The Oracle

While not exactly blue skies, there was a distinct lack of storm clouds in Oracle’s third quarter results released this week. True, the company came in at the low end of its own expectations, saying that software licensing revenues were up 16% for the quarter ended in February. It had been hoping for a jump of between 15-25%.

But Oracle’s recent acquisition strategy is providing a nice updraft. With a much stronger application software than IBM - and a wider middleware line-up than SAP - Oracle is now the only company other than Microsoft able to sell a full “stack” of software to corporate customers.

The results speak for themselves - new database and middleware licenses were up 20% in the quarter. And overall, Oracle took in $1.3bn in net income, an increase of 30%, on revenues which grew 21% to $5.3bn. The company’s CFO says that its taking more time to close deals these days but predicts that current quarter will see sales growth of 10-20%. 

If the US is on the brink of recession, maybe someone should tell the folks at Oracle?

LTE versus WiMax debate rumbles on

The LTE versus WiMax debate won’t be silenced, but there’s really just one question that needs to be answered. Does LTE offer a more natural evolution path than WiMax for existing 3G players? If it does, WiMax will struggle to ever get the support it needs to become a mass-market offer, even with its time-to-market advantage.

The fact that more 3G operators are coming out of the woodwork and backing LTE suggests there is some commonality, but Intel – the daddy of WiMax – continues to insist LTE is an entirely different technology.

I put this point to Jeanette Fridberg, head of product marketing for chief LTE backer Ericsson, earlier today. Fridberg accepts that LTE cannot re-use 3G radio technology or base stations, and has no advantage over WiMax in that respect (it is, in fact, based on the same air interface as WiMax). But she says LTE can be deployed at 3G base station sites, which account for up to 80% of the capital expenditure.

So what’s to stop an operator from deploying WiMax at 3G sites? Not much, apparently, except that WiMax base stations provide less coverage than LTE and 3G ones. That means a 3G operator rolling out WiMax would have to build more sites to fill the gaps in coverage, which could be not only costly but also inefficient, leaving it with sites that overlap in coverage.

The unresolved question is how much of this coverage advantage stems from LTE’s reliance on FDD technology, as opposed to the TDD used by WiMax (FDD uses two spectrum channels, one for sending information and one for receiving it, while TDD uses a single channel for both). If an FDD version of WiMax would level the playing field then Ericsson will have to be on its toes. Supporters of WiMax say they are working on an FDD system now.

Shattering the mobile experience

There’s been a lot of activity around mobile software platforms and application development this week. Microsoft has made its Silverlight web platform available on some of Nokia’s phones, Google has revealed that its own Gears platform can now be used on Windows Mobile devices and Apple is getting ready to launch its software development kit for the iPhone later today.

It makes the mobile sector sound like a rich emporium for the end user. But it really goes to show just how fragmented the industry has become. Take the iPhone, for example. It may be a great-looking device – possibly even a revolutionary design – but it presents third-party application developers with a tough choice. Do they invest precious time in writing a version of an existing application for the iPhone? Or is it better to invest those resources in coming up with a new application for a Symbian handset?

Making that decision probably means spending even more time analysing the market and trying to figure out whether the iPhone will become a serious rival to Symbian smartphones. And meanwhile the customer is left waiting.

Sadly, things look set to get even worse with the summer arrival of Android, Google’s hyped operating system for mobile phones. Android is eagerly awaited by those who reckon it will lower pricing and improve the experience of using mobile applications. Yet it’s described as “another bloody platform” by Carl Uminski, the chief technology officer of Trutap. That’s telling, because Trutap is exactly one of the third-party application developers Google would assume is on its side.

Uminski’s not the only one feeling exasperated. Charles Wiles says he’s working to bring Windows-compatible software to Android and other capable web browsers. Who is he? The product manager for Google Gears.