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Open Source Delivers: MWC OSS Report

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS OPEN SOURCE REPORT

Excerpt from my OSD blog post:

Every year the movers and shakers of the mobile/wireless industry converge upon the industry’s mecca, the Mobile World Congress (MWC). This year’s ecosystem extravaganza in Barcelona drew 1,500 exhibitors and over 72,000 visitors. Attendees spanned the gadget gamut, from mobile chipset vendors and software platform suppliers to device manufacturers and network operators, from app developers, ISVs and services providers to journalists and end-users in consumer and enterprise IT markets.

Following is a roundup of highlights from this mobile mega event, and it is no surprise that every key announcement and trend coming out of MWC 2013 involved open source software.

2013: 03/06
CATEGORY: Android
mobile
open source
smartphones
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Linaro – Open Source Glue

Last week ARM Ltd. and its licensees Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and TI, along with IBM, launched Linaro, a new organization to “foster innovation in the Linux® community through a common foundation of tools and software”.

My first reaction to the Linaro announcement was “O Joy, another Linux knitting circle”. But I am happy to say that Linaro appears to be what the industry really needs – the glue between silicon and software (my apologies to fans of Linaro stallions). Instead of creating standards or aggregating yet another embedded Linux distribution, Linaro has the stated goal of enabling existing (and new) software to run on actual silicon in the marketplace.

Deliverables of such an effort include

device drivers
board support packages (configurations)
Linux kernel patches
tools to support integration of these and other contributions

Let’s take a stroll down .org memory lane to compare Linaro’s goals to the aspirations and accomplishments of other initiatives, past and present:

Embedded/Mobile Linux .org Roll Call

OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative – MLI put together requirements for a mobile Linux-based platform as a de facto soft standard (as OSDL did with Carrier Grade Linux). Unlike CGL, MLI members were disappointed by the lack of actual software deliverables (that is, participants played chicken with contributions). MLI did serve to help popularize Linux as a foundation of mobile telephony.

CELF – the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum worked to create standards for Linux in a range of consumer electronics, including mobile telephony; these efforts were very skewed toward particular member implementations and did not survive industry scrutiny. CELF also instigated real implementation by funding kernel contributions by maintainers (e.g., for flash and power management) and today survives as a sponsor of Embedded Linux Conferences.

LiPS – the Linux Phone Standards Forum had the explicit goal of creating Linux-based standards for mobile terminal devices. Led by FT/Orange, ACCESS and VirtualLogix, they published several generations of specifications and were in the process of launching an open source TAPI project when the organization was absorbed by LiMo in 2008.

LiMo – the LiMo Foundation strives create the “first truly open, hardware-independent, Linux-based operating system for mobile device”, realized as a distribution shared by its members and deployed in member-built handsets. Despite these lofty goals, LiMo is hampered by a highly stratified and expensive membership structure, tortuous IPR with limited out-licensing, slow-to-market specifications, and most importantly incomplete validation suites and an MIA SDK. While LiMo claims dozens of phones as compliant, the basis is a very rudimentary specification, with little or no visibility to applications developers (cp. Android).

Linux Foundation / MeeGo – In 2007, the Linux Foundation was born out of the merger of Free Standards Group (home of the Linux Standards Base) and OSDL. They have been very successful in continuing work on LSD (fighting fragmentation) and in sponsoring a range of kernel engineering and other development activities. They recently announced their acceptance of hosting MeeGo, the result of merging Nokia’s Maemo tablet platform with Intel’s netbook/MID Moblin project. MeeGo targets a range of embedded/mobile applications, including mobile handsets.

So, Linaro is NOT a standards body, not a distribution supplier and not a mere cheerleader, as far as I can tell. They seem to have a clear vision of what they want to do – enable Linux on real silicon.

To that end, they are not getting fancy, especially in terms of licensing. Unlike LiPS, LiMo and others, they have pledged to adhere to existing licensing regimes and not indulge in license proliferation (beyond the profligate OSI corpus). In particular, the Linaro IP Policy refreshingly stipulates

respect for and adherence to upstream licenses

commitment to use only existing, OSI-approved licenses

Cautious Optimism

Like embarking on a second (or third) marriage, launching a new .org for embedded Linux represents the triumph of optimism over experience. Despite (or because of?) my personal involvement with several of the .orgs above, I believe that Linaro has achievable goals and the members and means to achieve them. In particular, Linaro sets its sites on providing and improving infrastructure, an area where open source and .orgs have classically excelled.

So, keep your eyes on Linaro. Not the horse, but much needed glue.

2010: 06/04
CATEGORY: embedded
Linux
mobile
open source
silicon
1 comment

Cavium Acquires MontaVista – Embedded Linux Consolidation Continues

The original MontaVista Hardhat Linux penguin Yesterday semiconductor supplier Cavium Networks announced its plans to acquire embedded Linux pioneer MontaVista Software. MontaVista, founded in 1999 by Jim Ready (of Ready Systems / VRTX reknown) was among the first to commercialize and evangelize Linux for embedded designs. It was one of the few remaining independent vendors in the embedded Linux business when Cavium snapped it up yesterday for $16M in cash and $34M in stock.

