Retrospect and Prospect--the battle and analysis of platform

Domain Hot words: ecosystem, data, information operators, cloud computing

The hottest keyword in the 2011 is probably not a platform. The reason is simple, the major events of the year have almost been closely related to the platform.

On the chip layer, the ARM architecture has taken up most of the mobile device's share, creating enormous pressure on the once undisputed overlord, Intel. One of Nvidia's successful transformation is particularly typical, it is based on arm Tegra played a beautiful turnaround, November 2011 released 4 nuclear mobile chip, consolidating its own with Qualcomm, TI, Samsung and so on as a first-line arm manufacturers status. And Tilera, such as nuclear chips, GPGPU and other heterogeneous computing architectures in the cloud computing environment also has great potential.

At the operating system level, the Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion Two new versions of the user interface have been strongly affected by mobile devices.

And the rapid rise of two mobile platforms, iOS and Android, has not only dramatically grabbed the market share and living space of Windows mobile/windows Phone, MeeGo, WebOS, Symbian, BlackBerry, Quietly lowering your PC to a normal device, Google and Apple have also made two platform companies, HTC, Samsung, Huawei, ZTE finished savage growth, but at the same time, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Motorola, Sony, BlackBerry and other giants have entered troubled, handsome change handsome , acquisitions, layoffs.

What is a platform?

We are most familiar with the technology platform (or development platform, computing platform), refers to software applications can run on the software and hardware environment, hardware architecture, operating systems, APIs, runtime, programming framework, etc. are common platforms. With the popularity of the web, browsers and their plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight are also platforms. Enterprise software development, and WebSphere, JBoss and other middleware and a variety of field-oriented business platform, are also platform.

WEB 2.0, Cloud computing, in order to share data, provide a more seamless experience and value-added, many Internet sites and services began to provide open APIs, Third-party developers can develop software applications, access to platform data or other features. This is the open platform in which we have heard the ear cocoon.

These are, of course, important platforms. But the platform has a more important meaning across the industry.

In February 2011, Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, revealed a very rare internal memo.

Engadget comments This is one of the most exciting and interesting CEO memos ever. He announced to Finnish colleagues that he had decided to forge a strategic alliance with Microsoft, while simultaneously bringing Symbian, Meego and Qt's three most popular platforms into a legacy system. Remember what he said?

"Competition between devices has evolved into competition between ecosystems." Our competitors are not capturing market share through equipment, but through a complete ecosystem. This means that we will have to decide to create, promote or join an ecosystem ...

"Nokia, our platform is on fire. ”

Although the Elop has been controversial, and nearly a year later today, he has not delivered a satisfactory answer, but he said a crucial point: the platform is the ecosystem. He also gave a clear definition of the ecosystem: "Not only the hardware and software of the equipment, but also the developers, applications, E-commerce, advertising, search, social applications, geographic services, unified communications and many other content." ”

Elop is likely to see the cruelty of future competition and Nokia's lack of combat capacity, only to finally choose an alliance, to join a ready-made ecosystem.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)