Editor’s note: Richard Wong is a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, an investor in AdMob, GetJar, and SunRun, and a former mobile industry executive. In this guest post he argues that the fragmentation of mobile devices and platforms is here to stay, and offers some advice to entrepreneurs on how to deal with it.
Mobile data is on fire. Despite a few false starts, we are now in the midst of a transformative “Open Mobile 3rd Wave” (remember WAP, and J2ME?). We are just in the early swell of the wave; the iPhone itself is not even three years old, and thanks to continued improvements we’re now seeing in smart phones, mobile OS platforms and 3G/4G networks, the raw ingredients are just getting better every month.
Per the views of many mobile denizens and thought-leaders such as well-known internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, I certainly believe there will emerge new industry-transforming Facebooks, Googles, and Yahoos in this mobile wave.
FRAGMENTATION & COMPLEXITY
However, a key topic discussed by us mobile geeks and startups is the challenge of mobile platform fragmentation. There is an alphabet soup of protocols, standards, and regional differences by country which can be daunting for any entrepreneur. Just look at the range of technologies on handset platforms alone, from iPhone to Android to Blackberry, and even new platforms announced in last 30 days, from WinMo7, to MeeGo, to Samsung Bada, as if we need more platforms to deal with . . .
THE MAGIC BULLET—IT DOESN’T EXIST
One of the worst myths floating around the blogosphere is the wait by some for a “unifying technology” that will make things “simpler and easier” to develop services and apps for the global mobile market. At times, some have claimed that Java (J2ME) was the answer, then Flash Lite, then Webkit browsers, and most recently HTML5. While each solution has its merits, there will not be any unification anytime soon. Even as HTML5 richness has improved substantially, browser support will still vary and many, many phones will not support HTML5 for 7+ years.
Anyone who is waiting for a single silver bullet to solve fragmentation issues in mobile will be waiting a very long time, especially if they want to go after the global mobile opportunity. As such, it is important for mobile entrepreneurs to wade in and sort it out for themselves. No one is going to flatten the industry such as Microsoft did in the PC-era to make it simple.
THE REALPOLITIK: COMMON STANDARDS = COMMODITY STANDARDS FOR MANY
The realpolitik is that Mobile is truly global, and serves an extremely wide range of countries and users. There will naturally be a wide breadth of technologies, from CDMA vs GSM protocols, J2ME vs BREW, Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web, xHTML vs HDML, SMS vs MMS and others to serve this market.
Ask former execs of PSINet (bankrupt operator), AST (bankrupt PC maker) & Packard Bell (bankrupt PC maker) about the impact of the WINTEL “standard” on other PC industry players, and you’ll get a sense why Nokia, Motorola,Verizon, & Sprint aren’t rushing to follow their PC-era predecessors. Common standards = commodity standards for many players in this industry. Sadly, whether or not there is an elegant technical answer, it will be hard to drive any single set of worldwide standards given the different economic incentives of the many players, however good it would be for developers.
OK, SO AS A MOBILE ENTREPRENEUR WHAT DO YOU DO?
What do you do as a mobile entrepreneur in the face of this complexity? If you’re going to be successful, the winning entrepreneurs in mobile will have to learn to navigate these waters. There’s no simple shortcut. Several thoughts:
- Don’t wait for the Magic Bullet. The first step towards progress is acceptance of reality. I actually do believe that Webkit browsers, HTML5, continued progression of J2ME, Android and iPhone are all positive trends that will help make things easier for many developers, but none of them will be a single-threaded answer. There are too many markets where these solutions are insufficient. For example, India, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets is stilldominated by Nokia, which has 70%+ market share. I don’t think developing only for iPhones will be enough to dominate the India market given their < 5% share.
