A few weeks back, I was caught up in a discussion regarding the emergence of Azingo, a new Linux variant for smartphones, and how the company was attempting to conquer a trail already marked out by the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP).  I’d like to see ALP successful.  This doesn’t come from any disdain for closed platforms or a belief in Linux as technology’s savior (I tried to love Ubuntu, really I did).  I just want to upgrade to a platform that can meaningfully move forward and still allow me to use my favorite apps.

Practical and financial concerns have kept me on the sidelines of the current struggles for mind and market share in the mobile world.  I’m still getting along fairly nicely with my old Treo 650, using mobile e-mail and internet only when desperately needed, and syncing once or twice a week to my desktop Mac.

All this exposition aside, I don’t quite understand what the way forward is for ALP, as much as it saddens me.  Problem number one is painfully obvious:

Where’s the hardware?  There appears to be a fairly firm commitment by Emblaze to put out a couple of devices by the middle of the year, and that may answer a lot of my questions about what makes the platform special, provided a device shows up in Europe or America.

Getting on a device is great, but getting that device offered by wireless providers and for consumers to pay for it is the end game, and I’m not sure where ALP fits in. As an avid follower of the market, I know what it’s got.

But as an end user, I don’t know what it can do for other end users who are platform agnostic and swayed by marketshare, sexiness, and word-of-mouth.
BlackBerry has e-mail.  Apple has the best entertainment platform and leverage from the dominance of the iPod and iTunes Music Store.  Android has Google.  Palm’s Pre and webOS aren’t out yet, but Synergy looks to be a compelling and unique offering.  Windows Mobile has, um, well, it has Microsoft behind it.  ALP’s name alone is off-putting.

What does ALP bring to the table that these other platforms don’t?  As an end user, I can say confidently that the word ³Linux² means absolutely nothing to the masses who will produce the sales numbers needed for success 3rd party development is more important, but still not as critical as the average PDA-247 reader makes it out to be.  BB still suffers terribly on this matter and iPhone conquered for a year without sanctioned 3rd party apps. For the typical buyer, the device does its job if it can reasonably handle calling, internet, e-mail, entertainment, and PIM out of the box.

UI is important, but ALP appears pretty ³middle of the road² from what I’ve seen thus far.  It’s more attractive and capable than BB or your basic WinMo, but lacking some of the flash and sparkle on iPhone or webOS. The only unique thing I’ve seen on ALP is the widgets on the home screen. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

What I’ve seen from ACCESS thus far is that they’re putting first things first, promoting the benefits to hardware vendors and service providers, especially drawing attention to the opportunity for service providers to customize.  But this strategy thus far isn’t really convincing anyone about how ALP will sell itself to the consumer.

What strikes me, with the tone of the sales pitch being put out to the providers, is that ALP is being positioned as the new go-to budget OS for the plethora of devices out there pretending to be smartphones but not actually running a full smartphone OS. Think devices from Samsung or LG, like the Eternity, Instinct, Dare, Versa, and so forth.  I’m definitely not saying that ALP is in any way the same as these crippled, semi-in-house proprietary operating systems.  ALP may very well be the most advanced and flexible mobile OS yet.  But that’s not what convinces masses of customers to fork over their cash.  Coming in cheap just might.

With the right licensing terms from ACCESS, hardware vendors could drop their “faker” platforms and provide budget devices ready to compete with the big boys.  ALP could presumably also aim to replace WinMo in some lower-end smartphones.  I don’t know if ACCESS will start out making a lot of money that way, but it’s got to be more money than a platform that’s reached version 3.0 without actually having been sold on a device yet.

I just can’t see how ALP can enter the market and think to compete at the top end, given the years of mindshare advantage and hordes of 3rd party developers that the big boys have already. If, however, ALP starts from the bottom, staying cheap to replace the fake smartphone OS’s, it can at least get into the hands of users, draw in 3rd party developers by virtue of user base, and then strike at the top later, hopefully with a killer name. James.