The End of the (Mobile) Platform Wars?

SMS Text News reader Olly has been giving a lot of thought to the platform vs browser phenomenon rapidly developing across the mobile industry (and, actually, the desktop industry too — I move friction free between PC, Apple, Nokia, iPhone, HTC). Take a read…

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There’s a weird, but not entirely unexpected, phenomenon happening in the “platform wars” in the computing space… and it’s extending it’s reach into the mobile version of those very same wars: the platforms themselves are becoming less and less relevant.

You may have recently seen the article by Peter Harboson on the S60 blogs, detailing his attempt to do the maximum possible “smartphoniness” using only the browser and phone functions of his handset. His result, that basically with the exception of the camera almost everything else could be browser based, is telling — the web, in all of it’s confusing spam filled, troll infested glory, is becoming the platform.

And here’s my confession: I have started to not care about what platform I’m on anymore, as long as the browser itself is up to snuff. That’s right, I’m no longer the Linux or Symbian zealot that I used to be (at least in practice, though I still feel that tribal/philosophical urge to defend them wherever possible). This year I began using another OS on my desktop (OS X) for the first time in years (though I still maintain my Ubuntu partition, even if I find myself using it less and less), and I’m perfectly happy with it for the most part.

On the desktop side of things, the progression of browser technology has gone far enough that the platform, at least for many things, has truly become irrelevant — mostly because you are always ON the same platform anyway. Don’t believe me? Think about it: it’s called Firefox. I run the same browser, with the same extensions, on OS X, Ubuntu, my wife’s Vista laptop, and my XP desktop at work. All of my bookmarks are sync’d up via del.icio.us — really nothing is handled locally anymore (other than hosting the browser itself). My email is in the ether (even my work email, thanks to Outlook Web Access) — my word processing is handled through Google Docs for the most part — even my main source of music consumption is on every desktop platform, through Last.fm.

Yes, I truly don’t care what platform I’m on from a practical day to day use standpoint — and this is beginning to extend to the mobile space as well.

I’ve been a die hard Symbian user for years now. Oh, I’ve had my dalliances with other mobile OS’s (Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry — even Linux on the Nokia Tablets). But in the end, I keep coming back to Symbian, and do you know why?

The browser (and more recently their camera). It’s not the third party apps (since just about anything you do on Symbian can be found comparably on any other platform), it’s that great webkit based browser which has managed to stay light years ahead of any other mobile browser (perhaps you iPhone zealots will disagree — I haven’t used mobile Safari enough to know one way or another). That being the case, you’d think that I’d be perfectly happy on my N95, right?

Well, I switched my sim into a Blackberry Curve yesterday and I noticed something. I love the Blackberry OS in many ways. Behind Symbian, it’s my favorite mobile OS. Oh sure, it has it’s quirks and can be frustratingly slow sometimes — but then so can Symbian. However it is also customizable to a degree (as far as alerts and whatnot) that Symbian can’t touch. With past blackberry experiments (7290, 7105t, Pearl) there was always the element of “not quite”, and that was largely due to the browser.

But after this afternoon’s install of Opera Mini 4, that may no longer be true. I’ve tried Opera Mini many times in the past, and I’ve always hated it. I found the interface clunky, the lack of true full screen annoying, and the way things were formatted just down right ugly.

OM4, on the other hand, is as close to the Symbian browsing experience that I’ve ever had on a mobile (Nokia Internet tablets excluded). It’s that good. And it’s faster.

Think about that article that I mentioned earlier (Ricky shares his own thoughts on it here). Then start to think of this: if the browser was the same, across every mobile platform, would it REALLY matter what platform you were using? Sure, there will always be preferences as to how sms are handled, or the actual phone functions themselves — and for the near future, there are favorite apps that people have on EVERY platform that don’t have their duplicates.

But in a world where more and more of our day to day activities, both mobile and on the laptop/desktop, are moving to the web — could a company like Opera (or Minimo if it ever gets it’s wings unfolded), be the app that ends the platform wars? It’s already happening on the desktop, where virtualization technologies and comparable products (Photoshop to the GIMP, as an example) make your choice of OS all but academic in all areas except perhaps stability and security… is the mobile space next?

What happens when someone comes along and makes the phone functions themselves simply well designed web pages — will Symbian vs WinMo vs iPhone vs Blackberry REALLY matter that much anymore? Hardware differentiation will always exist — Nokia’s camera is an example of this. But the “brand loyalty” to any particular OS may be dying, and I can’t say I’m too sad at seeing it go.

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Thanks Olly. You know what? That’s just what I’ve been experiencing too…