- Bound The Problem & Get Down the User Learning Curve. So, the critical next step is to limit the boundaries of the problem so you can actually solve it. Are you pursuing an enterprise app or a consumer app? Does your success require broad scale viral use, or is it perfectly good to have 2000 profitable users? Many developers focused on the consumer market are going to find that a blend of mobile web, and prototyping on iPhone-only or Android-only is the right first step and only then expand to broader platforms. Blackberry and WindowsMobile are similarly important in business applications. Rather than the costly efforts of chasing 4-5 platforms at once, focus in on the first one or two, prove your model, then expanding will help to bound the complexity.
- Geography matters. That said, it turns out that there are major differences by country in the mobile ecosystem. Just as important as the use case, is which country/geography one is targeting first. In Europe, 3rd party retailers such as Carphone Warehouse play a major role, reducing the influence of operator controlled stores. In emerging markets, Nokia is still a major force to be reckoned with. In North America, iPhone is capturing a disproportionate profit share of the industry. Look at the data sources I link to below and understand which handsets dominate which geography—it is very different by region.
- Get a guide. It is difficult to explain the subtleties of the mobile ecosystem without a longer dialogue, but the good news is that there are quite a few battle-scarred mobile veterans around that can help you with the Cliff Notes on the industry. Find one to help you.
- Resources To Tap Into. Whether or not you agree with my opinions in this article, here are some great data sources to learn more.
- Admob Mobile Metrics—a good summary of trends in the mobile data ecosystem from the lens of Admob’s network. A good view of by-country handset types from their view.
- Chetan Sharma Consulting—Chetan, as an independent analyst publishes some great research on the trends in the mobile data space.
- Getjar Mobile Statistics—Getjar is the leading independent mobile app store, and publishes stats on download volumes, handset types, etc.
- Mobile Monday—great entrepreneur organized events getting the mobile community together in over 120+ cities around the world. If you really are looking for a guide, this is a good place to start
- WURFL— wireless universal resource file—an open source project; a “config file that contains all info on every wireless device on earth”
DON’T WAIT
There’s an incredible startup and wealth-creating opportunity in this new arena of Open Mobile. The smartest entrepreneurs will not wait for these fragmentation issues to be solved but are figuring out now how to pick a use case, a core platform, and geography to bound their problem and get going. Once you have initial momentum, you can pick through these fragmentation landmines, and make a 2nd and 3rd step. Don’t wait for the unifying technology to solve these issues before diving in. Its going to be an exciting time to build great mobile companies this next 5-7 years. See you out there.
Reference Glossary
SMS – short message system otherwise known as text messaging
MMS – multimedia messaging system (originated as photo messaging from J-phone in Japan)
CDMA – code division multiplexing – pioneered and still very controlled by Qualcomm – Sprint, Verizon & MetroPCS use this protocol
GSM – Global System for Mobile, the standard in Europe and most of the world – AT&T & T-Mobile use this protocol
J2ME – Java Mobile Edition (often paired with class library profile called MIDP2)
BREW – Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless – a Qualcomm owned initiative as alternative to J2ME
XHTML – multi modality markup language
WML – the original markup language of the WAP Forum which allowed more efficient use of bandwith constrained mobile networks (i.e.. less chatty)
WURFL – wireless universal resource file – open source config file of wireless devices
MOMO – Mobile Monday community of mobile entrepreneurs supporting other mobile entrepreneurs
(@Rich_Wong is a Partner @Accel_Partners and works with mobile investements Admob and Getjar ( among others) and was previously an operating exec at mobile technology provider Openwave Systems. See www.accel.com/rpw_presos for additional data around the mobile ecosystem. Disclosure: Accel Partners is an investor in Admob, Amobee, Getjar, Mig33, Medio, MetroPCS, as referenced above)
Some more data regarding the mobile ecosphere is available here: http://www.taptu.com/metrics
We at taptu have long believed that the unification of the mobile eco-sphere will only occur when people recognise the mobile web as an easier, and more unifying experience than an app.
Of course, they are certain things that only an App can do, but as a brand, how often do you need the technologies afforded by an App, especially with HTML5 coming on leaps and bounds?
merely my 2 cents, I’d love to hear what you guys think..