When Silicon Buys Software and Services

The acquisition is the latest in a string of M&A moves by silicon vendors hoping to gain an edge in filling sockets by providing software tools, platforms and services. The most recent, most visible and most lucrative was Intel’s buy of Wind River earlier this year for a cool $884M, most palpably to support design-in of Intel’s mobile/embedded Atom architecture family. Others include

Motorola Semiconductor (now Freescale) purchase of MetroWerks in 2003
Mentor Graphics acquisition of Embedded Alley earlier in 2009 (Mentor helps companies design semiconductors)

Independent embedded Linux companies remaining after Cavium’s move are much smaller players like TimeSys, services provider Denx and Linux tools supplier Viosoft.

Why MontaVista, Why Now?

Cavium’s stated reasons for the buy are to “complement Cavium’s market leading processor portfolio” and to “significantly increase Cavium’s software and services revenue”, which in 2009 could amount to a top-line bump of $30M according to Cavium’s investor call. Unstated are likely concerns about sustaining Cavium’s traditionally close ties with Wind River for design wins with popular Cavium MIPS architecture CPUs for networking and other applications.

MontaVista, for its part, has reportedly been courting suitors for three years or more, after multiple funding rounds that totaled over $100M since the company’s founding in 1999. The marriage with Cavium reflects the embedded Linux supplier’s long-standing ties to semiconductor suppliers, including AMCC, Freescale, Intel, Marvell, and Texas Instruments, and processor IP providers ARM and MIPS Technologies. Many were also strategic investors and sources of substantial historical enablement revenue. It also probably reflects the state of the firm’s revenues and cash reserves.

Analysis – Acquisition a Bang or a Whimper?

The acquisition is certainly a bang for Cavium. They get revenue growth, enabling technology, expertise and new ecosystem reach. But for MontaVista? They get financial security (for now) and a place in a strong and growing technology supplier. However, this acquisition surely falls short of the “event” once envisioned by Ready and his many investors.

MontaVista made a strong start in 1999 and 2000, riding the wave of infrastructure build-out to support what later turned into the Internet bubble. Even after that bubble burst, MontaVista continued to grow, complementing still-strong networking business with consumer electronics, mobile telephony and other intelligent device application segments. They achieved an impressive series of “firsts” in bringing Linux and open source software (OSS) to the embedded space:

First commercial cross tools and fully embedded platform for Power, MIPS and ARM architectures
First support for redefinable CPU architectures
First to market with a Carrier Grade Linux platform
First mass deployments in dozens mobile handset designs and millions of handsets with MobiLinux

and

Key enhancements in real-time responsiveness of the Linux kernel
Investment in maintaining Linux kernel architecture trees, including especially PowerPC and multiple ARM family CPUs
Important advances in and contributions to open source projects, including the Linux kernel and device drivers, threading libraries, power management, GDBserver and numerous others
Early support for embedded multicore architectures and designs
Industry leadership in evangelizing embedded Linux and providing assurances about the IP safety of embedded open source

So why did an acquisition occur not at first, but at last? How was late starter Wind River able to enter the embedded Linux space in earnest after MontaVista’s five year head-start, and eclispe MontaVista in Linux-based revenues and ultimately in valuation?

For all of the company’s “firsts”, MontaVista took numerous missteps, slowing its growth and causing it to miss multiple windows of opportunity:

Value-added: for most of its history, MontaVista primarily acted as an integrator of OSS projects, treading water and often swimming below the ever-rising open source value line. True innovation emerged from the company, but always so low in the stack (mostly in the kernel) that they were unsuccessful in commanding a premium for it.

Revenue Scaling: Because they packaged up and commercialized a broad array of existing projects, and marketed them as development seats to engineers, MontaVista revenue growth was always limited by their ability to capture development teams as customers. They resisted both developing deployment IP or reselling run-time technology from 3rd parties, limiting their opportunity to benefit from successful high-volume OEM customer products. At one time the company did offer a per-unit licensing option for this aggregated open source content. Primarily a response to requirements for risk-sharing from key customers, this short-lived selling model baffled many in the industry who assumed that OSS code could only accrue services revenues.

Sustaining vs. Enabling Revenue: MontaVista cultivated strong ties to semiconductor suppliers and other hardware vendors, and was successful for many years in charging a premium for hardware enablement and upstream migration of patches and other code to support CPUs, SoCs and embedded computers. At various times, the company was more successful in extracting revenues for enabling reference hardware than for supporting OEMs in building product on those systems and silicon. The result of such strong business development was a product line bloated with board support packages that never saw the light of day in shipping OEM products but added substantial time and costs to new releases and sustaining engineering. This focus on enablement also served to alienate partners over time when they could not justify ROI for their NRE.

