| Microsoft demos mysterious FonePlus cellphone OS |
Jul. 28, 2006
Microsoft reportedly demonstrated some sort of prototype cellphone software platform during its Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) in Redmond July 27. The concept demo gave a glimpse of how ultra-low-cost cellphones might in the future bring connected, computer-like experiences to hordes of otherwise computerless people in developing areas of the world.
The Microsoft Research project, known as FonePlus, "consists of WebTV technology running on a cell phone," Mary Jo Foley reports on our sister site, Microsoft Watch. Regarding the project, Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, rhetorically asked, "Could this be your first computer?"
According to Foley, Mundie said that such a device -- whether running Windows CE or some other Microsoft OS -- would need to be able to open and read email, run a suite of productivity applications along the lines of Office Mobile, browse the Web, and access online video content.
A phone running WebTV? What on earth, we wonder, are they talking about?!
OK, so, here's our guess.
First, it's important to understand the problem that Microsoft is trying to solve. The cellphone market represents a fast-growing hundreds-of-millions of units opportunity, associated with hundreds-of-millions of end users. During the first quarter of 2006 alone, some 210 million mobile phones shipped, representing a 24 percent increase over the same period of last year. And of all this potential, the biggest growth opportunity, according to ABI Research, is the low end, sub-$40 cellphone. This is definitely not the sort of device that fits into Microsoft's current Windows Mobile Smartphone category.
To achieve a $40 cost goal, the hardware must be cost-reduced to the bone. There's no spare budget for loading a sophisticated embedded OS requiring 8-16 MB each of flash storage and DRAM execution memory, let alone the CPU resources to make such an OS run acceptably fast or the battery pack to run it all.
What to do?
We already know that there are Web browsers available for low-end cellphones that consist of a small chunk of software located in the device that works in conjunction with software on a remote server. This approach minimizes memory, processor, power requirements, and all of their associated costs, relying instead on remote servers to do the heavy lifting.
Examples of this approach, relative to Web browsers, include Opera Mini and Bitstream Thunderhawk.
Now, what works for browsers, can easily work for other software requirements, such as office-type apps, PIM apps, web-based email, streaming media -- you name it. The key here, is that because the device is connected to a network -- in the case of cellphones, a wireless network -- the resources in the device need only be sufficient to provide a user interface and some local storage for user configuration settings and some minimal user data.
  For perspective, consider the company's SPOT (smart personal objects technology) wristwatch initiative (left), and its Smart Display initiative (right), neither of which has lit the world on fire... yet. The watches have very little built-in hardware/software computing power, but depend on wireless services to receive subscribed-to information for their wearers. The displays, which are now no longer offered, acted like remote touch-screens working in tandem with a Windows XP Pro desktop somewhere within WiFi range.
So basically, FonePlus might be a "cellphone as thin-client" strategy. This, of course, has the "advantage" of making software available as services -- you pay for what you use. In fact, Microsoft has already begun making its software available on a "pay as you go" basis for AMD's highly cost-sensitive "50x15" program. 50x15 aims to endow 50 percent of the world's population with Internet access by 2015, and includes the Windows CE-based Personal Internet Communicate device, among other products.
Or, it could be more. At this point, however, Microsoft has shared very little about what its FonePlus R&D project is really all about -- so all bets are off.
For a few more details on what took place at FAM, read the complete Microsoft Watch story, which is available here.
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