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Google Phone OS?
Oct. 31st, 2007 10:09 am The Reg is reporting some details of the Google Phone. They're repeating the idea of a free phone OS and how amazing this would be. It would be amazing, it would also be something of a miracle if it actually works or is of much interest to the OEMs and ODMs. While Symbian and MS charge anything up to around $10 a unit for their OS, there's a lot that comes with this.
The problem is this. Getting a phone to market is much harder than getting an application to work on a PC. The integration of the OS and radio stack is tricky, getting the OS to work with the selected Silicon is a complete bitch and the certification and approvals process is an absolute nightmare (ask Apple). The OS is actually a small part of those costs and both Symbian and MS spend a lot of their time working on the silicon integration and radio performance on behalf of their OEMs and ODMs. To be succesful you really need an eco-system of engineering companies who can help with these stages. I know for a fact that Google haven't done that. Microsoft didn't with their "open OS" until long after they tried to take the market by storm.
I'll wait until I've done some more digging on this before commenting, because I might end up under NDA on this. But we I wouldn't be feeling comofrtable if I were them.
They certainly should be able to launch a google phone without too much trouble, but their own OS? Yeah, right.
The problem is this. Getting a phone to market is much harder than getting an application to work on a PC. The integration of the OS and radio stack is tricky, getting the OS to work with the selected Silicon is a complete bitch and the certification and approvals process is an absolute nightmare (ask Apple). The OS is actually a small part of those costs and both Symbian and MS spend a lot of their time working on the silicon integration and radio performance on behalf of their OEMs and ODMs. To be succesful you really need an eco-system of engineering companies who can help with these stages. I know for a fact that Google haven't done that. Microsoft didn't with their "open OS" until long after they tried to take the market by storm.
I'll wait until I've done some more digging on this before commenting, because I might end up under NDA on this. But we I wouldn't be feeling comofrtable if I were them.
They certainly should be able to launch a google phone without too much trouble, but their own OS? Yeah, right.
