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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?
is part of microsofts mission statement? hmm, i guess "great" is a relative term.
I guess this means they'll stop selling Windows.
How the porn industry will exploit these changes. Whole new meaning to "phone sex".
But I thought only NetBSD would run on my toaster...
-Charles
Now if they only produced better screens we could get some work done. The only working thing you can consider "computing" and "cellular" is the Treo.
That WAP is shit. I can tell you as I have some experience (Nokia, Siemens, Sony, Ericsson, Alcatel, everyone plays his own game, with large differences in the ways things are shown). We have to go directly for web or for Java. I've tested some Nokias and Alcatels. For instance, Alcatel 525 WAP browser, in forms, it doesn't show you the next input till you've filled it!!
What gets lost in this discussion is why cellphone usage so much greater (in terms of percentage) in Europe and Japan is a comparison of the alternatives. How many European and Pacific Rim countries have unmeetered local phone service? That is, talk all you want next door or across town for a very low flat monthly fee?
"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.
Not sure if you are trying to be funny, but Italy is roughly 301,000 sq km, and New Jersey is rougly 19,215 sq km.
Where was the article about collision when Sun entered this market with Java? I guess this is bad now because it's Microsoft offering something new, and everyone who buys their products was forced to because it's a monopoly. Sheesh...
on the same subject is http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory .cfm?Story_ID=1454436
Who needs one when you just stay home and read slashdot?
As phones become more intelligent, it only seems natural that phone manufacturers would have an easier time than microsoft because microsoft has to scale down its product, clean out bugs, adapt the software to be real-time --- all while getting new teams organized that have the ability to do this.
Cell phone companies already have a large number of experienced exployees that have been meeting th ese necessary goals for years.
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'm no Luddite, I think all this innovation is fine and dandy (although, sorry, I do not salivate at the prospect of MS getting into my phone) ... but can anyone promise that I'll still be able to buy plain, simple, boring phones and basically do telephone calls? And don't need an engineering degree to operate? Please?
This is from someone who misses corded dial telephones that never broke, or if they did the phone company swapped you for a new one. There were a lot of problems with that era, but some nice things, too. I still have a classic ugly-beige tabletop phone with a hard-to-turn dial and a REAL BELL. And even Alexander Graham Bell could probably use it in minutes.
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
In other words, phase one (a computer on every desk and in every home) has been completed +/- 10%. Now it's time to go out and achieve 100% (+/- 10%) proliferation on portable devices.
What's next, owning my brain?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So now I'll have to CTRL-ALT-DEL to access my phone book.
Will it ask me for an administrators password when I want to change the ring tone?
And what will I do when I get an 'Ignore/Cancel' error message?
I can see it now: mid conversation, and all of a sudden a message pops up 'There is a new security patch for your phone. Would you like to install it now?'
Here's a partial list of my priorities when it comes to having a cellphone:
.
.
.
1) Geographic range
2) Sound quality
3) Dropped calls
75) Playing tetris
76) Browsing the web
77) Checking e-mail
It's a phone, for God's sake.
It's not that. Penetration measures against population. That is, 80% of the Italians (some 80 million, not so small) own a cell phone. Italy, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Spain, Netherlands, ... have more users than the USA per inhabitant.
With such differences, it's not a matter of infrastructure. You can take only those regions with coverage and the difference would still be there. The problem is in the offer.
The fight for digital (as in finger) dominance
Nov 21st 1952
From The Historiconomist BS edition
The convergence of slide rules and notepads is bringing the giants of the plastic and paper industries into direct conflict
IT MAY look like a notepad, but the Orange PenNPaper, launched last month, is much more than that. With its lined pages, multicolored ink and spiral ring spine, it resembles other notepads on the market. But it has one far more significant feature: the lookup tables and conversion formulas on the inside front cover, indicated by the familiar-looking quadratic equation on the upper left side. For the PNP is the first "quick-reference notepad"--in other words, it does things a slide rule does. It is the paper industry's attempt to stake its claim in the new academic community of engineers and scientists created by the convergence of notepads and slide rules. It is no less than a declaration of war.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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?
'empowering people through great software...
What?
Where are they going to get that from?
