Bad MEN Of Wireless

justbeatit wrote to us with an article from Red Herring about the bad MEN of Wireless. MEN, of course, means Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia.

Comments

Forget the MEN...

[Cutriss]

MEN, of course, means Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia.

Who cares? I wanna see the WOMEN of Wireless!

WAP anyone ?

[MosesJones]

Not invented by the big three, hyped and failed.

Part of the issue here is that there are a few basic tennets for the wireless industry

1) Open Standards, strange to say but the folks at these three are actively pushing such standards

2) Security and reliability, the operators have to support the hardware so they won't buy that which isn't reliable as it costs them more.

3) Investment, these three have invested huge amounts of cash already, and don't want to see Mr Johnny come lately investing 3c and getting a totally different level of ROI.

4) Fear. Of Microsoft, Of diminising returns, Of competition. This is a tough marketplace and they would prefer to be the last man standing, and so anyone new isn't being blocked out by a cartel, but blocked out by 3 companies who see newcommers as potential allies of their competitors.

For someone to complain that they are blocked out of the "wireless messaging" meetings when they don't manufacture handsets is a bit rich. This is like me complaining that I get cut out of UN Security Council meetings just because I'm not a country and don't have an army.

Big business is often bad, but these aer three companies that act against each other to drive down prices and drive up inovation. Small fry on the side who bitch that $1,000 doesn't buy them the same seat at the table as $1,000,000,000 are just as clueless as the .com "millionaires" who bitched that suppliers wouldn't give them as good a deal as they gave Sears.

Welcome to capitalism, if you don't like it... become an accountant.

They know not what they do

[gosand]

I worked at the M in MEN for about 5 years, in the cellular division. Believe me, they don't really know what they are doing. It may sound logical to say they know that they are stifling competition, but nobody there could wipe their butt unless there was an SOP document showing them how. It was a huge, iceberg of a company, where it took months to get anything done. We had an intern who was there for 4 months, and he never got his UNIX account created. We had to submit the proper paperwork to someone, and they had to interoffice mail it to someone else, who then gave it to the manager of the sysadmin, etc etc etc. It was excruciating. We submitted the papwork the day after he started. We called, emailed, you name it for 4 months. No account was ever created, it was always "in process".

So as a company they may be part of a group (MEN) that collectively keeps their own interests to heart, but there is no grand conspiracy as far as I could tell. Unless it is between the VPs or CEOs, or other people who make those important decisions. I was just a grunt that got sick of working for a lumbering giant with a cult-like company culture.