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Google Should Have Made The gPhone

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If you have spent time in the dating game, you know the harsh reality: it is usually better when you are being wooed by someone, than it is when you are running after them. When you are the one who is trying to win over someone, no matter how great your qualities and offerings, they may act reluctant, express doubts, second guess your motives and in the end, not accept you at all. On the other hand, when someone is wooing you, even if they know your negative qualities and idiosyncrasies, even if you act all pricey, they might still brush those aside and pursue you; they will be happy to accept you as you are and make a good life with that.

Reading about Google working with handset makers and carriers, I get the impression that Google is wooing a bunch of Reluctant Rebeccas who are demanding much and not making it easy for Google. The angst of a hassled suitor is best expressed by Google’s director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin: “This is where the pain happens,” he says. “We are very, very close.”

Very close, but no cigar… yet.

Imagine how much better it would have been if things were the opposite: if all the carriers and handset makers were lining up at Google’s gates because they were desperate to have this great new awesome that Google had built. Even if they had to a pay high price for it.

Google should have built The gPhone first. It should have worked with one handset maker, in secret (with occasional leaks to the “person familiar with the matter”, of course!), to build the most awesome piece of mobile hardware. And, instead of spending time and resources to build and manage a reluctant alliance, Google should have concentrated all its own energies on doing what it does best: make innovative software with a revolutionary, irresistible UI.

With such exclusive focus, Google would have been ready to launch the g(od)Phone this June or July. Imagine the launch where Google not only showed off an awesome, unlocked, full-featured, uncrippled phone, but also offered the open mobile platform Android for free to anyone who wants it, and announced the Android developer challenge! Now, that would have been a true 1-2-3 knockout punch from which that other locked-and-limited-but-shiny-and-popular phone coming out in July would have found hard to recover. Carriers would have lined up to get the gPhone on their networks ASAP. Handset makers would have lined up to get Android on their phones ASAP. Developers would have lined up to churn out apps for the original godPhone and all other Android phones ASAP. Happy customers the world over would have lined up to get the new gPhone ASAP. Really, can you imagine how all that would have played out? That would have shaken up the mobile world, alright! Then, Google could have built the OHA as a strong coalition of willing converts, rather than a loose alliance of skeptical and reluctant participants.

Instead, what we have today is a situation where Google is scrambling hard to help T-Mobile launch the first Android phone before the end of the year. This is taking up enough of Google’s resources that Sprint cites that as an excuse for not offering an Android Phone on its own network yet. Of course, Sprint has other excuses too: top management shuffling, plans to skip 3G and go straight to 4G with the Android phone, preference to offer its own branded services on the phone (read ‘walled garden’) rather than offer Google’s built-in services. Sprint, purported founding member of the OHA, has made ambiguous and non-committal statements about Android from the very beginning. So, I am not surprised that they are not ready to offer an Android phone any time soon. In fact, I’m glad that Google is first working with T-Mobile, the carrier which cripples phones the least among all the popular US carriers.

Google should have learned from its Gmail launch. Gmail is a complete email product, with innovative, unique features. It wow-ed the world when it was launched. Some Gmail features are so unique, almost no other email provider has replicated them or even offered them as options years after Gmail launched. Remember the days when people all over the world were desperate to get an invite to Gmail? Now imagine that Google never built Gmail, and instead built a plug-in to work with Outlook or Yahoo mail or any other email system, to bring the Gmail features like threaded conversations, labeled mails, hidden quoted text, etc. to your existing mail box. Google would have had to go through hard and frustrating times to get the plug-in to work with the numerous mail systems out there. Having done that, it would have been even more difficult to get the other email providers to offer this plug-in as an optional feature, if at all. Even if Google had offered the plug-in as an independent download, it would not be as ubiquitous and useful as Gmail is today.

Google’s attempts to push Android on reluctant carriers and handset makers is akin to pushing a Gmail plug-in on existing email systems! Moreover, it makes you wonder what compromises and limitations Google might be building into Android in order to make it acceptable to the carriers. I’d like to believe that Google would not do that, but then I’d also have liked to believe that Google does not offer a self-censored search engine in China.

Anyway, what is done is done. For better or worse, Android is on the path it is on now. Nobody wishes for its success as much as we do. But it’s still not too late for Google to make and market its own branded, full-featured and unlocked godPhone which can be held up as a standard for other phones to measure up to. Perhaps, they should partner with the struggling Motorola, which has put its best engineers to work on an Android phone, to make the ideal gPhone. An ideal gPhone would serve Google (and us, the mobile customers) very well. For one thing, it would show the world what Android can really do. And, it would prevent carriers from crippling other Android (and even non-Android) phones too much. Why would people buy a crippled phone if a full-featured one is available? And even if the carriers crippled their phones a little, they would be forced to offer something in exchange – like awesome hardware or innovative services or simply cheaper phones – to tempt customers to buy those phones. Would be a win-win for everybody.

34 Weeks of OHA: #23

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Company Name: Samsung Electronics

How the OHA site classifies them: Handset Manufacturer

What the OHA site says about them: A leading innovator and provider of mobile phones and telecom systems.

What they do: Samsung is scary as hell.

Seriously.

Head on over to the Wikipedia article for Samsung Group, the conglomerate of which Samsung Electronics is the biggest part. These guys basically drive the South Korean economy (20% of the entire country’s exports in 2004, 6% of the total tax revenue the country received in 2003). In addition to electronics, they’re one of the world’s largest shipbuilders and a major global construction company. They also do chemicals, financial services, retails, entertainment, cars, etc., etc. They have revenue rivaling many small countries; in 2006 it would have been the world’s 34th largest economy. They are the second largest conglomerate in the world.

