Sure, Apple's next-gen iPhone still looks pretty, and the iClones will follow from the old guard of handset makers. But even if Steve Jobs is playing nice with the cellphone market, PM's resident geek says it's the software, stupid. Here's how Google Android could really take down iPhone 2.0 in the upcoming code wars.
Apple didn't reinvent the phone. But it came close with the iPhone, creating an entirely new breed of mobile device—and promptly selling 6 million of them. In other words, the first iPhone wasn't the Sputnik of cellphones, but it may have been the Apollo 11.
A year later, as Apple launches its second-generation iPhone, the competition must realize that time is running out. If someone doesn't build a comparable touchscreen phone—right now—then the iPhone could become more than a historic success story. It will be unassailable, and the concept of an iPhone killer will become as mythical and useless as that other holy grail of consumer electronics: the iPod killer.
While companies like Samsung, LG and Motorola are used to fighting it out over handset design and built-in features, dutifully serving a range of niche customers while stumbling toward the next RAZR, beating the iPhone will mean excelling in an arena where phone makers have generally failed: software.
It's not that a touchscreen phone's hardware is irrelevant. The screen has to be tough enough to survive a fall, the processor fast enough to keep the phone from feeling too much like an underpowered computer, and the hard buttons smart enough to offset the inevitable interface hiccups. But more than any other kind of phone, a touchphone is a bundle of potential energy, a platform for software that defines not only the features, but the look and feel of the device. As iPhone competitors like the Samsung Instinct and LG Vu enter the market, it's been clear that the interface is what sets one model apart from another—turned off, every touchphone is a shiny little monolith. So even on a cosmetic level, the touchphone war will be fought with code.
Compared to Windows Mobile or the various proprietary operating systems built by other phone makers, the iPhone's OS and graphical user interface is clean, efficient and surprisingly free of embarrassment. Anyone who's tried to browse the Internet with directional buttons, or do anything at all with a RAZR, knows what I'm talking about. There's some room for improvement, of course. The lack of a landscape view for every iPhone application—and particularly ones where you're required to type—is mysterious, while video support in Safari is practically non-existent.
But no phone maker today is poised to take advantage of the software chinks—however small—in the iPhone's armor. Companies like BlackBerry may have excelled at direct, no-frills interfaces, but with the flood of new iPhone applications due to arrive July 11, it will take a true software giant to mount any sort of defense.
A giant like Google.
The company, which is spearheading the release of the open-source mobile phone operating system Android, also cut its teeth on simple, intuitive interfaces. It quietly releases free, browser-based applications that rival the Microsoft Office empire, and has already proven its mobile chops with the iPhone's Maps functionality.
While Apple attempts to encourage creative iPhone applications ideas with venture capital, the $10 million prize money that Google is sinking into its Android Developers Challenge may seem more tempting and less predatory to programmers. The first prize-winning Android applications will be released later this year—and early startups, like a GPS tracking program or even open-source hardware, are promising.
For Google, the emphasis is on open architecture and a wealth of smart programs for all kinds of phones. But as the iPhone has demonstrated, touchphones are the true battleground for software supremacy. If any of the first Android handsets released in the second half of this year is, say, touch-sensitive, with a screen somewhere between 3 and 4 in., the gauntlet will be thrown.
There's another possible endgame, though. "Do I believe that all applications are equal, and that more is always better," asks Muzib Khan, vice president of product management and engineering for Samsung Telecomm. "I don't think so." Samsung, it should be noted, is part of the Open Handset Alliance, but Khan points out that not every customer has the time—or desire—to filter through a constant flood of relatively untested applications. And with deep-pocketed providers like Sprint already investing billions in services like mobile TV, the company that can best implement a proven service, instead of enabling a million potentially buggy ones, could hold its own in the touchphone market. That's one reason why Samsung, for one, isn't planning on switching all of its new models to the Android platform. There's a place, you could argue, for proprietary, device-specific operating systems and services.
Still, given the track record that phone makers and providers have—with laughable browsers, stuttering television feeds and arcane e-mail programs—it's hard to imagine the old guard making an impact in the coming war between Apple and Android. Companies like Samsung will continue to deliver millions of devices that make excellent phone calls. But for something that does everything else, the last, best hope for a true iPhone-killer is Google.