Funny, I heard that line before.
“In technoglogy, Fragmentation will be forever”.
Obviously, this is expected. So don’t expect the perfect device to come up okay?
I thought I was going to die from boredom when I glanced thru this article, but it turned out to be quite informative, thanks! :D
Good article Richard.
You might want to add Distimo to your resource list (http://www.distimo.com/report).
Another interesting point is that the European network carrier market is very fragmented – much more than in the US. This is also proving to be an interesting challenge for European startups. Thankfully also providing many opportunities. Add to that the language barrier and you’ll see why it’s hard to conquer Europe as a whole. Having said that it is possible as LBS services like Foursquare are proving.
Great article Richard – if I may I’d like to add Taptu’s recent Mobile Touch Web Reports to your list of resources
http://taptu.com/metrics/
and in the spirit of not self promoting too much in the comments there’s also Opera’s recent Mobile Web reports.
http://www.opera.com/smw/
Very true. Fragmentation is here to stay…
ceo
fragmentation is not here to stay. theres only so much a phone can do and we are at that apex of innovation now.
“Inevitable Innovation Integration” kills fragmentation by default.
Very useful, pragmatic discussion of mobile from a fellow battle-scared mobile veteran. There is no silver bullet for fragmentation. It has been and will continue to be a trade-off between reach (e.g., SMS) vs richness (e.g., iPhone) for a long time.
Old school thinking and techies behind the times.
Smish http://smi.sh launched yesterday, this is the wave of the future, combining the desktop, web (convergence) and everything (friends, files, feeds, favorites) you do and use into one smart platform, in front of everyone, all the middle men cut out, faster and easier than the way you did it before, free…..watch and see when they launch a mobil platform…fragmentation, phooey!
http://thebig.smi.sh/
I’ve never seen so much marketing talk without a single example of what it is or why I want it.
I also enjoyed the “dev center” which basically says “we have an API”, well that’s real useful..
Hmmm, don’t we have a computer for that?
I am on the steering committee for MoMo in Chicago. Thanks for the plug. People should become involved with these chapters even thought there seem to be many groups nowadays. It would also be helpful if there were more of a central organization that supported a common web resource. I have tried to contact the leadership!
Since I am doing a start-up in education, these problems are a current issue. Since we have a code base for the iPhone, it makes sense that the iPad will be relevant to our effort. But, I feel that Android will offer a better tablet cost/benefit ratio down the road. Our approach is to develop on the iPad, but to ensure that we can port as soon as funding would make such a product viable.
The market is critical, and not all mobile use scenarios fit every device. In my discussions with Discovery yesterday, it was recognized that developing for many platforms quickly escalates costs beyond the possible return on investment. Sears for example supports many mobile platforms but still generates most of its mobile sales from the iPhone.
Targeting is critical. Making a product possible on a platform still doesn’t make it viable.
What?
Excuse me for bopping between buying airline tickets and posting.
First, thanks for supporting MoMo. PR…
Secondly, these issues (the article) include deciding what platform to develop for. The decisions are a result of previous work and potential of the various platforms.
That Morgan Stanley graphic seems mislabeled to me (or maybe created by someone who is too young to remember the 70′s and 80′s)?
Having lived through them both, I would argue 1980′s was real inflection point for desktop computers. 1990′s inflection point for desktop internet computing. And only now, 2000′s and maybe 2010′s the inflection point for mobile internet computing.
But then, maybe they don’t mean “inflection point”. Maybe they mean “the first time an experience ever appeared, even though adoption was ~0%)?
Yup – I noticed the same thing, everything is 10 years off.
Maybe he’s from Utah?
Hey guys – yeah you’re right, somehow the dates got transposed on the chart so everything is 10 years off … I did live in Utah for almost a year as a mgmt consultant … but not sure I can blame that..
