With the proliferation of smart phone platforms in today’s market the AWARE team thought it would be interesting to take a peak at what’s unfolding in the area of emergency related application development. Whilst wading through the masses of information it became pretty apparent that we needed to break this article up into digestible chunks. So for this first installment we figured we’d provide a backdrop of how this smartphone segment has matured.

I know for some us it’s pretty hard to recall life pre-dating the 2007 launch of the iPhone but I think it’s far to assume the smart people at Apple did their homework by researching the successes and failures of their competitors. So if we’re not starting there who gets the honor of being the first kid on the block? Well back in 1996 Nokia launched the Nokia 9000 Communicator, a clunky device by today’s standards but it was the first integrated product to offer voice and data (email) with basic calendar and contacts. The 9000 was on its own for a while until Ericsson (now Sony Ericsson) launched the first Symbian OS, touchscreen (grayscale not color) device in 2000. It had an interesting hybrid form factor that exposed a landscape orientated touchscreen that flapped over to convert it back to a traditional looking candy bar phone. That same year a little Canadian operation known as RIM launched a cellular version of their very successful Blackberry paging device. It looked like the familiar QWERTY keyboard device you know and love today minus the color display. The focus back then was a single device that allowed you to manage enterprise e-mail and make phone calls. Web browsing was limited WAP which supported simple text pages of news and weather content. Another platform we tend to forget about, but that has significant bearing on the segment was Danger’s Hiptop device (Sidekick). Dangers founder Andy Rubin (another former Apple employee) later went on to develop the Android OS. It’s also worth mentioning that carriers started rolling out network enhancements to handle packet data versus circuit switched (the mobile equivalent of dial-up) during this time enabling them to offer always-on data access for applications such as e-mail, browsing, and IM.

So the mobile OS landscape is forming early part of the last decade, outside of the US Symbian (the first open source platform) had become the dominant player. RIM becomes the de-facto device/service offering for enterprise customers. From enterprise its all about productivity applications, for consumers its messaging (text/IM) and personalization (ringtones and wallpaper content). As we skip through the years we see incremental enhancements to displays, processors, memory, and battery life. From a feature perspective we see better usability, more content and ubiquitous support for Location Based Services. Some manufacturers are starting to play around WiFi but it’s not widely implemented. With the CDMA network technology having limited support outside of the US Apple took a page from RIM’s playbook and rolled out a GSM iPhone in 2007. Four years and several device iterations later they’re launching a CDMA version with Verizon. So we’re all agreement the Apple iPhone not only looks good but it’s extremely intuitive to use…go figure! Add the already established iTunes content delivery mechanism and a worldwide network of eager developers, and you have yourself a game changer. As for the competition, Blackberry couldn’t seem to get a developer strategy together; Palm tried but failed to gain traction with their Pre and Web OS, eventually being gobble up by HP. And Microsoft…well I’m not really sure what they were trying to do? Early 2009 Google introduces the first open source Android OS device using Cupcake (Android 1.1). It’s no iOS killer, but the sheer pace of development that ensues enables them to catch up pretty quickly. Adoption of the open source OS by all major handset manufacturers and lack of exclusivity agreements sees Android devices launching with every major US carrier.  

A few key metrics from a Nielsen poll conducted in the US in November 2010 states a staggering 45 percent of buyers chose a smartphone over a feature phone purchase. Even with Apple locked to one US carrier, the quality of the iOS platform still commands 28.6 percent of the total US smartphone market, followed by Blackberry at 26.1 percent and Android at 25.6 percent. Depending on how you interpret the data iPhone is top of the heap. But, if you look smartphone purchases in the past 6 months, Android accounts for 40.8 percent of sales versus 26.9 percent for iOS. RIM isn’t down and out just yet they are continuing to maintain healthy market share with the introduction of Blackberry OS 6. It’s also interesting to note that each of these organizations have confirmed tablet strategies. Apple, again leading the charge, with Android and Blackberry close behind. The question is will this always be the case…or can Apple be trumped?

So why do I care about all this? One observation I made is that none of these platforms have planned support for CMAS on their roadmaps. However, programmable platforms enable carriers can push updates over the air or allow users to perform upgrades through desktop utilities. It will be interesting to see if carriers expose CMAS APIs to allow developers to create more robust CMAS enable applications of their own.

In our follow on article we will talk about emergency applications that have recently caught our attention.