Mobile Moves: Jostling "Back in the Pack"Mobile Moves: Jostling "Back in the Pack"

Developments for Nokia and Windows Phone, as well as HP and webOS, and Google/Android. But what everyone's waiting on is the iPhone 5.

It has been a big week for mobility announcements, with things popping on both the device and operating system fronts, however the action was coming not from the leaders but from "back in the pack". Of course, the way things move in the mobile market things could follow the line from Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changing" where "The first one now will later be last"-- but probably not.

Nokia started the rush, announcing the first Windows Phone 8 devices, the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 smartphones. The 920 features an 8-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, image stabilization, NFC capability, and a wireless charger. In what cannot be portrayed as a positive sign, the company's shares dropped 10% that afternoon.

Despite CEO Stephen Elop's decision to go all-in on Windows Phone 18-months ago, Nokia continues to sell more devices running its earlier Symbian operating system than Windows Phone devices. The company is hoping to reverse that this year, but it will take some major strides to reverse its downward spiral. For the second quarter 2012, the company booked a loss of 826 million Euros on sales of 7.542 billion Euros. Smartphone sales fell 34% from 2.351 billion Euros to 1,541 billion Euros from the same quarter last year; basic phone sales dropped 11% from 2.568 billion to 2.291 billion Euros.

In a rather outlandish prediction, IDC is saying that Windows Phone market share will grow to 19.2% by 2016. IDC pegs the current market share at 5.2%, which is more than twice what other market researchers are crediting it. I try to keep an open mind about these things, but given the dynamics of the mobile device market, I can't see that happening.

While it is not likely to spur a rapid pick-up in sales, Windows Phone 8 does finally start to address some of the enterprise concerns with the OS. High on the list is on-device encryption (notably lacking in earlier versions of the OS), and a secure-boot feature that will make it more difficult to sneak malware onto the device. One area that is still unclear is the level of support for mobile device (MDM) management systems, which are becoming a key element in enterprise mobility.

In the meantime, Hewlett-Packard released two beta versions of its webOS mobile operating system, one running on the Ubuntu Linux desktop, and one for the "OpenEmbedded" development environment. HP acquired webOS when it bought Palm in April 2010, but then announced it was discontinuing development of webOS devices in August the following year. That flip-flopping was a contributing element to the departure of HP CEO Leo Apotheker. HP had indicated its intention to release webOS to the development community when it exited the business, but we'll have to see if anything significant comes of it. My guess: no.

On the Android front, Motorola Mobility launched three new handsets, the first since it was acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, the deal closing in May. Resurrecting a fabled Motorola band name, the three are dubbed the Droid Razr HD, the Droid Razr MAXX HD, and the Droid Razr M; all three run the latest Android OS, version 4.1 or "Jelly Bean". The Droid Razr HD and Droid Razr MAXX HD will have 4.7-inch displays, extended battery life and 4G/LTE support; the lower end Droid Razr M will have a 4.3-inch display. While these new handsets should help to some degree, comScore puts the company's share of the US smartphone market at 11.7%, far behind Samsung's 25.5% and LG's 18.8% shares, so Google/Motorola Mobility still has some catching up to do.

While all of this is going on, the only thing anyone is talking about is the pending release of the iPhone 5. The rumor mill is spinning full tilt and the consensus seems to be the new version will support LTE, FaceTime over cellular, and a new connector so we can throw out all of our older chargers--the bets are evenly split on NFC support. There's also a very strong rumor that there's a 7-inch iPad on the way. We'll have a lot more to say about that after the official announcement planned for September 12.