These guys are the megacorporation your mother warned you about.

At the top of all this is Lee family, who has run the show for some time now. The string of Lees includes Lee Byung-Chul (the founder), Lee Soo-Bin and Lee Kun-Hee. It’s a monarchy, really.

It’s run using this weird circular ownership thing, whereby one division owns a certain percentage of another, which in turn owns a percentage of the third, which then owns a percentage of the fourth. It is thought that this arrangement allows the Lee family to keep control of everything without having a huge portion of the ownership of any one part. The system was designed by Lee Ma-Chia-Veh-Lee.

The Samsung Electronics subsidiary is the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, having overtaken Sony a few years back. They completely dominate in the areas of DRAM, SRAM, TFT-LCD, STN-LCD, flash memory, CDMA handsets, and a bunch of other stuff. As an electronics brand, Samsung has seen a steady improvement in public perception over the past handful of years, evolving into a mark of quality equal to or exceeding Sony.

And, of course, they make handsets. They are second only to Nokia in worldwide market share.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Today’s mobile industry is becoming more and more a customer-centric environment. Samsung’s joining with the Open Handset Alliance is fundamentally in line with this trend. We expect to lead the mobile industry by introducing more customer-oriented mobile phones through this alliance.

That’s the word from Dale Sohn, President of Samsung Telecommunications America, on the OHA quotes page. There’s not much there, other than a 1:1 participle-to-sentence ratio. I find it interesting that he’s so focused on how the industry is becoming more customer-oriented, a welcome change from the old days when it was more focused on mobile providers and South Korean God-Corporations. I mean, does it seem messed up to anyone else that it should be news when a consumer product/service is noted for becoming customer-oriented? Clearly, the power has gone to Samsung’s head.

They do create some cool handsets, though. Take a look at the Instinct (http://www.samsunginstinct.com/): while obviously heavily targeted at the iPhone market, there’s no doubt that its loaded to the gills with coolness. If they can bring the same standards to their Android offerings they may challenge HTC for my money. I’m not terribly interested in contributing to their world domination, but if they deliver the goods they can have my money.

Rumour has had it that the first Android handsets will actually come from Samsung sometime in September, rather than HTC as we’ve all been led to believe. It’s questionable whether Samsung would go this route, potentially diluting the impact of the Instinct – which they’ve thrown so much marketing money behind – during the Christmas season, but I’d certainly love to see their offering should it appear.

34 Weeks of OHA: #22

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Company Name: Qualcomm, Inc.

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: Qualcomm Incorporated is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products for advanced devices around the world.

What they do: Their wikipedia page describes them as a “wireless telecommunications research and development company”. Initially this line of work saw them releasing satellite locating and messaging services for long-haul truckers and various little bits n’ pieces of integrated whatsits for digital radio communications.

They hit their stride with CDMA technologies, however. As inventors of CDMAOne, CDMA 2000, and 1xEV-DO they have consistently been at the forefront the field. They are the code division multiple access ninjas. They’ve ridden their prowess all the way up to being one of the top ten semiconductor companies in the world.

Along the way, they developed BREW, the application development platform for handsets, bought naming rights for a stadium in San Diego, helped develop the Globalstar satellite system, and got their butts sued (and lost) over infringing patents held by fellow OHA-er Broadcom.

They also, interestingly, got themselves involved in email software through buying Eudora, which was, way back when, kind of a big name (I remember using Eudora Light). It limped along under the onslaught of Outlook for quite a few years, until, in 2006, it was open sourced and moved under Mozilla, where internet software that has had its ass handed to it by Microsoft go to regroup and stage their comeback.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Do I really need to answer that question? These guys invented CDMA, ferchrissakes.

As is likely the case with many other semiconductor companies, they’re probably involved mostly to provide hardware specs and reference platforms for the Android devs. As I’ve conjectured around these parts before, being a part of the OHA involves no risk for a company like Qualcomm. They provide some reference platforms, if Android is huge they win in that the software is sure to run on their stuff, whereas if Android fails all they’ve lost is some reference hardware.

I apologize that saying this over and over again, but there’s not much else to really say about Qualcomm. I can even hand the mic over to someone from Qualcomm, who basically told Information week’s Eric Zeman the same thing:

Qualcomm’s involvement is simple. The main benefactor will be the the chipset division. It continues to show that we will support many operating systems and platforms. This includes BREW,Microsoft and others. With Android, we’re just saying we can run Linux on our chipsets as well. (Emphasis mine).

So, nothing to see here. Move on. Qualcomm isn’t bringing any hot new tech to the table, they’re just jumping around, waving their arms, saying “Me too. Me too.”

I’m going to close out with the words of Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, Qualcomm CEO, from the OHA quotes page. He had his PR folks working overtime on this one; it’s great for being nicely verbose while really not saying much at all:

The convergence of the wireless and Internet industries is creating new partnerships, evolving business models and driving innovation. We are extremely pleased to be participating in the Open Handset Alliance, whose mission is to help build the leading open-source application platform for 3G networks. The proliferation of open-standards-based handsets will provide an exciting new opportunity to create compelling services and devices. As a result, we are committing research and development resources to enable the Android platform and to create the best always-connected consumer experience on our chipsets.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Packet Video

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I promised something special for this week, and have delivered! Read on for the bestest 34 Weeks of OHA article yet…

Company Name: PacketVideo

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: PacketVideo (PV) is a nine-year-old multimedia software company whose software powers the world’s leading mobile entertainment services, including Verizon Wireless’ VCAST music and video services, NTT DoCoMo’s 3-G FOMA service and Orange World by Orange.