It's been a long time.
Sony-Ericsson and Nokia (as well as others) have standardized on a phone OS platform, EPOC, that isn't microsoft based.
--- I do not moderate.
I loathe the day when I flip open my mobile phone and see the blue screen of death.
Oops, yes. Ericsson are Swedish. The causes and logic are similar.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
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.
No one wants to pay more than a few bucks a month for any of this.. Right now cellular is fine for chatting with friends to meet at whatever resturant or bar or movie showing, but outside of that, it's impossibly expensive. If you want to use your palm online all the time, it'll cost literally hundreds of dollars per month.. They need to change that to a $5 unlimited rate/month if they want people to embrace it. Remember: Think cheap!
Numbers 1-77 of your needs are provided by software. It may not be obvious, it may not be branded, but it's all software. Same goes for a large number of systems which need to co-operate to get your credit card to work either in stores or ATMs - they're all dependent on software.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
No, it's entirely a matter of infrastructure, just not the one you are thinking of.
Mobile phones aren't as popular here because of POTS infrastructure beating the hell out of it. When AT&T and Sprint offer the same WIRELESS deals as they do LONG DISTANCE deals, then you may see the numbers change.
When I can pay 20 bucks for unlimited local calls and 10 cents a minute for long distance calls then we'll talk (rimshot).
Never confuse volume with power.
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.
"All the standards are designed to progress from the base European infrastructure, which is why you'll notice American operators installing 2.5G networks now, to use the European migration plans to get to 3G."
Excuse me, but WHAT migration plan?
And how is UMTS in any way based on GSM/GPRS?
There is no interoperability between GSM/GPRS and UMTS whatsoever - New spectrum, new handsets, and new base stations are needed. Essentially, to go to 3G in a GSM/GPRS system, you have no option but to essentially build an entirely new network from the ground up. (As a result, many European providers are hurting financially, thanks to being forced to buy new spectrum at outrageous prices.)
Meanwhile, CDMA2000 (2.5G/3G) and cdmaOne (2G) are fully interoperable - cdmaOne handsets like my Kyocera 6035 will work fine on a CDMA2000 network, whether 1xRTT (2.5G) or 1xEV-DO (3G), and CDMA2000-capable handsets will work fine in areas where CDMA2000 capability has not been added and only cdmaOne base stations are available. No new spectrum is needed, providers can use their existing frequency assignments.
There is a clear upgrade for CDMA providers from 2G(cdmaOne)->2.5G(1xRTT)->3G(1xEV-DO) - Where's the upgrade path for GSM providers? 2G(GSM)->2.5G(GPRS)->dead end.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
With Microsoft getting involved, it's going to be more than a mere collision... it's going to be a train wreck.
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)
And just like I feel. I'd add SMS w/dictionary somewhere on top too, but besides that... I'll have my Nokia 3210 till it breaks, unless a future job requires that I can hook it up to a laptop or something.
Then again, I thought 3210 was being too flashy with these logos and whatever (99.9% of the time it's in my pocket, noone sees the damn logo, and picture messages noone I know ever use, oh and my dial tone is unique so I know it's my phone ringing, not some popular melody). But, the 3210 was a big hit because of that stuff.
I long since figured I'm not average, pretty much a minimalist (like Win2k-serious business vs. XP-flashy thingy). Generalizing from yourself is always very dangerous, the marked for a computer-phone could be huge even if *you* don't need one...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I can see it now.
911 - "Please state the nature of the emergency"
you - "I'm being..."
msphone - "priveledge violation. press any key to reboot"
When I lived in Japan, I loathed cell phones, and was proudly a member of the 0.1% of my age group to not own a cell phone.
Now that I'm in the US, I have a cell phone, but I got one only because I was in a long distance relationship at the time, and long distance calls were cheaper on a cell phone. Also, I don't have a phone line at home, so it's also my only phone...
Personally, what I don't understand is cell phones that try to be computers or PDAs. I've owned three PDAs (starting with a Pilot 5000) and found all of them useless (other than being good conversation starters and having geek appeal). Personally, I think a cell phone that tries to be more than a cell phone is equally useless. If I get a cell phone, I want a phone. I want a phone that's reliable (as in, doesn't crash or get disconnected in the middle of a conversation), and I don't give a damn if it takes crappy pictures or runs Quake on a puny screen.