Business Model and Execution: Many MontaVista watchers have argued that the company’s business model was essentially flawed. Certainly there is room for debate about the viability of going to market with a product built almost entirely from freely available OSS components (vs. complementing that platform with proprietary IP, etc.). Such a model based on building with and for open source can devolve into less attractive high-overhead packaged service business in the face of a rising value line.

By contrast, I would argue that MontaVista insiders and its various detractors were in no position to critique the business model itself since that model (and its minor variations) was never really tested. The model did not fail the company, but rather the company failed to execute on that model.

Failure to execute belies key assumptions about serving device OEMs with embedded Linux platforms and toolkits:

OEMs look to suppliers like MontaVista for productization of the latest Linux kernel technology, libaries, middleware and tools
OEMs expect frequent releases and deep expertise at many levels of the platform and tools
OEMs anticipate something “in the box” other than bits and bytes they can increasingly source directly from OSS project trees

While MontaVista made a strong start in all these areas, over time they reduced the investments needed to meet these (not unreasonable) expectations. In the last five years, MontaVista Linux releases became fewer and farther between and did not closely track ongoing Linux kernel and other OSS project evolution. The company lost most of its hallmark on-staff project maintainers, along with their insight and hands-on knowledge. And the firm never made sorely needed investments in truly original differentiating technologies and products.

In closing, I remember my first encounter with the company shortly after its founding in the Spring of 1999. I was doing a trade study of emerging embedded Linux with a colleague and we pondered the future of Jim Ready’s then-new company. Based on the history of Ready Systems and its flagship VRTX RTOS (acquired by Microtec Research for a modest sum in 1994) we debated whether this new venture would rise to spectacular success or ultimately stumble.

I guess we were both right.

2009: 11/11
CATEGORY: embedded
Linux
mobile
open source
silicon
5 comments

Intel to Acquire Wind River – Embedded Industry Realignment Coming

I woke up this morning to a train of email from friends and fellow pundits, intrigued and even aghast that Intel had announced its intentions of acquiring embedded industry leader Wind River Systems. The purchase, while very much newsworthy, is not a huge surprise in an industry where low market caps and niche offerings are the rule.

Embedded Systems (or Device Software, as Wind River calls it), as a segment is defined not by its customers, but by the vendor community. Device OEMs self-identify as developers of networking equipment, consumer devices, automotive systems, medical devices, instrumentation, etc. — not “embedded systems” or “device software”. This perennial identity crisis is part of the reason for my own saw – the embedded market is all tail and no body.

Plumpest Part of a Long Tail

That being said, Wind River has for several decades occupied the most massive part of the tail (closest to the rump) and enjoyed a clear leadership position. Its revenues for device software have only been rivaled by Microsoft, but only if you add up designs for Windows Mobile, CE, NT/XP Embedded and secondary use of WindowsXP and other desktop/server variants on blades and embedded motherboards. Not only have they led the overall segment, but their product line revenues also put them at the forefront of the RTOS market (with VxWorks) and the embedded Linux sub-segment (with Wind River Linux).

Wind Historically Blew off x86

One issue with the acquisition, from the embedded software side, is that historically Wind has never garnered the greatest share of its design wins on Intel silicon. Far more successful, first for VxWorks and later for the company’s Linux offering, have been architectures like ARM, PowerPC (Power Architecture) and MIPS. In the last year, the major thrust of the company has been towards mobile handsets, with visible investment in Android and LiMo products and services offerings — all built around ARM CPUs.

Certainly the Intel acquisition reflects the investment that the two companies have made in their partnership to promote Atom over the last year, in particular for automotive designs. To be fair and accurate, Wind River has also enjoyed a number of key design wins on single-board computers and blades with Intel Architecture CPUs, especially for its Carrier Grade Linux implementation, at companies like Nortel.

Intel – Off and On Again with Embedded Silicon

Intel’s acquisition of Wind River follows multiple forays into the embedded market on the silicon side. Each time they have enjoyed reasonable success but ultimately never took their eyes off their most lucrative businesses, enterprise servers, desktops and notebooks. A friend at Intel once despaired that their “embedded chips, revenue-wise, were a wart on the butt of desktop and data center”.

While much hype surrounds the Atom family of processors, it is actually the company’s sixth (and probably best) entrant into the embedded processor market:

Of course, the 8008, 8080 and 8085, all originally embedded silicon
8031 and 8051 CPUs — long-lived 8-bit microcontrollers, in the “pre-software period” of embedded history (assembly only)
Bigger/better 16/32 bit 80860 and 80960 RISC CPUs, which ended up in a mix of storage, graphics and aerospace applications
Repositioning low-end 386 CPUs for SBCs and custom designs
Intel’s expensive and short-lived licensing of ARM cores as XScale mobile applications (PXA), network (IXP) and storage processors (the XScale brand and technology were sold off to Marvell in 2006)

This evolutionary record alone, however, doesn’t not justify the current investment in all thing Atomic, including buying our friends in Alameda. What does obviously motivate these investments is the slow death of the PC desktop form factor, already manifested as flat desktop silicon sales, the recession notwithstanding.