The Backstory:

Usually when I’m writing these things I have to spend at least fifteen minutes surfing around the intertubes doing research. I take a bunch of notes, write the notes down on scraps of rice paper, feed them along with a couple shots of espresso to my specially trained Rhesus Monkey, and then lock him in the bathroom overnight with an old HP laptop. When morning comes, all I have to do is post what he’s put together to the site and clean the Rhesus poop out of the bathtub. It’s a great system.

This week, however, an opportunity came my way. Rather than having a monkey put the article together, I got a PhD in Electrical Engineering to do it, a technique which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has produced a far superior product.

The PhD in this case is Osama Alshaykh, CTO for Open Handset Alliance member PacketVideo. PacketVideo is a provider of multimedia software to basically every handset maker and mobile carrier that matters: Nokia, T Mobile, Rogers, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Verizon, etc., etc. They’re one of those companies that few people have ever heard of, but almost anyone that’s ever picked up a mobile phone has come in contact with their software.

Osama Alshaykh really does have a PhD in Electrical Engineering. He’s one of the founders of PacketVideo, which he came to after having spent some time working on multimedia standards like MPEG-4 and JPEG-2000. And he’s a Fullbright Scholar. So, he’s smarter than me, probably smarter than you, and definitely a lot smarter than my monkey. I’m guessing he’s a lot less nasty than my monkey if you steal his peanuts, as well.

I interviewed Dr. Alshaykh via email last week:

The Interview:

Q: Let’s start with the basic information. Usually for my articles I take the time to do some research around the company I’m profiling, but this time I can let you just hand me the information and save myself a bunch of work. Can you give me a brief history of PacketVideo, and tell me about some of the services and products you offer?

A: PacketVideo has been around for 10 years, and in the same year we were founded, we became the first company to put video on a cell phone. Since then, our multimedia software has shipped on about 230 million mobile devices, for mobile operators such as Verizon Wireless, Orange, NTT DoCoMo, Rogers, TELUS, Telstra, T-Mobile and more. Beyond our CORE multimedia application framework, on which the OpenCORE media subsystem for Android is based, we also have PVConnect, a DLNA-certified connected home product, and MediaFusion, an end-to-end rich media content management and delivery platform. Our existing products enable true multi-screen rich media services. We’ve also recently ventured into the hardware arena with Telly, a mobile broadcast receiver that will help mobile operators launch live TV services faster using their existing phone portfolios.

Q: Wow, that Telly’s a nifty little item. Cross platform and small enough to be convenient.

Without revealing any Top Secret stuff, what’s PacketVideo’s role in the Open Handset Alliance? What is PV bringing to the Android effort?

A: Our CORE multimedia framework is a mature, modular solution on which some of the most popular multimedia services are built, including Verizon VCAST and OrangeWorld. We’ve open sourced a subset of CORE features to enable Android developers to design and launch applications that employ basic media functions, such as audio and video streaming and playback, two-way video telephony, video authoring and imaging.

Q: I understand that Rogers Wireless, my mobile service provider here in Canada, is a client of PV. I have a rather large bill this month due to a new handset I purchased and some roaming data charges. Any chance you can swing me a discount?

A: Why aren’t you using their music services? Then we could talk.

Q: Well, I find much of the music I listen to isn’t offered by… Hey, wait, how do you know I’m not using their music service?

A: …

Q: What is the ‘Content Policy Manager’ component of OpenCORE? Is this where Digital Rights Management is enforced?

A: Yes, the content policy manager enables use case scenarios for digital rights management. Service providers can choose which technology and rules to include in their products by using these modules. PV provides and supports SDC, PlayReady and WMDRM10 digital rights management systems to provide users with many ways for obtaining media including renting, buying or forwarding content to your friends.

Q: I understand the OpenCORE code is open-source. How is it licensed — is it Apache 2.0 as is the Android SDK?

A: OpenCORE is available via the Android SDK, which is obtained through the Apache 2.0 license. No strings attached! Aren’t we good guys?

Q: Well, yes, you are good guys. It was the open-source part of Android that grabbed my attention when it was announced. But, I was a little surprised to see that OpenCORE does not support Ogg or FLAC audio codecs (at least, not according to the materials I read), which seems odd given that it’s open-source. What was the reasoning around not including these formats, and are there any plans to expand OpenCORE to include support for these codecs in the future?

A: PV provides a rich set of codecs and features including MP3, AAC, AAC+, MPEG-4, AVC, H.263, etc. We also opened up our system for developers to add other codecs and formats. This is the beauty of our architecture. It takes a village, you know …

Q: Well, I’m hoping there’s more than a village’s worth of participation in Android development.

Have you seen, or played with, the HTC Dream (the rumored HTC Android handset). Can it really convert water into wine? Can OpenCORE stream wine? ‘Cause, honestly, I could use some streaming wine.

A: Miracles can happen with a really innovative combination of hardware and services, but streaming wine from a phone isn’t on the roadmap. I can help stream it from a bottle! As for the rumored HTC handset, we like to consider it a legend.

Q: Wait, a “legend”? That’s rather cryptic. Are you saying that the HTC Dream that the blogosphere has been salivating for during the last few months doesn’t exist?

A: We’re not into rumors, but we are into reality, and the reality is that there will be cool Android devices and we’re very excited about that.

