More handsets in the pipeline; but still some progress to come on apps standardisation
LiMo will be used as the main platform for operators looking to provide a differentiated user experience from the iPhone and Symbian, Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation, told Mobile Europe.
Gillis said that Vodafone’s adoption of LiMo as the OS for its H1 and M1 Vodafone 360 phones from Samsung is proof that operators will move to the platform as the basis for a user experience that can provide operator and brand differentiation around the handset, and around access to applications and services.
Gillis said that with it becoming clear that most major European operators are going to range the iPhone at some point, it is with LiMo that they will seek to differentiate. This meant that there will be an increasing number of LiMo-based phones coming onto the market.
The Vodafone devices are the first devices compliant to Release 2 of LiMo, and Gillis said he thought they provided elements that the iPhone couldn’t, as well as being “more responsive” than Symbian devices.
Gillis also denied the implication that operators will use LiMo as a “second tier” platform, to mop up customers who have not chosen, or cannot afford, an iPhone, top of the range S60, or Android based handset. He said there would be a range of devices from LiMo, from the top OEMs down to white label ODMs.
“If operators execute correctly they [LiMo devices] will be front and centre and they will not be used to ‘mop up’ in the way you have described. They will be seen as a core part of their strategy,” Gillis said.
Gillis also hinted that one of the “uses” for LiMo from an operator point of view is that it can use the independence of the platform as a tool to negotiate with other device vendors, many of whom are developing their own app stores.
“I think this platform changes the basis of operators’ dialogue with a Google, or Nokia, because it offers the operators more self-sufficiency. It becomes plausible for an operator to say to Nokia that it wants users to have access to the full experience from a Nokia phone without it being muddled by Ovi or S60,” Gillis said.
He added that LiMo also gives operators a better revenue model in the provision of applications and services, as it keeps them in the value chain, as opposed to being cut out of it. “The economic advantages are strong,” he said. Operators can use LiMo as a route to providing their own apps portals, as Vodafone has done with 360.
Yet just using LiMo as the OS doesn’t mean that all handsets will provide a common applications framework for developers, something that will be crucial as operators seek to build scale around their own applications stores and development environments.
For the 360 Samsung M1 and H1 handsets, Vodafone is using the apps runtime environment from JIL (a commercial joint venture between Vodafone, Verizon, Softbank and China Mobile). But LiMo has just adopted the OMTP’s BONDI web runtime environment as its standard platform.
“LiMo’s application strategy is a broad one,” Gillis said, “with a strategic goal of engaging developers as broadly as possible onto the platform. That is important because real innovation can come from surprising places.
“That means that we don’t have a monolithic view on the apps environment. So currently we are supporting widget development on our platform through web runtime and there is a lot of native application development on the platform as well. We will also see additional web runtime standards on the platform, and it’s plausible (although this is not any kind of prediction) that we could see Flash from Adobe on the platform, for example.
“Web runtime standards are emerging but are at an early stage. LiMo has adopted OMTP BONDI for its R2 handsets. But if you examine JIL and BONDI you will see quite considerable overlap in terms of the functionality that’s supported. So it’s also plausible that in the future certain members will propose that we also adopt JIL as a standard, and then within that we could see harmonization between the two.”