We’re just over a month into 2011, and already this year has been transformative for mobile devices. Though the mainstream media may argue that the launch of the iPhone on Verizon is the biggest story of the new year, the truth is that there’s a much broader shift taking place. It’s all about control.
Steve Jobs loves to use a quote by Alan Kay to describe the engineering philosophy at Apple:
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
That, famously, has been the crux of the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft on desktops. Those that don’t favor the Apple way of business point out that software isn’t portable to different hardware as it is on Windows or Linux, and if anything, Apple has tightened the integration of hardware and software on their devices over the years.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has built its computer business on partnerships with hardware makers. At the D5 conference in 2007, Bill Gates, seated next to Jobs in an interview, explained:
“The question is, are there markets where the innovation and variety you get is a net positive? … And then take the phone market. We think we’re on 140 different kinds of hardware. We think it’s beneficial to us that even if we did a few ourselves, it wouldn’t give us what we have through those partnerships.”
What a difference four years – or in this case, a week – can make.
On Wednesday, HP held a press event to unveil their latest generation of mobile devices. The new gadgets use webOS, the operating system HP company acquired with its takeover of Palm last year. Though it wasn’t really a surprise that HP would use webOS on their new devices, the choice moved HP squarely in with Apple on the list of companies that want to control both hardware and software.1
And then there was yesterday.
In a joint statement with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced that Nokia phones would use Windows Phone 7. Nokia was running out of options in the expanding smartphone market, and Symbian, their previous primary OS, wasn’t stacking up to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7.
The politics of the deal are what make it interesting. Matt Drance writes that the Nokia/Microsoft partnership, too, may be about control. The “coup,” as Drance calls it, shows that Microsoft wants hardware control, too, even if it continues to allow other companies to develop with WP7.
The battle lines of control are being drawn. Google’s taking the Windows philosophy of the past: strength is in variety of hardware. Apple’s sticking its ground of hardware and software integration, but ten years ago who would’ve thought that HP and Microsoft would champion a similar style of control?
1 During the event on Wednesday, HP also announced that webOS will be available on desktops and notebooks at some point in the future. The landscape continues to change.
