Ever since Apple unleashed iPhone and changed the people’s perspective on their mobile phones, wireless providers were grappling with a future where their networks are fast becoming dump pipes. Even though iPhone itself is a walled garden of some kind, it (along with other Android based devices) helped tear down the walls built up by wireless providers for a long time. By breaking the ground underneath, smartphone platform providers are making wireless providers become completely irrelevant for the users. Alcatel-Lucent is damn serious on changing this. They strongly feel that they can imprint innovation on the DNA of the wireless providers and, also, making it super easy for developers.
The Problem
For a long time, wireless providers (especially, those in US) were curtailing innovation through their restrictive policies and walled garden approach. When smartphones became part of users’ daily workflow, innovation started flowing at a faster rate on these smartphone platforms and the wireless providers were fast becoming irrelevant with their networks turning into dump pipes. Actually, one should not be worrying about these telecom providers becoming dumb pipes. But, the fragmentation of smartphone platforms is a real pain point for many developers. App developers are forced to develop apps separately for every single mobile platform like iPhone, Android, Windows 7 Phones, etc.. This adds too much pressure on the developers requiring more resources from them and, thereby, slowing down the innovation. Ideally, the developers should be able to write once and deploy on all the available mobile platforms. The big egos of these mobile platform vendors combined with the greed of the telecom providers is not allowing such a thing from happening anytime soon.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Approach
Alcatel-Lucent is trying to solve the platform fragmentation problem from a completely different angle, from the side of mobile operators. They strongly feel that mobile operators can be convinced to listen to the users needs and make themselves “open”. They feel that it is possible to put the innovation on the DNA of mobile operators and, at the same time, solve the platform fragmentation problem for the developers. When I had a chance to talk to some folks from Alcatel-Lucent during Glue conference last summer and voiced my doubts about trusting the mobile operators (again), they had a passionate response to it. They asked me what is the guarantee that Google will continue with the innovation if we trust every single aspect of our lives with them. I found their concern valid. They told me that they are engaging with mobile operators talking to them about the need to be an open platform and empower the users. They feel that mobile operators are realizing this need clearly. Alcatel-Lucent approach is two fold
- Make mobile operators realize the need to be more open and innovative
- Build a platform for the mobile operators and offer an unified development platform for developers
By building an open platform for the mobile networks, they feel that they can solve the device fragmentation problem and give developers an unified platform to write the apps and deploy everywhere.
In order to make this dream a reality, Alcatel-Lucent released a developer platform in February of this year with support from many telecom providers. They followed it up by buying one of the darlings of API crowd, ProgrammableWeb. ProgrammableWeb is a comprehensive directory of web APIs with the sole purpose of evangelizing web as a platform. Alcatel-Lucent’s move to buy ProgrammableWeb is a smart move as it will help them reach out to developers and get them to their platform. Yesterday, they announced the acquisition of OpenPlug, a mobile software and applications development tools vendor. Through this acquisition, Alcatel-Lucent deepens its role in the applications space by delivering, as part of its integrated suite of developer tools, a platform where application developers can write an application once, which will then be translated to run on any of the five major mobile operating systems. This will be an important component in their platform helping them bridge various mobile operating systems and offer a single platform to the developers.
Conclusion
Alcatel-Lucent is putting together all the pieces in the puzzle. Let us keep in mind that it is not an easy problem to solve. On one hand, there is a need to unify the mobile platforms and make it easy for the application developers. On the other hand, there is a need to offer choice to both the developers and end users. It is a delicate task to manage these two needs.
In spite of the confidence shown by Alactel-Lucent, I am still skeptical of mobile operators embracing openness in order to allow innovation and user empowerment. If I am proven wrong in my skepticism, I will credit Alcatel-Lucent for single handedly doing something that the market forces couldn’t do in the previous decade(s).
(Cross-posted @ Krishnan Subramanian)
