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Cellular and Computing Industries Finally Collide
magarity writes "For years now cell phones have become increasing complex as computers become ever smaller. The two industries now directly collide. Of special interest is the change in mission statement by Microsoft from 'a computer on every desk and in every home' to 'empowering people through great software, any time, any place and on any device.' With mobile phone saturation in the industrialized world from +80% (Italy) to 45% (USA), this is the next battleground for information technology dominance. Both industries have giant sized players; the shakeouts, as well as implications for consumers, will be huge."
"With mobile phone saturation in the industrialized world from +80% (Italy) to 45% (USA),"
Am I the only one who thinks this indicates that EU countries will be the major players in the future, with MS going by the wayside?
"By putting new technologies into consumers' hands in an easy-to-use form, the new handsets seem to be succeeding where the PC has failed" Or perhaps it's the fact that the handsets are free or REALLY cheap, and the pocket PCs are REALLY expensive
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I just returned from Italy and I can attest to the 80% statistic. What totally blew me away was the fact that even very old people all had cell phones. Perhaps somebody can explain what factors cause people in one of the oldest western countries around to conquer the fear of new technology so well.
There's just no way the average guy is going to geek all day on the phone, for one thing.
For another, people's thumb tendons won't let them....
Only geeks will geek on the phone all day long and the cell doesn't do anything the pc doesn't do better, except walk around. And what kind of geek wants to walk around?
What MIGHT happen is people can be their own rolling data centers with secure VPN to their home box, their own mp3s playing from home in their hifi earphones and a Dragon Ball Z type Scouter visual thingy to keep an eye on the important stuff with.
All with provable open source very good privacy.
However, not only is this not here yet, it might well be illegalized in the very near future....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I was actually looking forward to this war. Its been a long time since MS met its match and Nokia is more than a match for MS. Firstly Nokia phones are normally known to be reliable. A fact I cant say about MS software. Secondly Nokia makes these phones so they dont have to convince the phone manufacturers to join the bandwagon. Thirdly, in Europe, anti MS feelings are strong, so I dont think MS can make much of an impact in this market. Fourthly, all the major phone manufacturers have signed up for symbian. And its pretty easy to write applications on that too. Lastly, MS cant arm twist Nokia into carrying their software, mainly because a viable alternative exists. But knowing how MS operates, they may try to pull off something aka Xbox. Don't know how Nokia will counter that.
What's under yellowstone?
I've recently spent some time with Nokia engineers, and they all had the hip-top communicators. Certainly they seemed very functional, but these engineers all still carried laptops-- the hiptop stuff was really suped-up text messenging and maybe some email.
The flipside were the belt-cases they wore to carry the things around. Definite geek-factor there, both good and bad.
Don't get me wrong-- I think the correct approach is to keep adding things to phones rather than stripping things off computers. Open Source taught us that lesson. But the ergonomics and design 'cool' factor needs some work.
davejenkins.com |
I think it was pretty inevitable as MS realised:
Unfortunately for them, they're entering markets with some extremely focused competitors who already dominate the space. In competing against Sony, Nokia and Ericsson (none of whom are likely to miss tricks the way IBM did in the 1980s), Microsoft are discovering what it's like to be on the receiving end.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Italy population: 57.3 mil
Italy size:113,536 sq. mi
US population: 278.4 mil
US size: 5,539,224 sq. mi
people per square mile:
Italy:504
US:50
cellphones per person per square mile:
Italy:403.2
US:22.5
# of cellphones:
Italy: 45.84 mil
US: 125.28
They should've realized from the tough time they had against Palm in the PDA market that they should just not even bother with embedded devices.
In the PDA market, size, reliability, and battery life are major factors, and those three have held WinCE devices back constantly - PalmOS devices have been able to do more with far less. (A 33 MHz Palm is far more responsive UI-wise than a 200 MHz WinCE device, and lasts far longer on battery.)
Now they're not only up against PalmOS (There are some great PalmOS smarphones out there, such as the Kyocera 6035 and 7135, Treos, and the upcoming Samsung I500 - I don't consider the I300 to be great since it's a PDA first and not a very good phone.) and Symbian (All of the Symbian devices I've seen performed their phone functions very well and had excellent integration.
