Open Mobile Still on the Way, AT&T's Donovan Said

The ideal mobile ecosystem is still one that's partly closed, such as the iPhone App Store, but the trend is toward greater openness, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan said.

Like other technologies, mobile is evolving from more closed environments, such as "walled gardens" restricted to carrier-supplied applications, to more open environments, Donovan said during an onstage conversation at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco. The iPhone ecosystem represents a step along that path, he said. Asked whether that evolution has reached the point of an open-source ecosystem like that of the Android platform, Donovan said it hasn't quite. "Until we find a healthy system where everyone gets paid and friction is low, then I don't think we've tipped past the midpoint," Donovan said. Applications have to be able to get easily from developers to consumers, with effective billing and payment systems, he said.