Flash Lite was an early approach, popular on over a billion early smartphones, but was not in an environment where it could be used as a browser plugin, and the different loading models did make content development difficult.
Now nearly every device manufacturer is supporting Adobe Flash Player 10.1 as browser plugin, and behind that comes AIR for cross-device native applications using only standard webdev techniques.
Fragmentation is real. But Adobe’s gig is in uniting separate silos, whether for printing devices (PostScript), use of electronic documents (PDF), or now with on-screen displays (Flash). Such publishing efficiencies may not eradicate fragmentation, but they will ameliorate them.
(Nice tips on navigating the turbulence though, thanks.)
jd/adobe
Give it up, flash is dead dead dead, why drag it out! Why is Adobe’s proprietary lock down product worth defending. It is an old bolt-on to the browser bolt-on. They never made a decent effort to maintain it properly across platforms. Why would any other hardware or software company want to be held ransom to Adobe’s monopoly control over their runtime environment. As new variants of hardware and software platforms enter the market place Adobe will hold the fate of these companies hostage. Even if Adobe was making a completely honest effort, their track record suggest they would simply not be able to keep up with their cross platform support in a timely manner. This would slow down innovation and competition, no one benefits from that. I have been slightly disappointed at times with the lock down pivot point on some Apple products, but Adobe, now that is true abuse of customers at every level. I, like others, have been burned by Adobe one to many times. I will never do business with them again. They are very greedy and have absolutely no intention of including their customers or partners in their value equation.
Firstly, Adobe’s design tools are excellent and you won’t find many people arguing that they are not the best in their respective fields. Secondly, the disparity between releases and performance across platforms has been steadily improving since Adobe bought Macromedia such that releases across all platforms are now simultaneous (although obviously the Linux version needs the most work). Also you’ll find that in Flash Player 10.1, the Mac version performs almost as well as then PC version because of Apple’s help with CoreAnimation support, etc. Give Adobe a bit of credit for creating the web you enjoy today.
You know, I have been hearing how Flash would never go anywhere, or was dying, since before it was even called Flash! Give it up. No whining about the evils of Flash are going to make it just suddenly disappear.
Morgan Stanley says we had Macs and the IBM PC in the 1970s ??? Desktop Internet and Google in the 1980s ??? iPhone in the 1990s ??? Can’t comment on the 50s and 60s, but 70s+ are embarrassingly wrong. I feel bad for Wong if some TechCrunch staff picked that awful graphic, ‘cos it discredits the whole piece.
Easy fix for those: shift each a decade up, and the 1970s should be “Hobbyist Computing” with a picture of an Altair 8800.
Now what were we talking about?
The first thing that struck me about the article was that the timelines in that graphic were off by about 10 years. Mac was 1984, Google was 1998, iPhone was 2007. The rest of the article was decent, however.
Good article…But the Morgan Stanley graph is incorrect. I know, because I was a VP marketing with IBM in 1981 when we rolled out the PC which belongs to the eigthies, not the seventies. The pics that follow are also wrong by a decade unless it all refers to development periods and ignores when it went to market. Is this important? Sure, we don’t like anybody to rewrite history as it were.
Really well written, thoughtful and analysis. We need more of this kind of article in Techcrunch.
Nice post. Thoughtful and to the point. Thanks.
I do agree with Peter though, that graphic seems off by a decade. -I had that IBM PC in the 80′s.
From a consumer viewpoint, true. But the 8088 was truly ’70s technology, just as the MacOS was derived from the Palo Alto Research Center STAR workstation (late ’70s) and the iPhone (2007) was really built on ’90s technology. Of course, as long as a technology is only in a lab it isn’t really making a difference to how we live.
The original Morgan Stanley graph had each cycle later by one decade… looks like Accel modified the original version.