Q: Hmm…

Where do you see multimedia on mobile platforms heading? It seems that everything we could want is already available — music, video, streaming TV, YouTube. What’s the next step in the evolution of multimedia on my handset, and what, if any, are some of the technical or industry-related obstacles that need to be overcome before next-gen multimedia services can be offered?

A: Oh, there’s so much more that can be done, especially when you throw web-based services, your home and your friends into the mix. Imagine your phone is your ultimate remote control of your media assets when you watch TV, listen to music on your stereo system or show your grandma your cute pictures on her TV. Imagine yourself as a mobile broadcaster showing your friends your latest skating moves, live on the web. We’re moving towards the ability to merge personal interests with viewing habits.

Many of those ideas can be realized with the current networks and devices. More will be done with faster networks. Just some additional ideas to think about: Accessing your friends’ MySpace playlists and sampling music from their libraries. Or watching a music video on your phone and getting instant concert or TV appearance news about the artist you’re watching – with an option to buy those concert tickets or record the TV appearance on your phone. There are endless possibilities of integrating music, video and information of any kind on web-based mobile apps.

Q: This is the the idea that the mobile platform will the central interface for managing and interacting with our digital environment. Not just receiving, but broadcasting content as well. Very exciting stuff, and, frankly, what I’ve been waiting for.

What are your hopes for the Android platform? Do you see its openness as a turning point in the mobile industry?

A: The real pivot in the industry that accelerated with the introduction of Android, while not necessarily started by it, is the move toward openness – in networks, in platforms, in services. PV is hoping that there will be some really clever implementations of Android that loosen traditional concepts about the role a mobile device can and should play in an end-user’s life. It’s a big leap forward toward a rich media world, where access to desired applications and services is much more intuitive and way more fun. By opening platforms, we are removing hurdles and accelerating the introduction of new concepts and new approaches. A significant industry investment is made available to anyone to innovate with. BTW, all of this is applicable to any device and not only mobile phones.

Q: Well said; parts of that answer could almost serve as a manifesto.

Can you give me a job? I’m a fairly accomplished Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse developer; most of my experience is with Microsoft technologies, but at home I’m a Linux user and open-source devotee. I can cook, but I don’t do windows.

A: I think you’re more our target end-user than target employee. Most of our engineers are really great cooks. You should see our potlucks.

Free food? I’m there.

The Post-Interview:

Thanks so much to Dr. Alshaykh for taking the time to do this. It’s really nice to interface with someone in an executive position who not only has credentials that any geek can respect but also understands how openness can drive innovation. My communication with Dr. Alshaykh and the obvious confidence the mobile industry has in his company’s products have convinced my that the multimedia components of Android are in very, very good hands.

My thanks, as well, to Jeff Seedman of Ruder Finn for contacting me on behalf of PacketVideo and for facilitating the interview.

Until next week…

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Nvidia

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My apologies to all the loyal readers out there for missing the article last week. I was spending some time in Seattle, doing the company-paid-for training course thing. I couldn’t find the time to get an article together. No worries, though, I’m back. Oh, and, stay tuned for next week’s profile, for which I’ve paid a few bribes and cashed in a few favors in order to bring you all something very, very special. You’ll love it, promise. I just wish this week’s article could live up to what will be coming next week…

Company Name: NVIDIA Corporation

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: NVIDIA is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. Its GoForce family of multimedia applications processors are designed for the mobile phone, PMP and PND markets.

What they do: They make graphics chips. You know this already, I don’t have to tell you. If you haven’t heard of NVIDIA, you need to go back to geek school.

The NVIDIA history as its relayed in their Wikipedia article is, really, not all that interesting. It starts out alright, with a couple of failed products punching up the first act of an underdog-rises-to-the-top success story, but it loses steam by the final third and degenerates into petty squabbling with ATI punctuated by a string of meaningless series numbers (Geforce 1 thru 8), abbreviations (GPGU, SLI, CUDA) and stand-alone prefixes (‘Ultra’). I’ve never been much of a gamer, so its hard to attach any sort of significance to this stuff.

Their website touts them as “the inventor of the GPU” and “the world leader is visual computing technologies”. NVIDIA is the 2nd largest graphics chip producer in the world, behind Intel who kind of doesn’t count. Certainly in the Gaming and High-End graphics space NVIDIA is the leader (although longtime rival ATI is always in the shadows, lurking around, maiming kittens and shafting Linux users). NVIDIA’s GeForce line is almost household name, and they continue to set standards for graphics chip technology.

I don’t have an NVIDIA in my laptop. I could have, but I opted for the Intel integrated job ’cause it was cheaper and I don’t do much gaming anyway. Also, Intel offers open source Linux drivers, which NVIDIA and ATI do not, and I hoped that would mean better support. Unfortunately, the Intel open source drivers are, apparently, ass; if I had gone with the NVIDIA chip then when I suddenly got interested in playing Eve Online I could have gone ahead and done so under Linux, rather than having to boot into Vista (the OS of Satan) just to get full pixel shader support. But enough about me.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

The piece that NVIDIA brings to the mobile space is their line of mobile/PDA, low-power graphics chips. Featuring nPower, whatever the hell that means. The big badass in their GoForce line is the 6100, offering VGA res at 30 fps H.264 or MPEG-4, 10 megapixel camera sensor support, integrated audio subsystem, TV encoder, S-Video out, and the ability to drive LCD displays at WVGA resolution, all attached to a 250mhz core with low power consumption. Oh, and it includes full DRM support, in case you were in the market specifically for a chip that would suck all your freedoms away.