Metrowerks II?

A friend of mine pointed out a structural similarity in this acquisition to Freescale (then Motorola Semiconductor) buying compiler and tool vendor MetroWerks way back in 1999 (these historical references are showing my age!). While the analogy is attractive and superficially accurate, key differences include

The market caps with Intel and Wind are greater by 10x or more
Neither MetroWerks nor Motorola Semiconductor held the clear leadership positions of Wind River and Intel
The emergence of Linux and open source (especially GNU tools) led to the decline of MetroWerks CodeWarrier as much as immersion within Motorola

Industry Impact

This type of cross-segment consolidation in theory results in a powerhouse successor company, but also causes rippling realignments among other players, in this case embedded software and silicon suppliers. The remaining players, traditionally fragmented and balkanized, are sure to build new ties to replace those with Intel and Wind, and to construct bulwarks against them.

Obvious question arising from the acquisition include

To what degree will Intel management constrain Wind River, over time, to focus on Intel architectures?
How successful will Atom be in volume applications beyond netbooks? How will acquiring Wind help with designs for in-car, in-home, in-hand and in-strumentation?
Can Wind River retain international mega-customers like NEC and Samsung, whose semiconductor subsidiaries compete head-on with Intel?
Will embedded software companies like Embedded Alley, GreenHills, LynuxWorks, MontaVista, QNX, TimeSys, et al. even continue to support Intel silicon with RTOS and embedded Linux offerings? Are they sufficiently agile and creative to take advantage of opportunities created by the acquisition, or will they be swamped by it?
Will ARM and MIPS and their licensees, as well as Freescale and AMCC with Power Architecture, win or lose designs? Can Atom compete with 1B+ annual ARM shipments?
What other consolidation will follow on this heels of interesting turn of events?

The recession has put enormous pressure on the players in embedded and mobile ecosystem. It’s not that large a club and not that well capitalized. More shoes will shortly drop, heads will roll. Stay tuned.

2009: 06/04
CATEGORY: embedded
Intel
Linux
mobile
netbooks
open source
silicon
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The Path to a Linux Netbook Comeback – Look to Google Android

Last week, I made a case for rethinking the role of Linux in mobile computing all together – eschewing the endless game of catchup inherent in the desktop/notebook market (as it applies to increasingly able netbooks), that Linux-based netbooks need to look Up from Phones, Not Down from Notebooks.

Readers responded, most interestingly to debate whether netbook vendors ever really wanted to ship Linux as a long-term solution, or whether ASUS and others had just “run up the Linux flag” as a way to get Redmond to negotiate better price points.

I was happy to read that Matt Asay saw potential for mobile Linux-based devices as I still do – his Open Road blog entry “Hit Microsoft where it ain’t” is definitely worth reading, as is Dana Blankenhorn’s ZDnet blog on “Linux and the Channel“. Sam Dean narrows the discussion from the whole channel down to the essential issue of product differentiation in his thoughtful blog entry “Linux Netbooks – What’s the secret sauce for sales?”

But is it really too late for Linux on Netbooks?

Is this potentially vibrant new marketplace doomed to share the fate of desktop Linux? Real hope lies in learning from the desktop debacle and re-inventing the open source OSS as a first-class service delivery vehicle. In that vein, I have listed some suggestions for netbook manufacturers, purveyors of Linux and the developer community:

Focus on integrating into operator programs

Even if you think that operators face disintermediation and dumb-pipe obsolescence, they still “own” the networks and are the drivers of current and next-generation rollout. They also represent a channel focused on service delivery as opposed to desktop hardware and accompanying expectations for margins etc.

Build on handset design concepts, not desktop expectations

If consumers wanted a Linux desktop experience, they’d have long since bought into actual desktops running Ubuntu and other consumer friendly distros. By contrast, Linux actually provides the foundation for a swath of very successful handsets, from the Motorola Ming, which handily captured a full percent of the Chinese mobile market – that’s 30-40 million units for a single handset model – to NEC Panasonic handsets in Japan to current generation Motorola ROKRs and RAZRs and the exploding market of Android-based devices.

Consumers buy and use these devices not because they run free software in general or Linux in particular, but because they deliver operator services in stylish and functional packages.

Focus on user experience, not just BoM

Even if operators are intent on squeezing costs to preserve services margins, Linux-based mobile devices must still provide compelling user experiences. Put aside the KDE vs. GNOME debate and focus on helping both operators and ISVs deliver applications – in this space the competition isn’t Windows, it’s the iPhone apps store, it’s Blackberry enterprise integration and outside the US, it’s the SymbianOS ecosystem.