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/mobile_internet_report122009.html
Nice piece Richard. I do believe that a silver bullet exists, and that it will emerge a lot sooner that most believe. Fragmentation is not just a mobile com problem. It’s an overall modern communication problem. Our means to solving this nasty fragmentation problem exists in the cloud— the web. The things that make my phone work, the apps, the data, the contacts, the media, must eventually follow me from screen to screen. Today’s mobile devices are micro PCs… and that reality sometimes escapes us. The unifying platform that will bring today’s competing mobile platforms to their knees will be a” universal identity platform”. When I purchase a new phone years from know, I will upload my digital Identity unto my new phone, and everything I had that made my old phone mine will make my new phone mine. Phones that aren’t compatible with this universal ID platform will sit in shelves. This platform will come, and it will change the game.
We have a very hard time seeing the correlation between fragmented and decentralized identity and the hugely fragment, inefficient experiences we face with technology. Every time we purchase a new device, be it mobile or a full workstation, how much time do we spend reloading software, media, data and preferences. “Identity” by definition is “centralized” and “managed”. If I want to keep something from my wife or boss on one device, I should hope that all my devices and platforms will aid in that goal. When I upload a new profile photo, and I want that photo to follow me everywhere.. and I want to control which relationships this new profile photo is for. That is dynamically distributed ID. Facebook Connect, OpenID, etc are not identity platforms. They bill themselves as much because the market demand is so great… but these platforms aren’t “designed” for managed ID. I agree that no one has succeeded in delivering a unified ID platform, and you illustrate well why they’re failed.
For what its worth, I wasn’t trying to comment on mobile identity specifically nor other utilities and services that help. I’m primarily commenting the underlying DEV INFRASTRUCTURE and DEV PLATFORMS .. While I personally find identity services useful, I do think its likely there will be many (e.g. the MSFT Passport, AOL Magic Carpet, and Liberty Alliance initiatives always seemed to start of with a head of momentum, then wilt away in my experience) – thanks Rich Wong
I complete understand that you were talking about dev environments for mobile apps. My point is that ID protocols will standardized the way developers think about mobile apps, and will make competing platforms more open. Most of these apps touch pieces of our usage that inform ID. A framework that enables these apps to speak with each other and allows ID data to flow between them will change how apps are used and how they are developed. If there is a silver bullet that will force the mitigation of fragmentation… it is a standardized API for ID data. I’ve been working on this issue for 3 years… so of course I see it as a glaring problem with a huge upside.
Rich you are spot on with your post. Will be interesting to see what happens to this fragmentation over time. Companies tend to develop very sophisticated strategies to keep people on their platform i.e. Microsoft yet google+open APIs have certainly made a dent. Eventually I do think we see consolidation but for now we have to suffer thru the same fragmentation that existed in the UNIX world, Java, HTML etc etc
This is one of the most intelligent pieces on mobile I’ve ever read on this blog. Thanks!
The key reason there is fragmentation is that the telcos and the handset makers won’t let Intel and Microsoft aggregate all of the innovation (and profits) as they did to the PC industry. PC makers making low single digit profit margins while MSFT and INTC reporting 60+% margins.
Very good article indeed.
Steve Jobs had said in an interview back in 2007 about how he had not seen hardware-software decoupling working well in form factors other than the PC. He had said however that it might happen in the mobile space.
I wonder whether its time to agree that it has happened, especially with Android fast becoming a platform that many phone manufacturing are lining up to. Though, again the major manufacturers still have their own proprietary OS.
This is the most sane article about mobile fragmentation I’ve read for a while.
Fragmentation will be there in the future, even in the lucky case that HTML5 would penetrate the mobile device market earlier than anticipated. This is because innovation in mobile devices has just began and we will see new kinds of devices in which standard display is just one part. Other parts can be around your wrist, weared in your jacket etc.
Browser technology is optimized for displaying stuff, but mobile devices are and will be used in situations where you are NOT actively looking at a display. All cool mobile services, if they want to be integral part of users daily experience, have to take this into account.