There are a number of other GeForce offerings, but they’re all given numbers lower than 6100, so I don’t care.

My first feeling was that NVIDIA is here in the OHA for the same reason most of the other semiconductor companies are: because the Android dev team needs their participation in order to ensure that the platform will run on the hardware. I’ve talked about this before. Basically Google needs reference hardware and the specs to go with it to ensure the compatibility of the OS. The hardware manufacturers such as NVIDIA, conversely, have relatively little to lose by providing the specs and reference hardware in the hopes that Android and the OHA goes big and their name can go along for the ride.

But, maybe I’m wrong on this one. Maybe NVIDIA has been working with the Android folks on something big. It’s not unprecedented: NVIDIA has a close relationship with Microsoft, and the two have been working together to bring NVIDIA’s APX2500 to fruition. NVIDIA calls the APX2500 an “applications processor”; it brings an up-to 750mhz processor together with audio/video processing, an ULP (Ultra Low Power) GeForce processor, up to 12 megapixel camera support, 720p HD, SXGA LCD, and both composite and S-Video outputs. Pretty hardcore.

This thing is branded as “The key to building the next generation smartphone for Microsoft Windows Mobile devices” and it is custom-built to interact with Windows Mobile. The question here is: will there be an Android-specific APX implementation? NVIDIA has indicated that the APX2500 is but the first in a family of APX application processors. Will Android get some APX lovin’? Is NVIDIA nothing more than just another semiconductor company throwing their names in with the cool kids hoping to reap some benefits, or will there be something truly unique coming out of their collaboration with Google? I certainly hope for the latter.

Looking for a clue, I turned to the OHA quotes page, hoping there would be something specific mentioned. There isn’t, but I’m going to add the quote anyway, ’cause it fills space, and leaving readers with someone else’s words goes a long way to improve their opinion of my articles. So, until next week, here’s Michael Rayfield, general manager of NVIDIA’s mobile business:

As the mobile phone becomes our most personal computer, the user experience has never been more important. NVIDIA will be working within the Open Handset Alliance to enable rich media acceleration on a new generation of devices based on the Android platform.

Word.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: NMS Communications

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So, I’m doing a fracking fantastic job of the alphabetical order thing. In answer to your questions, yes, I did attend grade 3. What’s more, I made use of the power of modern technology to alphabetize the list of OHA members, and I keep the list in a safe place and go back to it once a week to figure out what the next article is. I’m going to blame the fact that I screwed up the order, not once but twice, on the drugs and the terrible war memories. This week I’m doing NMS Communications, which should have been done, like, three weeks ago, or something. I’m catching up. Please bear with me for the future, and I’ll try not to disappoint you again.

Oh, wait, now I see what the problem is. NMS isn’t listed on the OHA site anymore. Google must’ve fired ’em or something. In their place now is LiveWire Mobile, which should have been even further back in the alphabetical list. How the hell is an alphabetical-order-OHA-member-profile-writer supposed to keep track of this crap?

Company Name: NMS Communications, or maybe LiveWire Mobile

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company and Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: The Nuance Communication’s blurb is lost to time. It ain’t showing in the Wayback Machine. The LiveWire Blurb reads: LiveWire Mobile is a global provider of managed personalization services for mobile operators. These services allow subscribers to create their own mobile identity and to define their own mobile experience.

What they do: NMS Communications, a division of NMS Communications Corp., is a leading provider of communications platforms that make it possible for our customers to rapidly develop and deploy value-added services on mobile and converged networks. They offer a number of hardware and software solutions to enable mobile and VOIP services. Servers, gateways, IP video, ringback tones. Boring stuff.

LiveWire Mobile is a subsidiary of NMS (which explains the OHA membership mixup), and seems to be where all the exciting stuff happens. I mean, just check out their page, which features an image of a young girl attempting to thief a mobile phone by hiding it in her knitted hat. You can tell she’s cool as hell just by the symmetrical sheen of her pearly white teeth, and ’cause she describes herself as a ‘hip chic” (sic).

LiveWire offers personalization services and all the accouterments to monetize it. Basically the concept is to customize a subscribers mobile services to their tastes and needs, allow them to make their mobile experience as much their own as possible, and then tie it together with a mobile storefront, billing, and marketing pieces so as to get as much money out of the subscriber as possible.

A major portion of this is customized ringback. You know the sound you hear when you’re calling someone and it’s letting you know that it’s ringing on the other end? Well imagine if you’re calling your buddy and he’s replaced that sound with a snippet of a Nickelback tune. And you thought MP3 ringtones were lame. Imagine, further, if you’re calling a business and they hit you with a promotion right off the bat; you’re not even on hold yet and already they’re marketing to you.

What they bring to OHA and Android: The major thing that NMS/LiveMobile brings to the table is that they offer a package of services to the Mobile Operators, and not to the subscribers directly. As an operator, what you get from LiveWire is your own customized personalization and monetization system, that you then market as services for your customers.
It’s not hard to see the value in this for the OHA. If I’m a Mobile Operator looking to offer Android handsets, the option of getting a ready-to-go personalization system, fully integrated with the OS, as an extra for my customers is hard to resist. The possibilities here are endless.

However, I don’t think the personalization bit is where the real action is. Rather, I think there’s something else NMS has that Google wants. Why do I think that? And what is NMS / LiveWire’s real contribution to the OHA? For the answer, let’s turn to Joel Hughes, NMS’ General Manager of Mobile Applications:

“NMS Communications is pleased to add our industry-leading IMS framework to the Open Handset Alliance initiative. I believe this Alliance will unlock unprecedented innovation in mobile operating systems benefiting operators, consumers and suppliers alike.”