Rather than focus on the “mobile desktop”, provide applications resources for rich graphics, multimedia, gesture-based MMI, skinning, and personalization in a netbook-sized package.

Look to Android as netbook platform

Many Linux purists dismiss Android as the insidious invention of the Google Borg and as a shiny tomb for the Linux kernel buried inside it. However, it may be the only viable vector for bringing Linux and open source to programmable mass-market devices. Android is cropping up everywhere – originally targeted to appeal to Tier II and III Asian handset OEMs and ODMs, it now constitutes the core of platform strategies at Tier I mobile suppliers like Samsung, Motorola, and LG. More importantly, Android caters to operator requirements for a services-centric customizable user experience.

Whether or not you like Android for its own sake, it creates opportunities for partnership among Google, operators, ISVs/OSVs, and other third parties. As a platform and a phenomenon it is building bridges across market chasms once considered unspannable. Just consider HTC, once a bastion of Windows Mobile handsets. The Taiwanese OEM is today the first and leading provider on phones based on Android.

Google, OHA members and others have also telegraphed their plans to deploy Android as a netbook OS. Early rumblings have emerged from Freescale for a $199 netbook based on their i.MX CPU, and other mobile-savvy semiconductor suppliers like TI and Marvell are likely to follow suit with their ARM-based offerings. Artesian efforts have also surfaced, demonstrating Android ported to currently available netbooks like the ASUS Eee PC.

Android Beyond Mobile

Android for operator-subsidized netbooks will also gain momentum and credibility from related deployment and crossover onto other content delivery devices, like digital TVs, set-top boxes, DVRs, satellite receivers and automotive in-vehicle infotainment systems. Earlier this week Embedded Alley announced delivery of a development system targeting MIPS-based devices. MIPS Technologies and their architecture licensee RMI also announced plans for Android support.

As always, I appreciate reader comments and feedback. I am especially interested what readers think of the current state of Android and its chances for success in mobile devices and beyond.

In the next and final segment of this topic, I will talk about trends in the underlying mobile processors, and then zoom right up to the synergies among netbooks, Linux and the Cloud.

2009: 06/03
CATEGORY: Linux
mobile
netbooks
open source
Uncategorized
3 comments

Netbooks: Up from Phones, Not Down from Notebooks

Last week I began a discussion of whether Linux will survive as an OS for netbooks. I received a number of comments, some highlighting which netbook OEMs favored which Linux distros, other despairing at the paucity of verifiable market numbers (a distress that I share). One reader pointedly chastised me not to

“overlook the fact that, after being caught off guard by netbooks, MS bent over backwards to get XP-based netbooks on the shelves. Then, they forced the Linux netbooks off the shelves with exclusivity agreements and strong-arm tactics. It’s rather difficult to sell Linux-based netbooks when the retail outlets have been bullied by MS to only stock XP-based netbooks.”

I am actually keenly aware of Redmond’s “negotiating skills”. In the mid-1990s, while I was at Acer Latin America, our entire group was audited by Microsoft. It seemed that our mix of DOS, Windows and Windows for Workgroups was too skewed towards the command line for Redmond’s bottom line. Our channels licensed a lot of DOS, principally to enable installation of Netware, UNIX and yes, also Linux, especially in Brazil where I was based. The audit lasted three months and actually shut down several of Acer’s smaller regional subsidiaries. We “got the point” but didn’t change our OS mix until Window95 appeared a year later.

Mobile Phone (Volume) Lust
I think that one strategic error made by purveyors of Linux netbooks was to covet the volumes of the global mobile telephony market while following the business models and channels of the legacy notebook marketplace. Linux fans – .orgs, Linux ISVs and device OEMS – unfortunately approached the netbook opportunity as a downward extension of the desktop and portable PC business, with volumes of 297M units in 2008 (IDC).

Instead, the Linux ecosystem needs to envision netbooks (and MIDs and tablets) as building on the worldwide mobile handset business, with its 1.28B annual unit shipments (Gartner) the most lucrative slice of which, smart phones, constitutes 14% (ABI) with 20% annual growth rates.
The structure and dynamics of the mobile handset market depart from the PC business on several parameters:

End users (a majority in the US) acquire their devices from service providers, not from the retail channels favored by PCs and notebooks
Mobile operators and carriers view handsets first as service delivery vehicles and second as applications platforms
Operators subsidize handset acquisition costs, making up their margins over multi-year service contracts

This time-worn model is beginning to break down, however, challenged by flat and falling voice revenues, encroaching VoIP services from “virtual” network operators, and surging EDGE and 3G data traffic that threatens to overwhelm existing network capacity.
As a means to preserve flagging ARPUs (Average Revenue Per User), mobile operators and regional carriers are accelerating next-generation (4G) rollout, emphasizing data, not voice, on WiMax and soon on LTE (Long-Term Evolution) in select markets, as well as experimenting with pure data business models over existing WiFi access points. Most interestingly, after lackluster efforts of marketing WiMax and WiFi network interface cards to existing notebook owners, operators like ATT, T-Mobile and Verizon are instead following their historical playbook and bundling Linux-based netbooks with data services subscriptions through their own channels.
This bundling, unlike CE/Retail channels, actually has the ability to leverage the presumed virtues of Linux-based netbooks:

Lightweight BoM further subsidized by data plan subscriptions
Greater opportunity for operators to preserve and build on brand equity and differentiate through custom applications and services (as with mobile phones)
Built-in network access and ability to leverage the Cloud

Such programs have the further charm of driving 3G+/4G revenue in the short and mid-term preserving ARPUs with data (rather than voice) and for building subscriber loyalty.

