May 30, 2010
Closed Development Architecture, not just for Apple anymore.
Well its official, the new tablet computer in the works from computing giant HP will now be running Palm’s web OS software, ditching windows 7 in favor of a more touch-friendly, intuitive operating system. Recently, HP bought out Palm in order to acquire rights to the software, and now Web OS is in the process of being tweaked to do exactly what HP wants it to do. HP has been working on their counter to Apples incredibly successful iPad, dubbed Slate, since around January and it’s set for release before the end of the current fiscal year. So, think around mid to late October. Just in time for people to buy them and then give them to other people. Completely counterproductive if you ask me, but I digress.
The reason any of this is worth looking at, writing about, or most importantly, caring about is because of the impact this move by HP will have on software giant Microsoft. I’ll be brief: Microsoft doesn’t make hardware aside from a few keyboards and that cool looking arc mouse that breaks after 3 months. They make windows, office, and a few other useless applications like Internet Explorer. They are nearly entirely dependent of software revenues, mostly from the aforementioned Windows OS and Office productivity suite, to stay in business. That’s where the problem arises.
HP’s move to build its own tablet PC operating system off of Palms Web OS is showing a growing trend of what has been dubbed vertical production in the market for tablet PC’s. When something is vertically developed, everything is done in house by the tablet PC’s manufacturer. So, instead of slapping Windows on a set of hardware specifications, each tablets OS is proprietary. Given that tablets, once they sufficiently advance in size, interface, and performance, are generally being hailed as the future of personal computing, the impacts of this could be huge, and there are two of them.
One, this will serve to break Microsoft’s stranglehold on the computer OS market. Some version of Windows is installed on just under 90% of the world’s computers and I’m writing this on a machine running windows 7. If tablets really are the wave of things to come and tablet manufacturers each write their own operating systems, Microsoft could find itself in a heap of trouble stemming from a severely reduced market share on its Windows operating system.
Even if the company manages to put out its own tablet PC, it will be facing real market competition for the first time in over a decade. Already Apple has the first to market advantage with what amounts to an overweight iPod touch. Soon, Google and HP will be releasing tablets, each running a different operating system. Google intents to run a beefed up version of their Android Smartphone software and HP will run WebOS. As tablets gain market share, and they will, evidenced by the success of the iPad, Microsoft will find itself not only losing OS revenues but also revenues from other softwares that either don’t run on these proprietary operating systems or lose out to lower cost alternatives produced by third parties, like apples writer application for iPad that essentially takes on the role of Microsoft word.
Second, standardization could go out the window. As evil as some people think Windows is and as much butthurt as it can elicit, the fact that it holds such a huge portion of the global OS market gives software developers a standard worth adhering to. If Windows market share drops siginficantly, this set of standards goes away and now developers are being forced to code for Web OS, Android, and whatever else tablet manufacturers cook up. This will lead to specialized software developers and potentially higher prices for applications as developers are forced to specialize. In addition, this lack of standards could lead to the same nightmare that occurred in the early days of word processing: various, incompatible formats. Think about it. Writer for WebOS saves your work in a .word format, an application that does the same thing for Googles Android OS saves it as a .carrot or whatever, and before long nobody can look at each other’s work and we’re all stuck in different, Apple-like closed development cycles. Scary…
Now, I could be wrong about all this and the switch to WebOS by HP will have no real effect and Microsoft, along with Starbucks and Wal-Mart, will continue to rule the world (that’s a joke). However, this is one scenario that could reasonably come to pass. Just saying.
Tl;dr: HP is no longer using Windows 7 on its tablet PC. This could signify a move towards proprietary tablet PC operating systems that would have major implications on both Microsoft and the computing world as a whole.
Nova Americana 