The Mobile Market
Yesterday, a discussion with Robert Scoble over at FriendFeed shed some interesting light on the way people think in the mobile world, and it’s brought me back into the research that I’ve grudgingly trenched through over the past decade to make sure the mobile purchases I make are sound, well planned, and will work for my needs. My friend (@massaro) put it best when he said, “I’ve seen what use a phone for, and the iPhone isn’t enough.” It’s true. The amount of technology that I use and how much I’ve tied it into my universe probably goes a little above and beyond what the typical user would do.
That said, it’s imperative that I’m able to access what I have, wherever I’m at, but also, I need to be able to contribute to it, distribute it, and alter it, quickly. I’m also a data-micro-managing fanatic. For me, it’s easy to “outgrow” simple devices and products, in fact, I’ve outgrown every simple thing I’ve ever owned. That’s also part of the problem I have with Apple, the creators of the one-button-hell.
So, I spent two hours this morning looking over the future of mobile technology, dipped into the Apple SDK docs, had a perusal over Qt, Symbian, Android, WebOS, and even poked around at what Qualcomm, Sony/Ericsson, LG and Motorola are up to these days.
I’m a big picture kinda guy, so when I say things like “Nokia is the best there is”, there’s usually a lot of research in both yesterday and tomorrow behind that statement, and not just some fanboy fanaticism crap that spawned from my “new favorite toy!” or utter hate for a company like Apple. I’m not that simple. So when an off-handed comment about my writing gets brushed off by a “critic” as Press-Releases, I get a little shitty about it, and take a second look at my position. In the end, I’ll either alter my approach and admit I’m wrong, or find out that I’m right, consider the critic to be absurd, and move on to the next thing.
So what did this morning’s research yield? Nothing new. After everything, Nokia is a greedy powerhouse and they’re losing market share against what is seen as an infiltrator in mobile technology (Apple). Apple hasn’t really made anything “new”; they’ve merely made software (which is what they do) that pushed the bar. They flopped horribly with the hardware of the iPhone, and it took 3 iterations of the damn thing to get it to where it should have been when they first released it years ago and it is definitely behind already. Nokia makes hardware, but now that the consumer focus is on software, Nokia is making brilliant long-tail decisions right now to ensure they won’t have much to worry about anymore.
What is going to happen is simple. People who love Apple will stick with their iPhone, and the iPhone will completely cease to be seen as a regular smartphone, much like iPods aren’t really mentioned as regular MP3 players. Apple’s used to this kind of separation from consumer markets (much like Sony is). Nokia will either engage Android and WebOS or trump them within the next 2 to 3 years, and that’ll be that. Unless they totally fuck it all up, which would be difficult given the brilliant decisions they’re making at the moment.
As for being slammed by Scoble for sounding like a Press Release in my blog posts, I’ve come to find the irony in that statement given how much he evangelizes his decisions. It’s what we do, those of us who weave technology into our lives. As technologists, we’d like to think we’re making sound decisions, and “what we know” is what pays the bills. Right now, I know that Scoble was wrong, and will continue to be wrong, because … well? He’s sold on what he thinks he knows. I’m just writing this to keep my 12 readers entertained.