IMS, eh. What’s this IMS, you ask? The IP Multimedia Subsystem. It’s a standard for bringing multimedia to mobile handsets. It’s designed to bring your handset, PC, TV, whatever together across multiple network types, and deliver rich multimedia apps. It’s a 3rd Generation Partnership Project standard, and is probably the direction the entire industry is heading.

Frankly, I don’t have the time or the inclination to decipher much of the Wikipedia page describing IMS, but what’s clear is that this is the next killer app for mobile handsets.

And NMS has their IMS ducks in a row. A couple of years ago they acquired Openera Technologies, an IMS app developer. And, guess who was the CEO of Openera before the acquisition? Good ole Joel Hughes, the quote-monger above who is also listed as the President on LiveWire Mobile’s executive page.

I think LiveWire’s personalization services are going to be taken to the next level with IMS integration. I can’t even begin to speculate where this one is going – video advertising delivered to your phone in place of a Ringback tone? Hopefully not. Video voicemail messages? Nice. The option to stream home media information to your phone as a pre-built service offered by the mobile operator rather than something you have to build and configure yourself? Now we’re talking.

It seems to me that NMS / LiveWire is one of the most interesting additions to the OHA. There are a number of OHA members that are, really, pretty unexciting, no matter how hard I try to dress them up in these weekly gigs. And then there are those smaller, lesser-known companies that are bringing something really cool to the table. Between Audience and their Neuromorphic voice suppression tech, LivingImage and their edit-less technology, Nuance’s voice recognition, and the magical mystery that is Noser’s Symphonie, the OHA is shaping up to be a pretty cutting edge group of companies (and we haven’t even covered PacketVideo or The Astonishing Tribe yet.)

Android is getting more exciting every week.

There are 34 founding members of the Open Handset Alliance and we’re covering them all.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Nuance Communication

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Company Name: Nuance Communications, Inc.

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world.

What they do: PDF Converter Professional 5. The only complete PDF solution designed specifically for business users $99.99

PaperPort 11 Professional. The most productive and cost effective way for everyone in your office to scan, organize, find and share all of your documents including paper, PDF, application files and photographs $199.99

OmniPage Professional 16. Allows business professionals to achieve new levels of productivity by eliminating the manual reproduction of documents $499.99

Okay, so you might be scratching your head here, wondering what a company that produces document conversion and handling software is doing in the OHA. It probably ain’t so that you can use your handset to convert PDFs, as useful as that might be. Its also probably not so that you can use your phone to organize the documents in your enterprise; I’m not even sure how such a thing would work.

And, honestly, it probably ain’t for the optical character recognition skills that a $500 gouge for OmniPage would get you. The OCR thing could definitely be useful on a handset (take a picture of a back-of-the-napkin brainstorming session and have it automatically converted to a .txt), but unless there’s something really, really special about OmniPage Professional 16 I don’t think that’s why Nuance is in the OHA, ’cause OCR software is kinda ubiquitous now.

Wikipedia gives us the company’s history: Nuance as we now know it has its origins in a company called ScanSoft, which in the day was called Kurzweil Computer Products, and was started by tech god Raymond Kurzweil back before he became fully aware of his mortality and really started going hippy-dippy. ScanSoft prior to 2001 mostly did desktop imaging software, until they started buying up a specific group of companies, including Nuance who had originally come out of Stanford Research Intitute’s Speech Technology and Reasearch Laboratory (acronym STAR, which sounds like something from a mid-80s cartoon), and was primarily in the business of automated call steering, SIP services, etc. They also bought up these Belgian dudes called Lernout and Hauspie, who earlier had acquired a little firm called Dragon.

Dragon produced NaturallySpeaking, which nowadays is the best selling speech recognition program in the world. NaturallySpeaking and the other acquisitions made ScanSoft, which took on the Nuance name, a speech recognition powerhouse, which is what gets me all excited at the thought of Nuance being involved in the OHA.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Speech recognition is tech with a lot of promise and a lot of hype that has yet to be realized. We all wanna be like Scotty, and address our computer to have it do what we’d like. Unfortunately, at this point, the reality is that we drop $500 and then carefully train the software to take our dictation, only to have it make Swedish out of English whenever we have a cold.

Handsets are a bigger problem simple because of processing power. The 500mhz ARM chips that will be a centerpiece of smartphone architecture over the next year are probably not up to the task of really intensive speech recognition; hell, a 2ghz dual-core intel is barely up to it.

Voice tags for contacts are the low-hanging fruit. We’re already doing that; my 200mhz HTC S621 with Window Mobile will do it no problem. It’s a small dictionary to match against.

So where’s can Nuance’s tech be effectively applied within Android? One idea is a simple location-based search; I press a button and say Pizza and my handset responds with the five nearest pizza joints. Or maybe a voice-activated application launcher. Some simple notes dictation would be killer, but I think processing power will probably preclude that.

Somehow I have a feeling, however, that Nuance and Google are thinking bigger. Voice message transcription via SMS? It’s been tried before, but as I understand it the results are spotty; if it can be perfected, it would be a productivity tool that I bet many a corporate-type current-Blackberry-user would go ape for. Or what if Google and Nuance are able to move the heavy lifting to the server side, and run full voice-activated search or automatic dictation with no training required; you activate the feature, it connects to Google’s computing power, interprets your voice and returns results to the client via XMPP. I’m not even sure that such a thing is feasible, but it’d sure be sweet. The beauty of good voice recognition tech is that it sets the imagination running wild.

