Windows Mobile, while it may have plenty of shortcomings, is still one of the most popular mobile operating systems in use today.
However, there are many factors that may change that soon- Symbian is going open source, the iPhone is becoming “unlocked”, and Android’s release is imminent… So, what will happen to Windows Mobile in the near future? Will it dissapear completely from the mobile OS lineup, or will they simply be content with dropping to the 4th or 5th most popular OS? Or, will they adapt to the brave new world and emerge on top?

Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO and creator of Funambol (a multi-platform open source sync solution) recently wrote about this on his blog:

“In particular, I do not see a chance for Microsoft to be relevant in mobile OSS. Now that Symbian is gone open source, we have three open source operating systems (Symbian, Android and LIMO derivatives) that are going to dominate the market. On top of it, you have the iPhone. That’s 90% of the market easily in a few years. Windows Mobile will be left with less than 10%. Even if WM becomes free (they have to make that move and it will be so painful for them), I do not think they will win market share. Their motto will be “think different” :-))

Unless they do the unthinkable: make Windows Mobile open source. That would be an incredible move, one that I think they cannot do with Ballmer at the helm.”

I’m not so sure I agree with 100% of that. You see, OpenMoko and Linux Mobile have been around a while, and have largely been considered failures when it comes to market adoption.

Why?
I think it is because simply being open source is not enough. You need to have a large enough community backing an open source project for it to be successful, and sadly OpenMoko and LiMo don’t have that (…yet).
Windows Mobile, meanwhile, has a very large pre-existing development community (one that I consider myself a part of on occasion), which is why they will continue to sell handsets even if the new open platforms are more powerful theoretically.

The only mobile OS that I think is really going to give WinMo a run for its money is Google’s Android. Google is popular enough that any project they put their name on has an instant following (as I mentioned recently). Its very possible that Android will show the world we’re ready for an open mobile OS.

Now, what’s going to happen to MS?
Well, I don’t think its so crazy that MS will start adopting more open-source models, they’ve already started doing that with some of their projects. A decade ago, no one would have believed that there would be a page on Microsoft.com about their open source projects, but clearly they are recognizing that this is a necessary move to stay competitive. Microsoft has done crazier things in its past.*

But will Windows Mobile go open source?
Only time will tell. I think Fabrizio’s prediction is further away than he implies, but then again the mobile market changes so quickly anything is possible.

*Little known fact: Microsoft once wrote their own version of Unix in the early 80s. Stuff that makes you go hmmm…

-Mordy Gilden

So this story is a couple of days old but I do not think that that many people picked it up. Software security expert Matt Hamrick got so fed up with the quality of standard issue mobile phones and tinkering with them and spending money on them ($3,000 over the past two years trying to get his calendar and e-mail to sync between his Apple computer and his phone) that he founded the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club. The Build-A-Bear like club for cell phones attracted more than 40 people to its first meeting.

Like the Hombrew Computer Club of the 1970’s, the Mobile Phone club hopes that its organization will pave the way for something akin to the personal computer revolution sparked by its predecessor.

The group has a bit of an advantage in that when the Computer Club was started not every member had a computer… every member of this club already has a mobile phone… in fact that is why the group was founded.

Some of the things Hamrick wants are the ability to be able to access more than just one of his many different e-mail accounts at once, a stopwatch that doesn’t stop when the phone goes into power-save mode. I like the one where he wants voicemail’s delivered and saved directly on the phone. He also aches, like most of us, for a broader choice of messaging systems than the prehistoric and mobily sloppy AOL Instant Messenger.

What Hamrick and many others are feeling and realizing is the lock-downed attitude that makes up the mobile industries. Between the carriers and the phone manufacturers the mobile roads are either closed or heavily tolled and always monitored by those who build and maintain them.

This has led to an influx of people proposing everything from Open Phone Systems [great article], to creating organizations like the Silcon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club or just going out and like Surj Patel and Deva Seetharam did and build their own [great article] cell phone and blog about it. I have been following that one for a while now. Riveting. Casey Halverson, a Seattle-based mobile developer is doing the same thing at his blog. There is even a guy who mobilized a Rotary Phone [also here]!

Now, these groups and individuals do not yet pose a threat to carriers and phone manufacturers and we are probably a long way’s a way from this type of difficult tinkering from ever becoming mainstream. One of the above articles quoted a Cingular spokesperson reminding us that any cell phone radio has to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission and the carrier itself before using the network, but said that the company supported experimentation.

In short, the carriers and the phone manufacturers would be silly to fight and gave these open source phone tinkerers a hard time. If anything at all, it can show them what people want in their phones that they are not providing as well as give them a stern warning. If you wont do it, somebody, somewhere, somehow, eventually will. And the will do it for almost nothing, on the cheap in their grandmothers garage. And people like garage coming of age stories.

[via Wired]

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