Nick Jones

RIM gets a trojan. RIM sent around a customer notification on Friday admitting that Etisalat, one of their operators in the UAE had distributed an application that claimed to be a performance-enhancing software patch but was in fact a snooping trojan. In one sense there’s not a lot RIM can do about this as the application was from a “trusted” source – the operator. However it does raise a question about the viability of their certification and signing process which allowed a trojan to be signed and distributed, even by a source that was supposedly trustworthy. This illustrates the point I made a few blogs ago that appstores and applications will become a major channel for trojans. This will reflect badly on operators everywhere. It shows the world that an operator can’t always be trusted, and many can easily be manipulated by governments. This could impact their ability to enter new businesses where trust is critical, like banking and payment. This should also be a wake-up call to all the app stores – do more analysis of applications before certifying and stocking them.

Nokia sells its Symbian professional services unit to Accenture. Some observers commented that this was an important step to make Symbian more credible to enterprises; but I don’t think so. Only 175 staff are being transferred and this group was responsible for tasks like supporting handset manufacturers and chip companies porting Symbian. Which means there’s approximately zero corporate impact. 

Google says the future of mobility is the mobile web, not app stores. Well they would wouldn’t they? If you write web apps there’s a good chance you’ll incorporate Google technology like maps, which in turn means Google can see what your users are doing and so do better advertising. Basically Google’s business model is based on institutionalised snooping, and the web provides more snooping opportunities than Android apps. Also, in Q1 09 only about 0.2% of handsets shipped use Android, and Google can’t afford to wait until smartphones rule the mobile world and Android has achieved a decent share of the smartphone market.

It’s true that future mobile architectures will get thinner, but they likely won’t be as anorexic as Google hopes. As the mobile web improves we’ll get HTML5, more exciting APIs in Javascript, and browsers with built-in databases so there will be a slow shift towards the browser becoming a more general purpose platform. There will be more apps that can be implemented in the browser alone, which will reduce the need for platform-dependent code, and that will be good for both developers and Google. But this is a two-edged sword because mobile widgets will get better too. And what is a mobile widget? Basically an installable app written using web technology. And where will these widgets come from? In many cases, app stores. Added to which the new generation of app stores don’t just stock apps, they stock videos, ring tones, music and lots of other stuff. So despite Google’s hopes we’ll all be using app stores for a long time to come.