I’m going to give the last word to Steve Chambers, Mobile and Consumer Services Division of Nuance Communications, in a quote from the OHA quote page:

Nuance joined the Open Handset Alliance with other industry leaders to grow the entire mobile ecosystem. We’re committed to apply our strength and leadership in voice-based search and messaging to move the market forward. By packaging and optimizing embedded speech technology components for open-source distribution, we’ve given developers the opportunity to access speech solutions through open APIs using the Android platform and to easily upgrade to new, more advanced speech features as well. We believe deep collaboration with members of the Alliance will grow our core mobile business and fuel the proliferation of speech-enabled applications worldwide.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: NTT DoCoMo

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Company Name: NTT DoCoMo

How the OHA site classifies them: Mobile Operator

What the OHA site says about them: NTT DoCoMo is the world’s leading mobile communications operator, with 53 million customers, of which 40 million use the 3G/ FOMA service based on W-CDMA technology.

What they do: NTT DoCoMo is the largest mobile network operator in Japan. The Japanese word dokomo also means ‘everywhere’ in Japanese, and the NTT might stand for ‘Nippon Telegraph and Telephone’, the Japanese telecom which owns most of DoCoMo’s shares (and which, in turn, is 31% to 55% — a figure sufficiently ambiguous to be truly Japanese — owned by the Japanese government). They serve somewhere north of fifty million customers. Japanese customers, that is, who as a demographic are probably the most savvy mobile handset users in the world.

Wikipedia mentions that NTT DoCoMo has a mascot, Dokomodake, which is a mushroom. Docomodake has his own videogame, merchandise, plush toys, etc. A mushroom, I sh*t you not. There’s a whole family of them: Mother Docomodake, Father Docomodake, Grandpa Docomodake. They’re all mushrooms.

DoCoMo is is perhaps the most cutting edge mobile operator in the world. Their extensive R&D budget allowed them to introduct 3G and the i-mode mobile data service before anyone else in the world. They developed the W-CDMA 3G network and pushed its adoption as an international standard. Their mascot is a mushroom.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

50 million of the most discerning mobile customers in the world.

I really don’t think most of the mobile operators included in the OHA are bringing anything to the effort other than their weight and their networks. These guys are just the gatekeepers giving Google the opportunity for instant widespread penetration in exchange for a piece of what may be the next big thing for mobile.

Even given their history of innovation, I don’t think NTT DoCoMo is an exception. Check out the blurb re: OHA that Takeshi Natsuno, DoCoMo’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the Multimedia Services Department (now that’s a sweet title), provided on the quotes site:

DoCoMo strongly believes that rich mobile Internet services have been changing users’ daily lives dramatically. We believe the Open Handset Alliance’s vision of driving true openness will contribute significantly to this trend, supported by DoCoMo and other partners in the Alliance.

 

That’s a truly uninspired bit of PR fluffery. Insert Android buzzword “openness” here, talk about rich mobile internet, blah-blah, Print it. NTT DoCoMo isn’t committing to anything. If Android wins, great, they were there from the beginning. If Android loses, that’s okay too, we still have our mushrooms.

It goes to show that even mobile operators known for their innovation are cagey animals, hedging bets and throwing their lot in with whatever low-risk opportunity may yield benefits. To be expected, I guess, from a group of companies that are descended from Telcos. Chip off the old block, and all that. I find it interesting that the most innovative announcement re: openness to come from any mobile operator since Android was announced has come from AT&T, who is not a member of the OHA.

I don’t want to harsh on NTT DoCoMo too much, just cause they happened to be the subject of the article at a time when I’m feeling bitter and cynical. DoCoMo is fine. Hey, they brought us the world’s first 3G network, so they can’t be all bad. And, they did put their name behind Android.

I just wonder about the mobile operators’ commitment to openness how much a name in a list of OHA members really means.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Noser

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Company Name: Noser Engineering

How the OHA site classifies them: Commercialization Company

What the OHA site says about them: Noser Engineering Inc. – core contributor of the Android Platform is your integrator and customization partner.

What they do: Okay, let’s get this out of the way first off before we continue. Yes, this company is called Noser, which to a North American native English speaker is completely ridiculous. Well, this company is Swiss, and you laughing at their funny Swiss name is ignorant and ethnocentric, and does not reflect well on you. Really, I’m ashamed.

Besides, I’m sure that there are many foreigners who laugh at the name Google, which is inherently silly, really.

Noser is a technical jack-of-all-trades company. They bill themselves as a ‘technology engineering firm’, and kinda do a little of everything: Linux support, service management, embedded and real-time systems, machine control, telco and mobile stuff, production data capture, RFID, software and system testing. There’s a heavy business systems bent here: custom solutions to enable business processes, management, etc. They’re a Microsoft Gold Partner and their site indicates that most of their development is done using .Net.

There’s actually not a lot out there about these guys. They do business solutions, they do mobile, but I can’t find much in the way of detail. They’re kinda the oddest duck among the odd ducks in the OHA, simply because on the surface there’s no reason that this relatively unknown business solution provider with an anatomical name from Switzerland should merit inclusion.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Here’s a clue. Check out this quote from Geri Moll, Noser’s CEO, on the OHA member quotes page:

Noser Engineering Inc. is a Swiss software engineering company that specializes in both embedded and mobile solutions. Working in close collaboration with the Open Handset Alliance, Noser contributed core functionality to the Android platform. This platform will revolutionize the mobile industry, and it will be an ideal ‘open’ development platform for the delivery of solutions to various industries. Noser’s experience with the Android platform allows us to better support operators, handset manufacturers and ISVs who plan to ship devices and services based on this platform.