What does WinCE have? It doesn't have battery life or reliability, and its hardware requirements mean that CE devices are almost always larger than their PalmOS and Symbian brethren. All three of these factors held CE back in the PDA market, but are even more critical in the phone market, where the Kyocera 6035 (One of the smaller smartphones) is considered to be monstrous in size.
Every MS-based phone that has hit the market has flopped, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I see Symbian winning the market for "basic" smartphones, and PalmOS winning the market for "power users" who need mainstream PDA capabilities.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Actually the pr0n industry has been a major driver of much technological innovation -- 8mm movies, VCR, the Internet. I'd be surprised if they don't turn out to be play a similar role in future.
This suggests that all computer users are also phone users, and all phone users are computer users. However I'm a computer user, and I do not own a phone (nor do I have plans to). What do I need one for? My communication skills aren't hindered now.
But I think the other side of the coin is more interesting. Think of all the whiny, screaming. 15 year old high school girls with phones on the oublic bus as they annoyingly try out every ring tone at maximum volume. Think about how they call every single one of their friends over and over again to tell them assanine gossip. Think about their tacky leopard print phone face covers.
Beh. The phone in America has more of a "toy" feel to me than it does a "utility" feel. Does anyone have any insight as to how the folks in Italy feel about their phones? I can't imagine trying to drive there, I'd be yelling at every other bent-necked wheel-clutching gabber I saw.
Actually, while this seems to be a reflection of the technological backwardness of the US - it's really a reflection on the failed socialist policies of European states. I used to work with a guy who had emigrated from Romainia - he's like, "of course everyone in Romania has cell phone - it costs hundreds of dollars and takes months to get a landline" - state telecom monopolies are not known for their quick service. Also, in Europe, people are accustomed to paying per minute for their local landline calls - concepts foreign to Americans who can secure a landline in a couple of days and feel entitled to unlimited free local calls. It's not much of a leap to get someone who is accustomed to paying $0.05/min for their calls to get them to pay $0.10/min for a mobile phone - but people who are accustomed to not paying for their calls at all - it's another matter.
I use a computer at work to code. I use my computer at home to learn (web, email, linux) and to play music. I could use a cell phone, sometimes, but most of the time, it's cheaper to use a normal land line. I got rid of my cell because I hated having to worry about how many minutes I was using, even for local calls.
From a pure function point of view, I'd like a mobile device that lets me schedule apointments, take notes, do some calculator type things, chat on the phone, chat online, and play music from my music collection (by this I mean remotely - the files would be streamed). However, it would have to cost only about US $30 a month (including unlimited local airtime) or else it would raise my expenses and I would realize that I didn't need it.
I really don't have any use for a web pad, but a laptop would be cool (really only to allow me to move around in my own house while computing). I would go for a laptop as my primary computing device (with an external monitor or projector for when I want a big display) and a mobile unit for the above described activities.
When it comes down to it, if these features raised my monthly costs much (over 5%), I would not pay. I'm cheap, and all of that mobile stuff doesn't really improve my life (it would probably hurt it by making me work more)
Mod this up. I was going to mention this as well, I just don't know the extent to which recent radio protocols (eg. 2.5G, 3G) have taken this into account. From what I've heard, this is true of all 2G protocols (CDMA/TDMA/GSM/that chinese one), that a cell phone virus could jam up the networks quite a bit if they could have unprotected access to the hardware. Also, isn't this true to some extent for 802.11 devices as well though? (well, only 300' diameters could be jammed, but a similar idea anyway)
while some problems may come from the software it is important to notice that mobile phone companys (telco in general) have made huge investments in quality management
specifically that i remember now, all of the bigger player have serveral ISO9000 compliances and many are CMM certified (specially Siemens that has level 3 and Motorola that has from 3 to 5 depending on the specific facility/factory)
while microsoft (and other software companies developing for computers) has none in all it's divisions
-- SouNerd.com
Yes, it is true. Just the sheer impact of a virus/DDOS/whatever gives me the creeps already. Here in Norway, part of emergency lines on trains etc are made on public cell phone nets..