It seems to be a new law of technology: modern mobile operating systems take about a year to find their feet. Apple, of course, set the precedent. In 2007, iOS on the first iPhone wasn't even a smartphone OS; you couldn't write an app for it. A year later, it blossomed into the powerful platform we see today. Android 1.0, released in September 2008, was missing several pieces, but a year later the platform really took off with Android 2.0 and the Motorola Droid in October 2009.
Windows Phone and RIM: Evolving
With Windows Phone 7, we're seeing a platform in the middle of its year's worth of evolution. There are some Windows Phones on the market, and they're pretty good, but they're not dominating. That's okay. The first year, it seems, is a time to work out bugs, attract developers, and convince hardware makers to join up.
At the MIX11 conference yesterday, Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore charted out how the company will fill the gaps in Windows Phone with its Mango update, around a year after its release. Lots of new APIs, a multitasking model similar to the iPhone's, the ability for Chinese and Indian programmers to write apps, and, hopefully, Nokia hardware could make Windows Phone 2012 look very different than 2011.
RIM has only now started its journey, which is why I'm not writing it off. Yes, the BlackBerry Tablet OS is very incomplete. It's incomplete like the app-free iOS 1.0 was incomplete. But it's only fair to give the company the same year that everyone else has gotten. By 2012—if RIM executes well—it'll have native PIM (personal information manager) on its tablet, super-phones running the new OS, and a much more finished-looking ecosystem.
The exception to this rule is Palm, but that's understandable. Palm actually delivered a finished-looking platform with WebOS 1.0, but the company made too many mistakes—lousy advertising, weak marketing, and just being too small—to capitalize on its great software.
But How Shall We Get These Updates?
There's one thing that none of the mobile platform providers other than Apple have mastered, though, and that's figuring out how to send out timely updates.
This is a big deal, because without updates, you're reliant on new hardware to push out new versions of your OS. Google has managed this by having a huge number of aggressive hardware partners, but RIM, especially, doesn't release enough new models per year to fall back on this crutch.
Microsoft's Belfiore identified the central problem, although he tried to weasel his way around it: Wireless carriers don't approve software updates on any regular schedule. They look at them like new phones, and anyone following the perpetually floating release dates of, say, Verizon's LTE phones knows that carriers will hold onto phones for months until they've satisfied every test they can think of. But consumers who see one phone get an update, but not a similar phone, get much angrier than consumers who just don't see an unannounced new phone come to market. We're envious of what our neighbors have, not of what everyone doesn't have.
Slow updates go against the carriers' interests, too, which is part of why this situation is so frustrating. Every time a person buys a new phone, it's an opportunity to switch carriers. So the carriers should be interested in keeping existing customers on their current phones with fresh software, so they don't think about their options. Carriers also want to have a lot of OS providers to play off of each other. A situation where everyone ends up beholden to Apple, as the only compelling platform provider (because it's the only one with updates), shouldn't appeal to carriers either.
Microsoft needs to pour resources into wheedling, helping, and heck, even paying carriers to make sure that prompt updates get to consumers. I'm encouraged by Mango, and even by what RIM is showing with the PlayBook. If they follow Apple's and Google's learning curve, they'll have great offerings by early next year. Now they need to focus on making sure consumers get them.