you are holding will borrow everything from the server, from RAM, hard disk space to CPU power. This got me thinking about the war currently going on between Microsoft and Nokia — which, if you take a closer look, will see is a real battle.

So what is going on?

MS has recently announced a deal with Texas Instruments to bring a reference platform to the market, which companies can use to build mobile phones based on SmartPhone 2002, previously named Stinger, Microsoft’s mobile phone platform. Microsoft also announced the Phone Edition of its Pocket PC 2002 platform, which offers current Pocket PC manufacturers an easier path for adding mobile phone capabilities to their devices — and new manufacturers a more interesting platform. If you take into account the fact that .NET will make it totally unimportant with which device you connect to any of the applications/services that .NET will make available, Microsoft’s grand scheme will become obvious. Microsoft already has what some might call a monopoly on the desktop and will use that to push .NET through other channels. Microsoft wants to be everywhere, which is the true reason for why .NET was devised. Once you have .NET on your desktop you might want to use it on your PDA (done), your XBox (done), your set-top box (done) or your phone (done). See it now? MS is thinking big, and with that strategy will be very well placed to exploit the company’s leadership in other fields to enhance the value of their mobile phone and PDA platforms too.

If Microsoft succeeds, the company will be able to once again control the API that developers work with. They will make the developers accustomed to that API, provide them with very good development tools, and thus make it hard for them to develop for another platform, locking them in on the platform. The benefits for consumers would be that Microsoft is moving in a similar direction with regard to its mobile phone and PDA platforms as it has in the past with desktops; making the hardware underneath a commodity, and helping to create the next Dell — and you can be sure Dell will enter the market if the company can get even the tiniest profit out of it. My point is that users will find the same interaction method, the same graphical user interface, on all devices and can easily switch between devices from different manufacturers without having to learn how to use a new interface. This is one of the factors that helped the PC business to become so successful, and in return granted consumers with (relatively) cheap access to computers.

And this is where Nokia comes in. Nokia does for sure not want mobile phones to become commodities, which would drive down prices and cut away at their margins. Nokia is at this time one of the few mobile phone companies that make a profit on its phones. Of course, mobile phones will not become commodities if Nokia gets their say — and many believe them. Nokia’s argument is that in relation to PCs, mobile phones are with you at all times and are very personal devices. You can walk in to many Internet Cafés and use the computers there, or work in a computer pool at an educational institution, or use the company computers. But you will have your own mobile phone with you at all times, and it will be an extension to your personality. Just take into account the amazing popularity of ring tones and phone covers.

Even though the personality of mobile phones is a likely presumption, Nokia still needs to make sure that it has a good bit of control over the market and distinctions therein. Upon close scrutiny, you will see that Nokia is also trying to control the API, apparent in their move similar to Microsoft’s to provide companies with a reference design for mobile phones based on Nokia’s Series 60 platform (Symbian based) together with a partnership with — you guessed it — Texas Instruments. Provided Nokia can push companies to use their reference design instead of Microsoft’s SmartPhone 2002 platform, they will have the power over the API to which developers code their applications (in C++ for native Symbian apps or Java which is increasingly available in mobile phones), and the users will be accustomed to use that interface, even though it is far more customizable than that of SmartPhone 2002. Controlling the API is crucial in the long run, but for Nokia, the other crucial part is that you can customize the interface and create something special. It’s important to remember that Nokia is working hard to elevate itself to the status of “platform company”, as Jorma Ollila, Nokia’s CEO, put it in a speech at last year’s Comdex in Las Vegas saying that Nokia has “commitment to open mobile architecture enabling a non- fragmented global mobile wireless market,”.

Nokia is also trying to work against MS by being one of the companies behind the Liberty Alliance (started by Sun), which wants to establish another authorization method than the one used by .NET (based on Passport). More on this can be read in the article on OS News but in short, the idea in both is that you will have one login and password for logging in to numerous different services such as your e-mail, calendar, tasks list, word application, knowledge database, tax application, shopping — you name it. You will also only pay for what you use and how long, while billing will be handled by the service. The Liberty Alliance is paying close attention to privacy so that users will only make their personal information available to those companies that they want to. Many people grow concerned when thinking of Microsoft handling all of their logins and monetary transactions on the web, but Microsoft will obviously address these concerns once the service is launched.

The solution of the Liberty Alliance is Java-based, and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) is already becoming a standard in mobile phones for developing applications for them. A uniform view is that this one-login-for-everything approach to authentication will be crucial in the future, hence the powerful movement behind the efforts.

This brings up the question of which platform is more important to dominate in the future: desktop PCs or mobile hones? Arguably, there are more mobile phones out there than PCs, but the dominance of Microsoft is larger on the desktop PC than Nokia’s is in terms of mobile phones. Meanwhile, the Liberty Alliance enjoys far more backing in terms of companies supporting the alliance than the Microsoft alternative, mainly because by now, many companies and especially mobile phone companies do not want to be at the mercy of Microsoft at this time if they can somehow avoid it.

A point to remember is that both the .NET and the Liberty Alliance approach build on SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) for the interaction of the services. Thus, an interesting aspect of the race will be whether service providers of various kinds will allow not only one, but both authentication systems (.NET, and Liberty Alliance) to interact with their services. If this becomes the case, you will be able to use a SOAP based service via logging in to MS’s platform or the Liberty Alliance system. As an example, there might be a company that provides a very good text editor that you can use whenever you please, and pay as you go, whilst another company is making advanced translation services available. If one service requires the authentication to be performed by .NET, and the other service by the Liberty Alliance, you would not be able to use both services simultaneously — but if both services would allow both authentication methods, you could do your word processing through one service and let it be translated in the other service independent of which authentication system you use. That means that if there is a drive towards making the services independent of the authentication system, then there would be less drive to use any one of them exclusively.

All in all, the race is still on, and many already believe that it will just be a space divided evenly between Microsoft and the Liberty Alliance. Only time will tell, and the judge is still out as to which one would be the better solution.