One of the surprise announcements from the 2010 Mobile World Congress came from a strategic alliance between Orange and Intel. The French telecom giant announced its intent to promote development and delivery of services that are optimized for devices that have Intel’s Atom microprocessors inside and leverage the Linux-based MeeGo software platform. As Caroline Gabriel explains in this article in “Rethink Wireless”, Orange’s initiative with Intel aims to avoid a role as big dumb pipe by promising a consistent user experience that spans desktops, laptops, handsets, TVs and (one would assume) as many combinations and permutations of user experience (UX) as the technology can enable.

I can only ask whether this trip is necessary and whether it will necessarily be effective. Atom-equipped devices running Linux-derivative operating systems are, indeed proliferating. Until the Orange announcement, MeeGo’s future was uncertain. The platform, itself, is the product of merged development efforts combining the Linux-based Maemo platform – an “open source” effort underwritten by Nokia – and Moblin (Mobile Linux) efforts initiated by Intel.

Application developers, integrators and software vendors are the force multipliers destined to make Recombinant Communications (RC) successful. When it comes to smartphones, for instance, applications developers have voted with their fast-moving fingers. And the results are pretty clear. In spite of Apple’s iron fisted control of the release process, the iPhone App Store offers more than 100,000 apps. That compares to Google’s 20,000 titles. Then it’s a long-distance call to the next tier of retail outlets, where RIM is approaching a five-figure total and Palm’s WebOS has just hit four figures. The proliferation of platforms will ultimately lead to “developer fatigue”. In the spirit of “Beta versus VHS” or “HDDVD versus BlueRay” it may turn out that even two is too many.

Even though success is by no means assured, choosing the MeeGo platform with Intel as a partner is a gamble that’s worth taking early. Orange is right to focus on the quality of user experience across multiple “screens” and, in case nobody has noticed, the iPhone OS, Android and MeeGo are all Linux variants. I’m not a coder, but I see a common denominator here. What the developer community looks for is fair-handedness in terms of support and revenue models. What users look for is consistency across multiple platforms. A service provider of Orange’s size and footprint has an opportunity to offer both.

Categories: Articles

Tags: mobile services, Orange, Intel, Recombinant Communications