The Mobile OS of the future is a service platform!
Thomas Menguy | May 1, 2007Really good read over at : The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…
The bulk of most services will be on a web server. Google Maps Mobile, Widsets, Opera Mini or Gmail are all good examples of extremly capable mobile applications supported by a strong web service. These are all java applications, but as web browsers in mobile phones grow more capable we will see XHTML or Flash Lite-based applications. Widgets, if you like that term.
The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…
Yes and this is a point I’ve discussed already (Back to the future mainframe, centralized computing anyone?) where the clear split between local and server is fading away, but is it really applicable to mobile phones? Not sure for now due to the high latency of the current mobile IP networks, but things are only beginning to be sorted out in the PC world…Mobility is next, for sure.
Web Developments frameworks (like Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight) are already migrating little by little to the mobility space, especially through the crop of On Device Portals that are, more or less services delivery platforms, with a “rich client” on the device, running some kind of Ajax/flash/svg/xml/javascript (put your favorite widget/UI/web2.0 technology here) framework to deliver “content”, content being here the service.
Ray Ozzie recently presented MS silverlight, outlining the following interesting trend:
Ray Ozzie outlined two types of web apps – what he calls “Universal Web” apps, meaning ajax, html, browser based apps. Then he discussed “Experience First” apps – xbox, mobile, pc desktop apps. He pointed out that “the most sucessful solutions have an element each of universal web and experience first”.
Ray Ozzie Keynote at MIX, Las Vegas
So really this is about integrating and adapting:
- On one side the service itself: how to render it, implement it as best as possible.
- On the other side: the device on which it is used: the write once runs everywhere mantra is definitively dead, long live to adaptative or even adapted software!
I’ll quote again the same Mobile Web Tablet article:
The problem with todays phones is not about access to the native OS, but rather how the web or downloaded applications are second grade citizens within the phone GUI. This, however, will change.
Nokias recent move to integrate a widget platform in S60 is a sign of exactly what I’m talking about. Sony Ericssons multitasking java and standby midlets are some other and so is the Apple iPhone. Good and useful widgets are really just a small window to a much larger web service.
The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…
I sort of agree with this comment: service integration is KEY, and while VERY difficult right now, next generation UI (iPhone, LG Prada, SonyEricsson Feature phones (not smartphones, UIQ is for me inferior to their mainstream but I digress), etc) perhaps won’t help cause when a graphical designer is involved to define the whole SUI, it is very very difficult to complement it with new services from the outer world without compromising the phone UI integrity: this is where the notion of “system”, as a collection of services and “Master of Ceremony” of those services interactions is coming to life (I’ll certainly comment much more on this notion on my blog later…).
On the other hand I’m not sure that access to natives phone hardware and services is enough today for mass market phones (this is after all on of the Open-Plug purpose ).
Something I’m not sure today is how those kind of service platforms will be implemented: after all mobile phones are still, and will be for a foreseeable future and for the biggest part of the market really low CPU, low RAM devices, so I’m not sure how to technically leverage this service approach on the mass market (see here for some data ..but my point of view has evolved since then ) , but I’m looking for
It seems that C. Enrique Ortiz is also digging , and found with Dojo an interesting property: working cleanly offline:
But Dojo off line touches on a very important and needed characteristic, a key feature that future mobile web browsers must support: “The ability to work disconnected”, or “Support for disconnected or off line browsing (cache), allowing the Mobile Web application operate as an occasionally connected application”
C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog
And you? any clue? vision on what this platform will be?