Mobile Fragmentation, Patents Challenge Software Makers, Execs Say

The Android platform, which “loosely” powers devices as divergent as the Kindle Fire and smartphones, will only become more diverse, said David Bluhm, president of social game maker Z2Live. The headaches that Android fragmentation gives software makers is “the price of innovation,” he said. T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman said the carrier would love to see more integration, which is Apple’s big advantage, but openness is “what made Android successful.” Google’s genius is letting downstream developers do all the work in differentiating Android devices, freeing Google to improve the platform so fast that many manufacturers simply take the default version, said Mike McSherry, CEO of text-entry developer Swype.

Abolishing the Patent and Trademark Office would be the single best thing that could happen to mobile infrastructure, McSherry said, drawing applause. Patent fights have “caused a hell of a lot of questions” and required startups like Swype, recently bought by speech-recognition giant Nuance Communications, to “do a dance around the big boys” who own vast patent portfolios, he said. Brodman said he would get rid of device subsidization, which “distorts the economic reality of what devices actually cost,” makes consumers “devalue completely the hardware they're using” and forces carriers to do trade-offs between drawing new customers and rewarding loyal subscribers. But implementing that vision is “hard when the other three don’t want to play along,” he said, meaning AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.

Rhapsody President Jon Irwin said he most wants the ability to “write the app once” and have it work across all devices. Though iOS “breathed new life” into the music subscription business, Rhapsody is constrained within the Apple App Store, he said. “You're in there on their terms,” which would mean forking over a 30 percent cut for any users who sign up through the iOS app, he said: “My board’s not going to let me stay in business long” under those conditions. Hence, its app only works for pre-existing Rhapsody subscribers. HTML5, long seen as the silver bullet to device fragmentation, is a nonstarter for Rhapsody because the company needs a way to protect copyrighted content, Irwin said. Bluhm, also a fan of abolishing the PTO, agreed HTML5 wasn’t a panacea. “We produce user experiences that have to be ‘wow,'” and Z2Live can’t be limited by technology that gets standardized, goes through “committees” and can’t recognize new functionality like finger swipes, he said.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone, whose earlier versions were unpopular with T-Mobile customers going back a decade, is “finally good” and getting positive consumer feedback, Brodman said. It has “quite high” chances of becoming a credible rival to Android and iOS and sales of Windows Phone 7 devices have been “quite strong” for the two quarters T-Mobile has sold them, he said. McSherry said Windows 8 has a “compelling form factor,” noting its use in coming tablets that dock with keyboards. But Microsoft hasn’t leveraged its massive Xbox Live community to drive phone sales, and until the mobile products powered by Windows OS get sales “volume,” Z2Live won’t develop for it, Bluhm said: “I just don’t think they've done a very good job” in marketing. The new phone software is “very solid” but Android and iOS have a “tremendous lead,” Irwin said. “Don’t discount Microsoft’s cash” as a shortcut to market share, McSherry said, though he said Microsoft should have spent its marketing budget on device subsidies and not relied so heavily on Nokia. Amazon will certainly release its own phone and “subsidize the hell out of it,” he said.