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Remember all those years ago, when people laughed at the first Android
phones (which were, to tell the truth, pretty clunky, but still...).
Remember how Apple fans have always insisted that however well Android
did in the smartphone market, it would always be second best, and never
seriously threaten Apple's dominance? Well here's what actually happened:
On Open Enterprise blog.
When the first Android smartphones came out, the consensus view among
certain "experts" was that Google didn't stand chance. The dogma was
that the iPhone was so perfect, and its hold on the market so strong,
that there was no way that Android could displace it. I think we can
say that hasn't proved to be the case:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last week, I wrote an article pointing out that the NSA's
assault on cryptography, bad as it was, had a silver lining for open
source, which was less vulnerable to being subverted than closed-source
applications produced by companies. However, that raises the question:
what about the mobile world?
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Linux has a problem: it's running out of platforms to conquer. It's already the top operating system for smartphones and supercomputers,
and is widely used in embedded and industrial systems. It's true the
Year of the GNU/Linux desktop continues to be five years in the future,
but the rise of tablets makes up for that in part.
On
The H Open.
In the wake of the news that Android sales now represent around 75% of the global smartphone market
during the most recent quarter, there's still some surprise that this
has happened. After all, this was a sector that Apple absolutely
dominated just a few years ago. Some find it hard to understand how
Android has pulled this off in just five years.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The reaction to the jury's decision in the US patent infringement
case between Apple and Samsung has been rather remarkable. I've seen it
called all kinds of turning and inflection points for the
computing/mobile world, as if we are entering some strange new era whose
landscape is weird and unknown to us. This is utter nonsense. I don't
think Apple's "stunning" or "total" victory - all phrases I've seen
bandied about - is particularly stunning, or even a victory.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
At the end of last year, I wrote about the great service Barnes & Noble had performed by drawing back the curtain on one of Microsoft's patent lawsuits.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Recently, there was some justified excitement that Red Hat had finally done it, and turned in annual sales of over $1 billion. A couple of years ago, I wrote
a post here on Computerworld UK wondering why there were no companies
based around open source that had managed to achieve such billion-dollar
turnovers, and suggested that the key reason was one put forward by Red
Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
You don't have to be a marketing genius or industry pundit to foresee
that tablets will be an extremely hot sector in 2012. The launch of
Apple's iPad in 2010 largely defined the category, just as the launch of
the iPhone defined a new kind of smartphone in 2007; in 2012 we will
probably begin to see Android tablets start to gain major market share
just as Android smartphones have done this year.
On
Techdirt.
It's no secret that Windows Phone is struggling desperately in the
battle against the smartphone leaders, iPhone and Android. And
desperate times demand desperate measures; but even so, this move by Microsoft is pretty extraordinary:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As I've noted many times, one of the biggest threats hanging over
open source is patents, because of the way trivial but indispensable
software techniques have been patented in some jurisdictions (mostly the
US). Things are made worse by the fact that vague threats can be made
in this area, for example this famous assertion in 2007:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Google matters for open source. First and foremost, it is an example
of a multi-billion dollar global company that simply would not be
possible without an underpinning of free software. Open source's
customisability means that its engineers have been able to fine-tune
Linux and other code to meet Google's very specific needs. That, and the
fact that there is no licensing fee, has allowed the company to scale
its operations to unprecedented levels – rumoured to be over a million
servers.
On
The H Open.
Microsoft is currently engaging in some incredible rewriting of
history. Here's Horacio Gutiérrez, deputy general counsel at the
company, trying to defend
Microsoft's evolution into a patent troll that is unable to make a
smartphone that anyone wants, and thus seeks to tax those who can:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As Bessen and Meurer's book "Patent Failure"
points out, one of the biggest problems with software patents is their
lack of well-defined boundaries. This makes it very hard to tell whether
newly-written code is infringing on existing patents or not. The threat
of treble damages for wilful infringement removes any incentive to try to find out.
On
Techdirt.
Back in April, when Apple sued Samsung in the US, I noted that Apple's claims seemed pretty over the top - basically claiming that any rectangular tablet computer with rounded corners and a border was a copy of the iPad.
Well, things seemed to have escalated since then, with the battle being brought to Europe:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last year, there was a lot of handwringing about Firefox's continuing loss of market share. This was only by relatively small amounts, but people wondered whether Firefox had peaked and was in trouble.
On
The H Open.
One of the unusual characteristics of the computer industry in recent years is the rapid rise of companies to almost complete market dominance of their respective sectors.
Things began with Microsoft, whose Windows operating system is still unchallenged on the desktop. Then came Google, which more or less owns the online search world (with the notable exception of the important Chinese market), and after that Facebook, which is probably hurtling towards 800 million users at the moment. What this means is that it is almost impossible for other companies to enter those particular markets and compete against the incumbent.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Android is under serious threat. Not so much commercially, where it continues to trounce its rivals and take an ever-larger market share around the world, but through legal threats. Of course, that's not just a problem for Google: as Techdirt's handy diagram illustrates, practically everyone in the smartphone space is suing everyone else. But the big difference is how the others are addressing this.
On
The H Open blog.
I've written plenty about why software patents should be resisted where they don't exist, and abolished where they do. But if I wanted further ammunition for my arguments I couldn't hope for a better example of software patent madness than what is happening in the smartphone sector.
On
Open Enterprise blog.