All of that is changing now. Today smart phones are more capable as computing devices than the hardware that these other operating systems were developed on. Which begs the question why don't they use one of these operating systems?
In fact they do. Google, Nokia and probably others are basing their operating systems on linux and of course the iPhone from Apple is based on the Mac OS which is based on unix.
They try to hide this as much as possible, but it gives us a peek at the future. The biggest reason that linux or unix work so well is that these operating systems were well designed from the start and run on very light weight hardware.
Of course Microsoft has their CE operating system and will continue to push that as well.
One thing that has puzzled me for awhile is why each vendor seems to want to create a closed system. Software developers who develop for one smart phone will no doubt want to develop for all smart phones. The typical way this is done is by supporting applications that run within the web browser. This is a great strategy, but I think it is a bit short sighted.
In talking to people and using online applications, such as the editor for this blog, I have found that while browser based applications seem to work, they have issues. The most notable is frequent updates that break things. This is fine for social networking or casual blogging, but it isn't fine for a mission critical application that you use to make money.
For example, if you are a reporter that has a daily blog, you want the software that you use for blogging to work the same today as it did yesterday. If one day you start using it and it's broken because a bug was introduced, you want the option to fall back to the version you used yesterday.
Some sites do a good job of this, but many do not.
Also, while many applications do require internet access, some do not. If an application doesn't require internet access or it only requires occasional access then it seems logical that it could be independent of the browser.
Most applications written up until a few years ago didn't have any internet connectivity.
What we have is a very large set of applications that could be potentially ported to a smart phone and possibly be very useful there. These applications are often only Windows based or linux, or Mac. Some have been ported to all the major platforms.
One of the portable application frameworks is QT. QT was recently acquired by Nokia and now Nokia is creating a smart phone operating system that supports QT. I believe this is a very astute move by Nokia. It is the kind of move that I would hope other vendors recognize and step up to supporting QT on their smart phones as well.
While every vendor would love to have their smart phone be the phone that everyone uses, the fact remains that the more applications that you can offer for your phone the better it will sell.
We saw Apple initially close the door on apps saying that they should be developed to run in Safari. They quickly changed that and we saw a huge number of apps written in a short period of time.
Now we are seeing all the smart phone vendors putting together their answer to the iPhone. If they want to beat Apple then they need to adopt a standard API so that software developers can write applications that can run on any phone. Open systems will ultimately win.
We have seen linux start to take over the OS market and ultimately I believe all operating systems will be based on linux. There is really no reason that even Microsoft can't move to linux and in fact there have been rumors that they are ultimately going that way.
Creating standard API's that are supported on all devices is reasonable and I believe necessary in order for hardware vendors to stay in business. Think of the operating system as if it were the road and the application as if it is the car. Every car can drive on every reasonably smooth highway. Certainly there are special cases, but in general if you were to build a car that could only be driven on half the highways you it wouldn't sell.
I will watch with interest the unfolding of the smart phone operating system wars. It is my belief that the winners will be those that embrace open standards, like linux and QT. The losers will be those that try to create a closed standard.
While Apple hit a home run with the iPhone if they want to remain a viable competitor they need to embrace an open standard so that developers can develop applications for all smart phones. While they clearly have an advantage today, if the combined market of other smart phone makers were to adopt many open standards they could be a minor player a few years from now.
