Friday, November 8, 2002
Welcome Back Sendo
Posted by Andy Sjostrom in "THOUGHT" @ 03:09 AM
It feels like we're already in the aftermath of yesterday's big news. I am referring to Sendo bailing out on Smartphone 2002. I have for a long time enthusiastically waited for the Sendo Z100 phone to come out, and I am positive they would have done very well. It's sad to see them leave when the party just begun. Bottom line: this is a major mistake on Sendo's behalf, but perhaps it was unavoidable.
From a hardware design reference and software platform point-of-view and regardless of whether we look at Symbian or Microsoft, it is obvious that phones are heading down the same path that PCs did in the late eighties: commoditization of hardware and fewer viable operating systems. Major drivers for this trend are demands for more efficient software development and Internet connectivity. This could become a long, long discussion... but let's head back to Sendo!
It is not difficult to understand that a British, Swedish, Finnish or [insert-any-non-Asian-country-here] phone maker faces an enormous task to compete with efficient and high-quality factories in Asia. For a company like Sendo differentiation must and can happen at another level than pure hardware manufacturing and operating system development, and here is the heart of the issue: Sendo seems to believe that they can accomplish this differentation more successfully with a Symbian platform than with a Microsoft platform, which I fail to understand given the rich set of programming interfaces available to Smartphone developers. From a Microsoft point-of-view, I believe Sendo bailing out is a set back but not even a significant one. When giving this some thought, it would seem extremely strange if a paranoid software giant with mobile world-wide ambitions would place put that much weight in a British basket. Microsoft strategies and strategy execution is more clever than that. Back to the late eighties. Some companies placed their bets on Microsoft and some did not. We all know what happened.
The race is on and the race is long. I remember the year 2000 and the amount of media attention and discussions that different flavors of Symbian products and partnerships generated. I said then, as I do now, that Microsoft's main competitor in the mobile market is the Symbian consortium. Microsoft clearly needs to attract phone makers, carriers, get Smartphones to consumers and to the developer community to win. Although that must be this week's understatement, we know that the strategy is in place and has just begun to show results. The Orange SPV Smartphone, maybe one of the reasons why Sendo left, is extremely important but is just the first tangible result of a strategy with the following key elements:
• An operating system known and mastered by millions of developers
• State-of-the-art Software Development Kit and tool set based on principles known and mastered by millions of developers
• Partnerships with phone/PDA making companies such as HTC leads to short time-to-market schedules for anyone looking to build phones (carriers)
• A focus on a key player on the market (current state): carrier
• In the mobile market, Microsoft is the only player with a proven ability to keep a platform together in all aspects. Yesterday's phones are what made the market today, and those phones are "dumb terminals". Moving forward it is the quality of much more complex phone platforms and software that will drive success.
• The situation is familiar. Java, CORBA, IBM OS/2, UNIX, Linux, Netscape etc. Somehow, Microsoft performs at its best when perceived as the underdog and the main lesson learned is that dynamic persistence pays off.
• Internet. None of the players in Symbian have shown that they have a clue what's going on in the connected world. As an example, Ericsson said just two years ago that Internet would die and that they were to build a "Futurenet" with their own switches. Cisco was discussed as a potential company to buy but quickly dismissed as an insignificant Internet startup...
• Microsoft's massive resources that are patiently spent.
Instead of partying on this strategy, Sendo chooses to fight it. In my opinion, Sendo blew it but is more than welcome back!
From a hardware design reference and software platform point-of-view and regardless of whether we look at Symbian or Microsoft, it is obvious that phones are heading down the same path that PCs did in the late eighties: commoditization of hardware and fewer viable operating systems. Major drivers for this trend are demands for more efficient software development and Internet connectivity. This could become a long, long discussion... but let's head back to Sendo!
It is not difficult to understand that a British, Swedish, Finnish or [insert-any-non-Asian-country-here] phone maker faces an enormous task to compete with efficient and high-quality factories in Asia. For a company like Sendo differentiation must and can happen at another level than pure hardware manufacturing and operating system development, and here is the heart of the issue: Sendo seems to believe that they can accomplish this differentation more successfully with a Symbian platform than with a Microsoft platform, which I fail to understand given the rich set of programming interfaces available to Smartphone developers. From a Microsoft point-of-view, I believe Sendo bailing out is a set back but not even a significant one. When giving this some thought, it would seem extremely strange if a paranoid software giant with mobile world-wide ambitions would place put that much weight in a British basket. Microsoft strategies and strategy execution is more clever than that. Back to the late eighties. Some companies placed their bets on Microsoft and some did not. We all know what happened.
The race is on and the race is long. I remember the year 2000 and the amount of media attention and discussions that different flavors of Symbian products and partnerships generated. I said then, as I do now, that Microsoft's main competitor in the mobile market is the Symbian consortium. Microsoft clearly needs to attract phone makers, carriers, get Smartphones to consumers and to the developer community to win. Although that must be this week's understatement, we know that the strategy is in place and has just begun to show results. The Orange SPV Smartphone, maybe one of the reasons why Sendo left, is extremely important but is just the first tangible result of a strategy with the following key elements:
• An operating system known and mastered by millions of developers
• State-of-the-art Software Development Kit and tool set based on principles known and mastered by millions of developers
• Partnerships with phone/PDA making companies such as HTC leads to short time-to-market schedules for anyone looking to build phones (carriers)
• A focus on a key player on the market (current state): carrier
• In the mobile market, Microsoft is the only player with a proven ability to keep a platform together in all aspects. Yesterday's phones are what made the market today, and those phones are "dumb terminals". Moving forward it is the quality of much more complex phone platforms and software that will drive success.
• The situation is familiar. Java, CORBA, IBM OS/2, UNIX, Linux, Netscape etc. Somehow, Microsoft performs at its best when perceived as the underdog and the main lesson learned is that dynamic persistence pays off.
• Internet. None of the players in Symbian have shown that they have a clue what's going on in the connected world. As an example, Ericsson said just two years ago that Internet would die and that they were to build a "Futurenet" with their own switches. Cisco was discussed as a potential company to buy but quickly dismissed as an insignificant Internet startup...
• Microsoft's massive resources that are patiently spent.
Instead of partying on this strategy, Sendo chooses to fight it. In my opinion, Sendo blew it but is more than welcome back!