At least in the US, I think they're trying to make up for the crappy infrastructure by packing useless features into the actual phones. "You'll get disconnected every 3 minutes, but look, you can play games while you're disconnected!"
---
Open Source Shirts
If you haven't read Clayton Christensen's Innovators Dilemma you owe it to yourselves to do that.
One of the observations he makes when a disruptive technology comes along is that the dominat player in the "level" above always gets displaced.
Help fight continental drift.
which will not be until December 2 according to the register. Apparently, MS are hiring a Detlef Eckert who heads a department in the European Union overseeing security, e-Commerce and telecommunications. But don't worry, he will not be resigning his post, just taking a leave of absence to work at Microsoft until he rotates back into his position to oversee EU IT in an unbiased way.
I'm truly shocked. I'm only 20, and I was able to point out iraq on the world atlas during the first war.
I was able to point out my own country on a map as well...Perhaps that 10% should be considered the margin of error?
It's been a long time.
This article (originally referred to in this submittal) comprehensively outlines how it's an uphill battle for Microsoft.
Mozilla's tabbed browsing is ideal for posting links on
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Can you hear me now...ahhhh shit, another BSOD!
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
the new handsets seem to be succeeding where the PC has failed. Mobile phones have a far broader appeal than PCs
Gee, maybe it's because cell phones can often be bought for "free" or mostly for $100 while even a "cheap" pc costs ~$500. Not to mention the "slight" difference in functionality provided. Sheesh, that's like saying that the boat market is a failure because they have less market penetration than the auto market.
# of cellphones:
.28 is a phone that was mangled by a frustrated user)
Italy: 45.84 mil
US: 125.28
The US only has 125 cell phones? Geez, that must suck. (And i can only assume the
While we were living in Italy, we were one of the fortunate people, through military contacts, who could procure a land line quickly and with very little effort. It wasn't an "old world" area, but the group in charge of telephones didn't generally feel pressured to move quickly. I'm not sure how much has changed in the last 10 years, but I would imagine that it's probably much easier to get a mobile phone than a land line, so "acceptance" is probably a sign of convenience, rather than progressive thinking.
As someone who worked for AT&T Wireless for years, I can tell you they are quickly running our of money. The centralized "cellular" paradigm is quickly running our of steam. It is simply not economically scalable to compete with very high speed ad-hoc "bottom up", software definted radio mesh networks that are the wave of the future. My opinion, is not only will telcos fail, but lets help them fail as fast as possible to make room for innovation by opening up more parts of the spectrum.
As for Microsft's involvement, who cares? I can't see them either dominating this space like they managed to do with the desktop. Interoperability will be the key, just like on the net today. Linux alread has a foot hold in this market.
Planet P - Liberation With Technology.
www.enthea.org
p.s. What is the link in your sig meant to do? I can see that it's an impossible IP address (for IPv4, at least), and when I click on it, I get an error(as I thought I would.)
It's been a long time.
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
You remember that thing they called the "soviet bloc", don't you? Romania was part of it. Italy wasn't, Finland wasn't, Austria wasn't - those are the EU countries with the highest market penetration for mobile phones. Here in Austria, I can get a fully digital landline set up within 2 days at a reasonable price, in any damn Alpine village. It's not much different in most of Western Europe. No, it wasn't always like this, but: the success of mobile telephony started after the modernisation of terrestrial. So, please forget the myth that cell phones took off in Europe because the "normal" phones just don't work properly. It might have to do with the fact that there's just one standard, GSM, but that's a wild guess.
Sure, there are no flat-fee "chat with your next-door neighbour on the phone" plans as in the US. But how does that help mobile telephony, which is comparatively expensive in any case?
... to correctly display the Blue Screen of Death.
Sorry, but someone had to say it!
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
It is so cute, everytime a cellphone-related piece of news comes up on slashdot, to see Americans plead for their backward cellphone market by boasting how their landlines are so comparatively good that they actually don't need cellphones.
