无线终端屏幕应用的争夺

苏公雨

转载自《Wireless Week》

Look out, Adobe. Nokia teams with Silverlight to warm up richer applications..

Microsofthas announced imminent plans to introduce its Silverlight runtime tothe estimated 150 million devices running Nokia’s S60 on Symbian OS inthe second quarter of 2008. Silverlight, which launched last September,is a cross-browser multimedia player similar to Adobe’s Flash player.It runs on Windows, Mac and in the future Linux.
“Ourgoal is to create a completely homogenous platform across allimplementations so that an application developed for the desktop willrun on a mobile phone with the only changes required being the userinterface (UI) to accommodate potential differences in screenresolution,” says Brian Goldfarb, group product manager of Microsoft’sDeveloper Division.
This is the first step in enabling itsestimated 4 million .Net developers to write mobile applications. Thefirst mobile Silverlight implementation focuses on streaming mediaapplications and is on par with Flash Lite.
“This gives furthercredibility to Microsoft and raises the game in terms of beingcross-platform,” says Bola Rotibi, an Ovum analyst. “For Nokia, itdemonstrates that it is interested in opening up rich applications formobile devices.”
Sebastian Nystrom, director of TechnologyStrategy, at Nokia says, “There are a number of technologies thatWebsite developers want to use. We believe that Silverlight will haveappeal to these developers and will grow in importance, and we want tosupport all of the technologies.”
Adobe currently has a leg up,with existing Flash Lite support for about 500 million mobile phones,and an estimated 2 million developers using its tools. Adobe expects itto ship on over 1 billion phones by 2010.
This compares withSun’s installed base of 2.1 billion Java-enabled mobile devices and 6million Java developers. However, Sun has not released any statisticson Java FX, its mobile media technology, which is still in its earlystages.
Also Adobe recently announced plans to port Flash Lite tothe Windows Mobile operating system running on an estimated 11 millionphones, which is expected to grow to 20 million in 2008. Anup Muraka,director of technical marketing for Mobile and Devices at Adobe notes,“Microsoft and Adobe will compete on some fronts and work together onothers to provide a richer environment for Windows Mobile devices.”
“Thisis not a battle as such,” says Ovum’s Rotibi. “It is really aboutleveraging your development community to allow them to buildapplications that cross a number of different platforms, whether thatbe for desktop or mobile applications.”
FUTURE OF MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT
Thefirst implementation of Silverlight and Flash Lite 3 are only the firststep in mobile applications development. “One of the issues withSilverlight 1.0 and Flash Lite 3 is they are more aimed at media,”notes Jeffrey Hammond, a Forrester Research analyst. “They don’tcontain the full programming frameworks you see with the full Flash orSilverlight 2.0 experience.”
The real opportunity is forMicrosoft to get the full Silverlight 2.0 mobile compatibility becausethat will let developers create full-blown .Net applications in themobile space. At the same time, Adobe Air support will provide the samekind of rich capabilities for developers to use Adobe’s moresophisticated Flex platform. Both companies have announced plans toenable these richer applications.
But developers are not going tobe able to just port over existing Web applications into these mobileenvironments, notes Rotibi. They will have to rethink the applicationsfor smaller screen sizes, more constrained memory and ergonomic factorsresulting from the lack of mouse and full-blown keyboards.
DISINTERMEDIATION OR NEW REVENUES?
Oneof the key challenges new technologies such as Flash Lite andSilverlight bring to carriers are threats to existing revenue streamsfrom the walled-garden approach of selling additional services likeselling music and advertising. Hammond notes, “The carriers are doing apretty good job of keeping control of the native applications. But ifyour browser supports rich media, it might be difficult to police theuse of new services. Once you build that neutral pipe, it is difficultto watch that pipe without irritating the customer.”
DigitalRights Management (DRM) technology is expected to play some role inprotecting revenue streams. “DRM will be a feature of Silverlight 2,”Goldfarb says. “Microsoft’s DRM technologies are already widelydeployed in mobile handsets from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson, LG and others as well as with mobile operators such asVerizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telefonica and NTT DoCoMo.Additionally Nokia’s Ovi Music Service, Napster and Rhapsody are allbased on Microsoft’s DRM technologies.”
The two main targets ofthe enhanced user experience are expected to be higher ad revenues andhigher average revenue per user (ARPU) rates, notes Julie Ask, aJupiterResearch analyst, who forecasts a $2.9 billion market for mobileadvertising in 2011. She says that a lack of a compelling userexperience is inhibiting the use of mobile data services. But thiscould change with better applications delivered via tools likeSilverlight and Flash Lite.
A JupiterResearch Report on MobileInternet notes that NTT DoCoMo was able to convert 8.4 million (out of40 million total) low ARPU subscribers to the i-mode data servicewithin 18 months after introducing a Flash cast service. The servicedelivers information into mobile Flash-based widgets that automaticallydownload new updates. These subscribers now drive an incremental $3.25per month to the operator.
“Everyone is in the business of makingmoney, and the question is, what is the best way of making money. We atNokia believe it is making sure consumers have the best choices,”Nystrom says. “People tend to go where the best service is, and maybesomeone else can help offer these. We are seeing that most carriers arerealizing they are good offering some services and not so good atoffering others. In the end, keeping your customers is good business.”