I’ll repeat the important bit here, ’cause it helps pad out the length on this article: “Noser contributed core functionality to the Android platform. Core functionality. Wonder what that could be? Smell-o-vision?

Noser’s site plays up their customization and support services for Android: app development, training, integration, etc. That’s great. We need this kind of service ready-to-rock when Android goes live. But it gives us no clue as to what ‘core functionality’ Noser contributed.

A clue might lie in the in the former URL advertised for Noser on the OHA site. Currently, the link points to www.noser.com/oha. And then the trail ends. I can find no other indication of what “symphonie” refers to. No clue. I’m open to conjecture and wild flights of fancy, however.

The story goes like this: Noser Engineering creates a groundbreaking mobile technology called Symphonie with Swiss expertise. It could be something like a Business Intelligence Dashboard or a sophisticated cross-platform email/calendar integration for business. Google, possibly through a connection with Andy Rubin from Danger, shows interest in Symphonie for Android. They might acquire it from Noser and offer Noser membership in the Open Handset Alliance as a commercialization partner. The name Symphonie briefly appears on the OHA page on Noser’s website, but this mistake is later fixed.

I’m making this all up, of course. Don’t believe any of it. .

I’m interested in any information anybody might have, however. Any Android or Noser insiders out there with the goods that want to, anonymously, give me the goods? What was Noser’s contribution? What is symphonie?

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Motorola

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Company Name: Motorola Inc.

How the OHA site classifies them: Handset Manufacturer

What the OHA site says about them: Motorola is known around the world for innovation and leadership in wireless and broadband communications.

What they do: According to Wikipedia, The name Motorola was conceived when the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation started making car radios. It was supposed to represent sound in motion; you know, motor and ola. Seventy-some-odd years on, the company is still trying to sell us its products with marketing pushes based on nonsense words like KRAZR or MOTOMAJX(!?). The only evolution here has been the adoption of all-caps and bizarre spelling, like someone with a rare speech impediment is YELLING REALLY LOUDLY IN YOUR EAR, DAMMIT!

Motorola mostly builds communications stuff. Radios, walkie-talkies (I love walkie-talkies), home networking stuff, Bluetooth headsets. They also do some other electronic bits like digital video recorders, cameras, and stuff, but I’ve never eactually seen any of these other products and probably wouldn’t recommend that anyone spend money on them.

Motorola has done some great stuff in their time, without doubt. Ever heard of the PowerPC chip? How about the Motorola 68000 chip and its role in the microprocessor revolution? Iridium satellites (a failed concept, but still cool as hell)? Motorola has been around for 75+ years for a reason: they have a history of innovation in a broad spectrum of electronic and engineering domains.

Nowadays they’re mostly known for cell phones, most notably clamshell jobs with buttons on the side that cannot be locked, so if you place the handset in your bag or pocket and it’s bumping up against your keys or mace or whatever then eventually, inevitably, the ringer volume is going to get turned way up and the ringtone will get changed to some dude with a scheisse-video voice uttering the catchphrase “Hello Moto!” If this has happened to you, I share your pain. For the most part their phones are nothing special.

In 2005, however, Motorola released its RAZR high-end device at a mid-market price point and took the handset world by storm. The RAZR was probably the first time that the concept of handset-as-fashion-statement really caught on, and for a while every metrosexual hipster in the world was rocking one. The success was not undeserved; RAZRs were perhaps the prettiest pocket-sized tech that had ever been released. They sold millions of the little buggers, and have kinda been living under that shadow ever since.

In November 2005, Motorola’s chief marketing officer Geoffrey Frost, the man many credited with the RAZR’s success, died suddenly. The bitter buzz from insiders has been that former CEO Ed Zander worked Frost to death, an opinion voiced in a recently-released letter sent to the company’s top execs by Numair Faraz, one of Frost’s advisers; the letter blasts the former and current CEOs for the company’s downfall. That fall has been graphic, with profits beginning to freefall starting final-quarter-2006 and the loss of 10% market share over 2007. Motorola was the second largest handset manufacturer in the world, but is now third and threatening fourth. Even the ROKR couldn’t save it. Throughout the disaster it has kept tossing out RAZR variants, which are uniformly uncool and un-innovative, in a pitiful bid to reclaim the magic.

Just late last month Motorola announced the spin-off of its handset division into a separate entity.

What they bring to OHA and Android:

Depressive self-loathing? A sinking ship mentality? The LOOZR V45pos Mk XIII? With Motorola there’s nothing to be excited about. At this point they are simply to be pitied.

Android adoption can only be a step in the right direction, but I have no sense that Motorola has anything substantial to offer in return. Perhaps a leaner, meaner, handset-only Motorola spin-off will be able to turn its fortunes around, but as yet there’s no real indication that this is the case. They’re kinda dead weight right now.

My advice for Motorola handsets? A new marketing direction, drop the KRZRKRZ crap and the MOTO bit. Don’t be afraid to play up the fact that you’re an American company, which is a rarity in the electronics biz, and try to give that angle a hip spin. Go for a large-touchscreen with number pad form factor with a mid-range price running Android. Focus on looks and mass-market functionality. And cheer up.

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