But will operators build out the mainsream versions of these programs using Linux-based devices? Can developers and purveyors of Linux sieze this opportunity and stay in the netbook game? Let me know what you think as we continue this discussion next week.

2009: 05/18
CATEGORY: Linux
mobile
netbooks
Nokia
open source
11 comments

Will Linux Survive on Netbooks?

Linux on netbooks. What a concept! Same great experience, but less filling. Not!

What a difference a year makes. After initial unbridled enthusiasm in 2008, Linux-based netbooks, MIDs and similar devices are taking a beating, delivered by, you guessed it — Microsoft. Consumers avoid Linux netbooks, manufacturers despair over immovable inventory – only free software enthusiasts seem ready to adopt these orphaned devices.
So why isn’t 2009 the “Year of Mobile Linux”? On paper, the case for deploying Linux on netbooks and MIDs looks compelling:

Lower Bill of Materials (B0M), both from shedding the “Windows Tax” and from more minimal provisioning of DRAM, HDD and client-based applications

More flexible system architecture – no lock-in to the “Wintel-PC virtual machine”

Customizable look-and-feel for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) eager to distance their brand from Microsoft

Ability to leverage web apps (like Google’s) and emerging Cloud Computing resources

Marketplace reality quickly proved that the best-laid plans of OEMs and ISVs often go awry. In the first half of 2008, OEM enthusiasm for Linux-based netbooks was so great that Windows (XP and CE) garnered only 10% of the pre-installed market. By Q1 of 2009, Windows had come back with a vengeance, boasting 96% of netbooks shipping with Windows-family OSes (Source: NPD Group).
Linux Netbooks appear to be doomed to repeat the sad history of desktop Linux. However “free” netbook Linux may be, consumers have not found it sufficiently compelling to leap across the historical functionality gap (perceived or real) from Windows. Moreover, as netbook capabilities creep up on low-end notebook specs, consumers expect to be able to run familiar Office applications, and to browse, view and play web sites and multimedia content just as they do on Windows desktops.
Despite significant advances in content handling over earlier generations of desktop Linux, netbook end-users found Linux-based devices unwieldy and apparently unreliable. Not only did new device sales falter, but buyers returned the devices in droves.
Quite simply, the rationale for Linux-based netbooks proved irrational in the real world:

Leveraging Linux for a lighter BoM (Bill of Materials) proved less appealing when Microsoft cut XP licensing fees and ever-cheaper memory, storage and CPUs closed much of the notebook-netbook capability gap.

Netbooks with full PCI buses and other PC-like capabilities eased XP installation, especially for OEMs already familiar with notebook design, like Taiwanese ASUS and Acer. Asian Tigers, while adopting Linux for more deployed embedded applications, are still more comfortable with Redmondware for mass-market consumer products.

Consumer reaction to first-generation netbook-centric look-and-feel proved unenthusiastic. Ubuntu, while a great Linux desktop, failed to impress mass market users; Moblin 1.0 wasn’t ready for prime-time and Mobile 2.0 arriving in 2009, was too late.

Netbooks intended to leverage emerging Cloud Computing relied on the vagaries of end-user network and cloud access, sending consumers scurrying back to client-based productivity software on better-provisioned Windows-based devices.

The combination of these factors, when pushed through multi-tier consumer product sales channels, proved to be a retail nightmare and a dead end for Linux and Open Source.

Next week I’ll again pick up this topic, comparing how Linux the mobile Linux dynamic differs depending on whether you come “down from notebooks” or “up from mobile phones”.

2009: 05/13
CATEGORY: Linux
mobile
open source
16 comments

Mobile Conference at OpenSource World 2009 – Call for Papers

Mobile Conference at OpenSource World™ 2009
Aug 10-13 San Francisco CA
Call for Papers Now Open – Mobile Platforms and Applications and More

OpenSource World Conference & Expo 2009 is the largest and most
comprehensive event for open source software and all things Linux. An
expansion of LinuxWorld Conference & Expo®, the conference presents the
latest Linux and open source ideas in a very technical context by
industry experts and innovators. OpenSource World focuses on real-world
solutions in real-world environments using open source, open standards
and open architecture as part of an integrated IT infrastructure.

