Mobile Linux, if not waiting to die, is impetrating its savior in China, Currently in China, mobile Linux is losing market share to Symbian and Windows Mobile. In 2007, with good market performance of Nokia and Sony Ericsson, Symbian showed a growth of market share, up to 67%. Supported by Microsoft, Windows Mobile was increasingly adopted by top handset manufactures in China, including Dopod (HTC), Samsung, Lenovo, Amoi, even Sony Ericsson. Windows Mobile has revealed a strong potential. In contrast, with the declining of Motorola, mobile Linux had become faint with market share down to less than 20% in 2007 from over 30% in 2005. However, who will help mobile Linux ignite the OS market in China, carriers, handset manufactures, or software vendors?
In China, telecom restructuring for 3G licenses has begun. In 3G era, to compete with each other by offering differentiated services, carriers must enhance their control to tailored handsets, especially Smartphones, through handset customization. In the year of 2007, near 20% of handset shipments are from handset customization of Chinese carriers. China Mobile has already launched TD-SCDMA services last year. So far, all the TD-SCDMA handsets are sold via carrier channel. To attract high-end users and to be more China Mobile style, China Mobile, the dominator of China wireless industry and the destination of many handset and equipment vendors, is very likely to give emphasis to the customization of mobile Linux-based TD-SCDMA Smartphones, as mobile Linux-based handsets can be more specialized to China Mobile style and can better support China Mobile’s own services. It is said that China Mobile is developing its own mobile Linux-based Smartphone OS. Maybe in the future, it will launch China Mobile brand mobile Linux-based Smartphones or make handset customization for its own mobile Linux-based OS. Both foreign handset vendors like Motorola, LG and Samsung, and local handset vendors like ZTE have showed interests in mobile Linux-based TD-SCDMA Smartphones. These handset vendors mainly use carrier channels. By using mobile Linux, large-scale handset vendors, like Motorola, hope to avoid being reliant to Symbian (held by Nokia) and Windows Mobile (owned by Microsoft); however Chinese local OEMs, like ZTE, TCL, Amoi, Bird, hope to save OS cost for product development. So, we believe that TD-SCDMA will bring great opportunities to mobile Linux in China Smartphone market.
Unlike Symbian and Windows Mobile, mobile Linux is open source. OS vendors and handset vendors develop their own version Linux-based OSs, thus the market lacks standardized OSs. This results difficulties for third-party application developers, and so far there are not enough applicable Linux-based applications, which is a main barrier to the growth of mobile Linux Smartphone market.
While, we see the hope from Google’s Android. Android, the innovative open source mobile Linux-based OS platform, will completely change the business model of handset OS industry and is expected to drive the growth of mobile Linux. After the release of Android, other mobile Linux associations, LiPS and LiMo Foundation, led by France Telecom and Motorola respectively, launched their mobile Linux platform. Members in these mobile Linux alliances have begun to make plans for mobile Linux-based Smartphones. We see that Chinese carriers and handset vendors, such as China Mobile, Huawei, ZTE, etc., have active response to Android. We think maybe in 2009 we can find Android phone in China.
However, mobile Linux will be facing the competition from Symbian, Windows Mobile, and iPhone’s OS X. As we know, iPhone is gaining popularity in China, though it has not been allowed to enter into China Market.
