Google and Mozilla draw battle lines in mobile browser wars

Google will benefit from acquiring Sparrow, Mozilla can't succeed with new OS, says analyst

The battle to own the mobile browser is intensifying as key competitors acquire new systems, and launch new software.

Google has acquired Sparrow, an iOS and Mac OS X email application, for a reported fee of $25m (£16m), while Mozilla has launched a mobile OS to compete with Microsoft, Apple and Google.

The Sparrow acquisition was announced by the firm's CEO, Dom Leca, in a blog: "We're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision – one that we think we can better achieve with Google.

"While we'll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users."

The Sparrow app has always been compatible with Gmail and Google Apps accounts, and, like Gmail, was allowed by Apple to compete with the built-in mail app for the iOS.

Tony Cripps, analyst at research firm Ovum, said the move "is an effort by Google to increase the ‘stickiness' of Gmail within the context of the Apple ecosystem. Apple would like people to move away from other services [such as Gmail] to their own, and if there is a better user experience with Gmail on an Apple device, that should minimise the extent that users will move away from other services".

Cripps said that by buying Sparrow, Google would reignite an on-going battle between vendors for services and apps.

"The ability to be interconnected through a particular ID is becoming as important as the apps themselves. So in the long-run, it is more important to acquire an app as an asset, and as there are many apps within the portfolio of both Apple and Google which are integrated from the same user account, it could sway the user to be more likely to use a particular app or service depending on the level of integration it has," he said.

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Google and Mozilla draw battle lines in mobile browser wars

Google will benefit from acquiring Sparrow, Mozilla can't succeed with new OS, says analyst

But Apple would not be able to restrict any benefit that Google has with its newly-owned Sparrow app, said Cripps.

"Apple has already moved to try to restrict the influence that Google has in its ecosystem; it has removed the Google maps application, but it is difficult to remove a mail application - it cannot block it as it may fall under an ‘anti-competitive' law.

"We haven't seen a situation like that since Microsoft's Internet Explorer was found guilty of being anti-competitive, as it did not make users aware that there were alternative browsers available on the Windows operating system. We haven't really seen that happen with smartphones yet and there is a possibility it could," he claimed.

If that were to happen for mobile operating systems, it could help non-profit organisation Mozilla to gain a foothold in the market with its new Firefox Mobile OS.

Mozilla has always advocated the use of open source software but the launch of a new operating system is not convincing, according to Cripps.

"It is difficult to see at this point in time how this effort can really be a challenger to the big three [Microsoft, Apple and Google] in the [mobile browser] space," he said.

On its website, Mozilla said that the browser "eliminates the need for apps to be built on platform-specific native APIs. Using HTML5, developers everywhere can write directly to the web".

This, it said, would "unlock many of the current limitations of web development on mobile, allowing HTML5 applications to access the underlying capabilities of a phone, previously only available to native applications".

Cripps said that although an operating system could get onto the market and may look competitive, it has a lot to do to compete with the likes of Apple and Google.

"Like previous operating systems like BB10 and WebOS, on the face of it the software is good but the truth is it has no support from application and content providers – it is lacking the core elements that make it attractive," he said.

He suggested that Mozilla's attempt could fail, because of the importance of integrated software and hardware, which Mozilla does not have.

The new operating system is being backed by a host of global mobile networks such as Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Sprint, but Cripps said this was no guarantee of success.

"The Limo platform was backed by numerous operators and did not succeed," he said.