Teemu, thanks for calling me sane … others might disagree with you, but appreciate it :)
Rich, I’ve read some much crap lately about mobile techs that ‘sane’ just felt the most complimentary word … ;-)
I was so delighted about your thoughts about mobile that I’ve been spending the rest of the evening reading your presentations and watching your ’2010′ interview with Scoble. Absolutely great stuff!
Good article overall :) I would agree with RalphF though that wherever you got that graphic from has missed something.
- Mobile computing barely got into its infancy in the early 2000′s, not the 1990′s.
Major Internet use was the 1990′s and not the 1980′s.
- Let’s not forget Yahoo was 1994 and Google was 1998. Even AOL Online was I think 1989?
- I doubt many people had personal computers in the 1970′s either. Mass adoption of in home PC use was def in the 1980′s
But still a great article :)
Hi, this is Rich Wong – yes btw, I agree MSDW in the chart posted has their dates/decades mislabeled. I think its Mobile is the 2000 – 2020 era in my personal opinion. Thanks for all the comments
And the link to the original MSDW Mary Meeker report is here – http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/mobile_internet_fsreport122009.html … for those of you interested in reading more
Yes Richard, there surely is no magic standardized bullet for these applications or browsers, but what about crafting a universal tool leveraging the standardized file playback capabilities of all mobile devices?
Albeit the global mobile platform segmentation, music is universal in mp3 format, and images in jpg format. You mentioned Nokia’s 70% market share dominance in India – which is our 3rd largest source of revenue.
We now have over 4,000 users and have sold over 3,000 of our patent pending products. Although our iPhone Apps generated $3k in their first 2 months, our simple disruptive patent pending product line of digital vocabulary flashcard files have carried us much further.
Briefly, PlaySay empowers busy people to learn their dream language on the go. Anytime. Anywhere. On any mobile device. We turn cell phones into sexy walking, talking foreign language teachers. Try it at http://playsay.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/playsay
It’s hard for me to take any article seriously that claims the Internet decade was the 80s (complete with an image of Google, not founded until 1998), and that the 90s were the mobile decade (again accompanied by an anachronistic image: the iPhone wasn’t released until 2007).
If you can’t even get the basics of the market defined in your graphics, it really makes the rest of your content suspect.
I think this is spot on. Those of us who bear the battle scars of the last decade in mobile can attest to the fact that promises of one platform to do everything just don’t pan out. This religious war over which technology wins and enables build once run everywhere is phony, none will. Great post.
Rich,
Nicely stated. Fragmentation makes most things really difficult to peg. Another point of advice to mobile entrepreneurs is to be really thoughtful about timing. If you are a successful internet entrepreneur – you need to forget most things you have learned related to time to revenue (real revenue that is). Those battle-scarred guides come in handy here.
Fragmentation also creates opportunity. Mobile will be the great growth story of our lifetime. Mary Meeker’s piece is telling – if you look at the meat of it, the growth projections are sound, if not conservative.
To those attracted to today’s apps/services sex appeal, good luck. There’s great opportunity there – hope you have a guide and aren’t too early. Don’t forget about the great opportunities in the network bottleneck.
This is a fine piece of work. I’d like to extend the discussion in three ways:
1.) Some developers can find a magic bullet
2.) New intermediate platforms for old phones
3.) An imperative to solve the fragmentation problem.
For more details, see my posting “Coping with mobile fragmentation” which in turn has more pointers to further discussion of the vexed question of fragmentation.
// David Wood
excellent article!
>> Get a guide
if anyone is looking for a guide/assistance – drop me a message. i have been working in the mobile space for well over 10 years now; working with many platforms and investigating the market going forward. you can view more about my background on linked in:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ardiri
you should definitely get help when making decisions around these areas!.
// Aaron Ardiri
aaron@ardiri.com
Rich, I think you are a little conservative. Mobile data started more or less converged with WAP. Since then the various factions seem to have been diverging at an increasing rate and I don’t see any technology having a chance of bringing them together and the idea that it will be a technical rather than a user experience that brings them together is dreamland.