The Mobile Conference at OpenSource World extends these themes into the
domain of mobile platforms and applications. The Mobile Conference at
OpenSource World is divided into two tracks and welcomes submissions in
the following areas (and is open to your suggestions as well):

TRACK I – PLATFORMS

Android, LiMo, Maemo, Moblin, OpenMoko and other Linux-based open source mobile platforms
Open SymbianOS
Shared Source around WindowsMobile
Browsers and Browser-based platforms – Mozilla/Gecko, Webkit, Pre, etc.
Open Source Java platforms
Application Frameworks – GTK, Enlightenment, Qt, etc.
Emerging form factors – MIDs, voice-enabled nettops, etc.
State of key platforms technologies – power management, multi-core support, virtualization, etc.
Building and sustaining communities around mobile platforms
Platform licensing choices and impact

TRACK II – MOBILE APPLICATIONS

Mobile application development tools and techniques
Comparing application frameworks and paradigms
End-to-end applications development and deployment
Enterprise mobile application development, rollout and management
State of OSS applications technologies – VoIP, multimedia, etc.
Content and content management with open source software
Mobile application delivery
Working with operators, application stores and other channels
Licensing of mobile applications and content

Submit your speaking proposal TODAY online

Deadline for submissions is February 20, 2009

Guidelines

Focus proposals to offer attendees information, tools and inspiration to
accomplish mobile open source. Please DO NOT focus proposals on a
commercial product or propose a marketing pitch, but rather open source
software and technology.

We look forward to your participation in OpenSource World 2009!

The Mobile Conference at LinuxWorld Program Committee

Bill Weinberg, LinuxPundit.com
Andreas Constantinou, VisionMobile.com
Rick Lehrbaum, DeviceGuru.com

2009: 01/20
CATEGORY: Linux
mobile
open source
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Intel and Taiwan Inc. Partner for OSS Research, WiMAX Rollout

Intel announced today that the sultan of silicon will partner with the Taiwanese government and invest in the Republic’s IT industry to launch a Software Development Center for Open Source mobile devices. Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini indicated that the company had inked a formal agreement with the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA). Together, Intel and ROC ministry staff will establish a lab for enabling Intel’s Linux-based Moblin platform, as well as other open source software, targeting devices built around the Intel Atom processor. Simultaneously, the company’s venture arm, Intel Capital, will invest NT$386M (US$11.5M) in Taiwanese carrier VMAX to support deployment of Taiwan’s first mobile WiMax network during 1H/2009.

This move by Intel has something in it for for everyone: it benefits Intel, helping to consolidate the position of newly-minted mobile/embedded Atom CPUs. It helps Taiwanese OEMs, who quickly launched Atom-based devices (many based on WindowsXP), but who are scrambling for availability of richer (and cheaper) Linux-based software stacks with more extensive localization and local value-added through software. It’s a good deal for Taiwanese consumer, who’ll enjoy high-bandwidth wireless access together with blazing data and streaming media. And the goodness ripples out across the Taiwan Straights and the Pacific Ocean and behond, since Taiwan-based rollouts of new ideas and gadgets open markets for cost-down, high-volume versions of the same technologies and devices off the island and over the horizon.

This double-whammy announcement gives hope to fans of the MID and mutes its critics – Intel is serious about the MID as more than a collection of empty sockets to fill. Industry analysts project Atom-based MIDs will climb to worldwide shipments of 86M+ units by 2013. Certainly more potential than the beleaguered Linux desktop, and interesting volumes in their own right, but still a mere ripple in the global mobile pond when compared with today’s billion-plus volumes for 2.5/3G handsets.

Endowing the nascent MID class with a gushing fat WiMAX pipe, combined with software interoperability with desktop and server Linux, opens this converged platform to dizzying new possibilities. Milliwatt-consumption Atoms loaded with with Linux-based Moblin, connected to the Cloud via high speed WiMAX add charm and substance to Intel’s vision for MIDs. I like the idea of long-lived, well-provisioned, connected mobile devices with always on, always available multimedia and social networking.

Now if only my middle-aged fingers were dexterous enough to use their tiny keyboards and my aging eyes were up to reading MIDs’ high resolution displays . . . I’ll leave that part to Generation MID.

Conspicuous by its absence in the announcement is the subject of VOICE. Intel positions MIDs precisely as “Mobile Internet Devices”. However, the MID form factor overlaps the spec and size for many of today’s 2,5G
and 3G smartphones (e.g., from Taiwanese HTC who build WindowsMobile handsets, and starting in October, Google/Android G1 devices). Moreover, WiMAX is not merely a WiFi replacement, but rather a
longer-haul WAN technology. WiMAX is a technology that forms the backbone of announced 4G rollouts by carriers like Sprint, ClearWire, Packet 1, UQ and other Intel partners. So, developing open source
software for WiMAX-enabled MIDs could very well support a revolution not just in data and multimedia, but in voice-based communications. OSS-powered MIDs and WiMAX could extend today’s operator-licensed
paradigms or re-invent person-to-person communication with point-to-point voice and video over WiMAX and also the establishment of non-traditional operator networks – MVNOs with enterprise, academic and
community backing.

