images.jpegAT&T, speaking at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco, said that it intended to standardize on the OS for AT&T branded smartphones, reported Macworld today.

This could be an excellent move for the proliferation of e-books, as, in my opinion, they suffer just as much from OS babel as from format babel. As a matter of fact, OS babel is one of the major causes of format babel. Just think—we have Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Apple and Android, all mutually exclusive as to software

According to the article, this AT&T consolidation would not affect units such as the iPhone (and I suspect the Blackberry) because they are just stand-alone devices that take advantage of AT&T services. There is no question, however, that it would affect Windows Mobile devices, now primarily made by HTC.

This is a great move by AT&T and will certainly reduce, probably dramatically, their support costs. So what will they choose? My own prediction would be Symbian. It’s the most used smartphone OS in the world and is extremely mature. Additionally, Nokia has completed its acquisition of Symbian and will shortly make it an open source OS under the Symbian Foundation.

Java just isn’t robust enough, especially down at the hardware level. Windows Mobile is pretty much a nightmare, unless it gets a complete GUI redesign, and generation 7 keeps getting put off. It also has pretty extreme hardware requirements. The Palm OS is, even Palm admits, a dead issue, and there is still no sight of Palm’s replacement. Also, Palm has become pretty small bananas in the industry nowadays.

Finally there is Android, an unproven system with few applications available and no formal structure for its future development. It’s also controlled by Google, and if I were still in the corporate world I can tell you that I would very reluctant to put my future in the hands of someone who could hold me to ransom (and the same could be said for Windows Mobile).

In any event, it’s an exciting time, and I firmly believe that a reduction in OS babel will help the e-book market tremendously. Kudos to AT&T.

It is worth noting that, of the mobile OS platforms mentioned, Fictionwise currently has an eReader application for all except Blackberry, which it will add in 1Q 2009, and Android, which it will presumably add along with other Linux-based systems in 1H 2009. —C.M.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Android runs on top of Linux, but Android aps are Java-based. So a generic Linux reader won’t work on Android phones.

    Mobipocket has a Java-based reader, which runs on EInk devices (including the Kindle) and on Blackberry, with an alpha version undergoing testing for some Java phones. They have not said whether they are developing an Android varient.

    If eReader is developing a Blackberry version, it will presumably be Java-based and might form the basis for an Android port.

  2. Java is solid enough the problem is just that j2me dont offer a complete multitasking system but needs an host.

    Id also go with symbian, because it’s stable and sold seperately from hardware licence with montavista linux(the os used on sonyreader fyi) as the only real contender.

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