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Analyst Opinion - The one thing you typically get when you follow the news coming from the big mobile industry conference currently being held in Barcelona is that the time to buy a new phone is late in the second half of this year. Most of the stuff folks are excitedly talking about will actually be available around that time. Of course, that is also when the second shoe drops and you realize much of the really cool stuff will be hitting Europe or Asia first. Thank goodness for folks like Apple and Palm who tend to favor the U.S. otherwise I'd likely be in terminal phone envy.
What I think is interesting is that the smart phone market, which has many similarities to the original PC market, is following a similar path, but with some interesting differences. Some of the players are the same in that you have Microsoft with their renamed Windows Mobile platform going up against the Apple only iPhone, but you have Palm emulating Apple, and Google emulating Microsoft as well. You also have Nokia who appears to be trying a blend of the two models using an OS they own, but are licensing it out for others to use. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Nokia's latest expensive phone really sucks.
Let's talk about some of this stuff this week.
Best News out of Show
For me, the best news coming out of the show had nothing to do with any of the core players, but with something that has annoyed me from the first day I ever owned a cell phone. And that is the inability for phone firms to agree on hardware interfaces; particularly for chargers. Well 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, Mobilkom Austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile, and Vodafone all agreed to a common standard based on the USB interface and enforced by 2012 (I would've hoped for yesterday).
The fact that the majority of these folks are carriers incredibly interested in standardizing so they can keep inventory costs down would indicate that we may actually make progress on this one, and that the folks who aren't on this list (hello Apple) will be forced to comply in order to meet carrier requirements.
It would be wonderful to just have one charger that worked with all phones. [Editor's note: Many TG Daily readers have already suggested there exists a standard, namely the micro-USB port which allows for in-car charging on a conventional jack.]
RIM, Apple and Palm vs. Microsoft and Google (with Nokia Hedging)
Back in the early days of the PC there were three big hardware centric companies -- including Apple, Commodore, and Atari. Commodore (who actually led the market in terms of market share during the 80s) and the original Atari didn't make it, and Apple almost went under about a decade ago. There were two platform companies, IBM and Microsoft, but Microsoft took the vastly larger IBM out at the knees and we ultimately ended up with Apple's hardware centric position and Microsoft's software centric position.
With Cell phones we are back to exploring this same argument again, but the field has changed. Microsoft is the largest player, and yet they appear to be more in IBM's old roll. Google is relatively stronger today than Microsoft was in the late 80s, and both Apple and RIM are considered the companies to beat. Nokia, who remains the largest cell phone company, is playing to a different drummer and represents a wild card. The most exciting phone so far in 2009 is the Palm Pre, and Palm used to be where Apple is now, creating the PDA market as Apple created the current-gen smartphone market.
It's as if this were part of a series of experiments where certain variables are changed to see what result is better than what initially occurred. For the developer this is a confusing mess because each platform now has its own application store and, should the market follow applications like they did on the PC, it will come down to whomever gets most of the compelling ones (and here Apple has an impressive lead).
One big difference today is that modern compiler technologies are far more advanced, as are operating systems. Strong limitations don't exist today in modern software as they did a decade or more ago in PC spaces and antique software.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE: Calling the Race, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Wrapping Up...
What I think is interesting is that the smart phone market, which has many similarities to the original PC market, is following a similar path, but with some interesting differences. Some of the players are the same in that you have Microsoft with their renamed Windows Mobile platform going up against the Apple only iPhone, but you have Palm emulating Apple, and Google emulating Microsoft as well. You also have Nokia who appears to be trying a blend of the two models using an OS they own, but are licensing it out for others to use. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Nokia's latest expensive phone really sucks.
Let's talk about some of this stuff this week.
Best News out of Show
For me, the best news coming out of the show had nothing to do with any of the core players, but with something that has annoyed me from the first day I ever owned a cell phone. And that is the inability for phone firms to agree on hardware interfaces; particularly for chargers. Well 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, Mobilkom Austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile, and Vodafone all agreed to a common standard based on the USB interface and enforced by 2012 (I would've hoped for yesterday).
The fact that the majority of these folks are carriers incredibly interested in standardizing so they can keep inventory costs down would indicate that we may actually make progress on this one, and that the folks who aren't on this list (hello Apple) will be forced to comply in order to meet carrier requirements.
It would be wonderful to just have one charger that worked with all phones. [Editor's note: Many TG Daily readers have already suggested there exists a standard, namely the micro-USB port which allows for in-car charging on a conventional jack.]
RIM, Apple and Palm vs. Microsoft and Google (with Nokia Hedging)
Back in the early days of the PC there were three big hardware centric companies -- including Apple, Commodore, and Atari. Commodore (who actually led the market in terms of market share during the 80s) and the original Atari didn't make it, and Apple almost went under about a decade ago. There were two platform companies, IBM and Microsoft, but Microsoft took the vastly larger IBM out at the knees and we ultimately ended up with Apple's hardware centric position and Microsoft's software centric position.
With Cell phones we are back to exploring this same argument again, but the field has changed. Microsoft is the largest player, and yet they appear to be more in IBM's old roll. Google is relatively stronger today than Microsoft was in the late 80s, and both Apple and RIM are considered the companies to beat. Nokia, who remains the largest cell phone company, is playing to a different drummer and represents a wild card. The most exciting phone so far in 2009 is the Palm Pre, and Palm used to be where Apple is now, creating the PDA market as Apple created the current-gen smartphone market.
It's as if this were part of a series of experiments where certain variables are changed to see what result is better than what initially occurred. For the developer this is a confusing mess because each platform now has its own application store and, should the market follow applications like they did on the PC, it will come down to whomever gets most of the compelling ones (and here Apple has an impressive lead).
One big difference today is that modern compiler technologies are far more advanced, as are operating systems. Strong limitations don't exist today in modern software as they did a decade or more ago in PC spaces and antique software.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE: Calling the Race, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Wrapping Up...