2008: 10/30
CATEGORY: Linux
mobile
open source
TAGS: Atom
Intel
MID
mobile
Moblin
Taiwan
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Nokia to Buy Symbian, Dive Headfirst into Open Source

By now, most interested readers have heard the news about Nokia and Symbian:

Substance

Nokia to buy the 52.1 percent of Symbian shares it doesn’t already hold
Stop paying annual US$250M to other Symbian stakeholders
Merge Symbian with S60 organization to create the Symbian Foundation
- Also covers UIQ and MOAP platforms
New entity to launch SymbianOS under EPL

Challenges

Interestingly, the mobile press and blogosphere have been quite reserved in their reception of this “fantastic news”. From my point of view, formation of the Symbian Foundation is GOOD NEWS for the Symbian platform and for mobile open source in general.

However, despite increasing levels of deployment (200M phones in 2007), is not the darling of analysts and pundits, and definitely not the golden child of developers.

The challenges facing Nokia itself and also ahead of the announced Symbian Foundation are numerous and daunting. These challenges organize themselves into three areas:

Technical Challenges

Making the new platform easier to program
- SymbianOS programming model famously complex
New platform unwieldy
- Need to support SymbianOS, S60, UIQ, MOAP and also TrollTech’s Qt/Qtopia in single s/w base
- Stated goal of backward compatibility could cripple innovation
  - Symbian OS v9 and S60 3rd edition
  - Java, Adobe FlashLite and Microsoft Silverlight
  - Compliance suite will be late

Building A Shared Platform

Dilution of Tier I Resources
- Foundation members LG, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung Electronics, TI and Vodafone already members of LiMo, OHA
- Are there enough platform developers to go around?
Discourage further fragmentation
- It’s a myth that commercial platforms like SymbianOS and MW WindowsMobile are unitary
- ISVs already suffer from minor and major fissures in each platform
Opening SymbianOS
- Platform complex mix of IP
- Could see sigficant delays in opening under EPL
  - Cf. OpenSolaris, Java, Android

Community Challenges

Build community beyond orbit of Nokia
- Open source is not a verb: opening SymbianOS code under EPL does not make it into living, breathing “open source”
- Building free-standing community for large complex code base is “non trivial”
- Danger of cutting CAPEX but not enhance ecosystem
Engage Broader Audience
- NA : single digit market share, no mind share
- SA : price points out of reach for SymbianOS handsets
Make Foundation Egalitarian
- Despite low cost of membership, tilted towards founding/board members

Real Impact

For Nokia and the SymbianOS, this move is either a stroke of genius or a move born of desperation. It will certainly help to lower the cost of entry onto SymbianOS and into the very tidy Symbian ecosystem. Remember, one of the drivers for the swath of mobile Linux initiatives and platforms, and also for continuing investment by Microsoft has been the difficulty of dealing with Symbian and the fear of living in Nokia’s shadow on a platform dominated by the Finnish mobile giant.

Whether it will actually motivate new platform deployments and the rollout of new applications and services is debatable.

Whither Mobile Linux?

Nokia’s announcement concretizes the ongoing balkanization of mobile platforms around consortium-led open source and commercial entities:

SymbianOS – Symbian Foundation

Android – Open Handset Alliance, built on Linux and neo-Java (Dalvik), led by Google

LiMo – The LiMo Foundation, built on Linux and led by Motorola, NTT and other others

Windows Mobile – despite Redmond’s “shared source” programs and loud protestations, still a closed proprietary effort

iPhone – Based at least partially on open source BSD and dominated by Apple (to say the least). The jury is still out on the impact of the iPhone SDK and as-yet unreleased 2.0 software

RIM – the Blackberry platform has a phalanx of even more fanatic users than the iPhone, but is increasingly relegated to niche usage (a lucrative corporate IT niche, but not a growing one)

As with the launch of OpenSolaris, I question whether an open Symbian OS will draw developers away from Linux. Probably not – the new platform will just provide an open basis for developers and ecosystem players already engaged with Nokia/Symbian.

And just as with Sun’s kimono-loosening, the opening of SymbianOS will make it more difficult for many current Symbian ecosystem players to remain profitable, accustomed as they are to 100% proprietary dealings.

Shallow End of the Pool?

Don’t forget that SymbianOS is definitively a smartphone platform, and that smartphones still only occupy about 8-10% of the billion unit global handset market. That’s the shallow end of the mobile swimming pool. Ask yourself, how deep are available developer resources and how boyant is end-user patience?

Watch your head, shareholders!

2008: 06/24
CATEGORY: mobile
Nokia
open source
Uncategorized
TAGS: Nokia
open source
Symbian
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