Android, Motorloa, Microsoft and Skype. What about the end user?
August 23rd, 2011Microsoft’s purchase of Skype and Google ’s [proposed] purchase of Motorola Mobility might make sense for their respective businesses but together they could be less good for the consumer.
As Hoover was to carpet cleaning, Skype is a universal brand that has practically entered the vernacular to describe any kind of unpaid for instant message communication, voice only or video call over the internet. Beyond its domestic market increasingly Skype is also being used in other areas such as business and media where it can be used to keep costs down. It has been able to do this because of its ubiquity.
Google wants to buy Motorola Mobile ostensibly to help in its multitude of ongoing patent battles involving its Android mobile operating system and while Google says it will run Motorola Mobility as a completely separate business it seems logical that Google will use its closer relationship with the handset maker to speed up development of Andoid. What this means for partner handset makers such as HTC, Samsung and LG has yet to be firmly established but whilst they have all made positive noises about the proposed aquisition, they can’t be too excited behind closed doors.
Microsoft has of course already forged a close partnership with Nokia in the hope that it will have a more pervasive platform on which to roll out Windows 7 Mobile with Nokia hoping that the the OS will reverse its declining fortunes.
Skype is currently available as an application on most mobile platforms and it has recently been upgraded to deliver video calling on both the Apple and Android platforms. It also has more than 600 million registered users.
With computing’s seemly inexorable shift towards mobile and Microsfot’s new ownership of Skype it seems likely that MS will do as much as it can to integrate Skype into Windows 7 Mobile with Nokia as its preferred platform and showcase development partner. Then there is the questions of Aps Vs HTML 5 and what if anything the rise of HTML 5 will mean for the app market. If apps start to wane as more app like service are offered via the web then it might seem that a VoIP telecoms platform like Skype would either have the option of closer integration with the mobile operating system or… not.
Back to Google and they already have their own under-sung chat service in Google Chat. As Android development ties in more with Motorola and computing shifts more towards mobile (witness the early start of this with the Motorola Atrix) it seems likely that Google would want to make more of its own offering in the VoIP area. Add to that the fact that Android is hands down the fastest growing mobile OS at the moment with over 50% of new handsets sold in the U.S. being powered by Android and the potential is too big to ignore.
Perhaps an interesting area to look at for possible answers is the experience of Apple’s Face Time Vs Skype. Apple launched Face Time last year as an open standard video calling VoIP service but it was only available on iPhone 4 thereby restricting usage to people with that handset. According to Appleinsider.com Face Time appeared to receive a luke-warm reception from all the other leading players in the market. Since then Skype has become available on iPhone 4 with video chat capability.
The questions then are will Skype’s 600+ million users be too much of a temptation for the likes of Google’s Android? Will Microsoft drive Skype down a more integrated development path based on its own Windows operating system both on Mobile and PC? The latter seems less likely but MS must surely want to do all it can to use Skype as a means to shift users to its own mobile OS.
With Google pulling in one direction in the confidence that it has critical mass with its Android OS and MS pulling in the opposite direction with Skype and its massive user base and given the general high level of acrimony in the mobile industry as is evident from the endless patent law suites that appear to crop up at an almost weekly rate one wonders if the consumer might end up being caught in the middle.