Good for them that we rarely talk about bank cards (no embedded chips in the US), washer/dryers (common US models were designed in the 50s), car radios (no RDS in the US), TVs (widescreen penetration extremely small), trains (less high-speed tracks in the whole US than in Spain)...
It's just a phone, dammit. You use it to make calls.
All these companies had better take a look at Donald Norman's "Psychology of Everyday Things." He talks quite a lot about telephones. In the fifties and sixties, nobody had any trouble using them. In the seventies and eighties, people started to have serious trouble using their office phones. (Do YOU know how to transfer a call on yours without dropping the connection?)
Now this crapola is spreading. When my wife and I went to buy cell phones we decided that even though our needs were significantly different, we needed to buy identical models so we could be a little user group of two and get technical support from each other (honey, how do I get this thing out of silent operation and turn the ring back on? sweetie, why is it saying "EXT-ROAM" when I'm supposed to be within my home area?)
On getting back from my high school reunion, I put some snapshots up on my web site and sent the URL to four classmates. Although they all have email, three of the four don't seem to know what a URL or a website is ("Did you really send pictures in that email? I'd like to see them but I can't figure out how... I'm not very good at this computer stuff"). Don't assume that everyone wants to run spreadsheets on their cellphones.
Please, guys, read Norman, and KEEP IT SIMPLE, will you? If you know how.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
http://www.eurunion.org/profile/facts.html 15 members, which doesn't include, for instance, Switzerland or Denmark)
(actua
2001 data unless otherwise stated:
US area: 3717.9 sq miles ??
US population: 284.8 million ??
US density/sq mile: 76.6
US share of world trade: 11.9%
US mobile users: 137.5 million (July 2002)
EU area: 1249.0 sq miles
EU population: 378.0 million
EU density/sq mile: 302.6
EU share of world trade: 19.4%
European mobile users 279 million
European penetration 70.2% (July 2002)
world total number of users: 860 million
Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson, Sagem, Alcatel, Symbian.
The list could go on. Many, many of the big players in the mobile phone market (phones, network technology, software) are located in. Europe. Europe is a huge market. Not only Italy or Finnland, but also the other big and small countries (DE, FR, GB, ES) have a penetration beyond 60%. There are approximately twice as many mobile phones in Europe as in the US.
And the younger generation wants to do more than just phone someone. SMS, Games, even the number of ringtones or display colors is a very important factor for many customers here.
I believe that while EMS (enhanced message service) was useless like WAP, MMS (multimedia message service) will be used widely. Many people (especially nerds) laugh about these uses but you shouldn't underestimate how much they are accepted by other people. Mobile Multimedia Instant Messaging willl later (with the help of GPRS and UMTS) bring the Internet into the mobile world:
EVERNET. It's not just a marketing hype! If the price is ok (and even if it isn't -> SMS), the (European) customers will use it, because it changes their life so much. For all these features you need software, capable delivering these "services":
You should take a closer look on the Symbian OS v7. It's a well engineered OS with a bright future. One day, at some places in Europe, it might be used more frequently than MS Windows.
We will see who will win this war. One could even call it a war between continents... but this would perhaps be too flamebait. My guess: At the end everyone will find their niche!
--- censored
If slashdot advertized the service plans as much as the phones maybe I'd actually buy something instead of just commenting on it.
A 33 MHz Palm is far more responsive UI-wise than a 200 MHz WinCE device, and lasts far longer on battery.
I replaced my old Palm recently... with a new one. It's simple, really. While WinCE was trying to cram every known thing into their PDA OS, Palm continued to provide the essential features to the user as quickly as possible. I hit one button and there's my address book or calendar.
Screw solitaire and mp3 files if I have to sit through a boot time.
Microsoft could bury Palm and Symbian, and if they were determined enough they could even guarantee that no one would ever touch Linux again.
Since it is thanksgiving time in the US, a time when we traditionally get together to thank Microsoft for permitting us to use technology throughout the rest of the year, let us take this time and remember to thank Microsoft for their generosity in graciously permitting Linux, Palm and Symbian to exist.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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
anything that has a cost associated with it is "ridiculously expensive" to some slashdotters. you'll never get a cellphone if you wait for everyone here to agree that a certain carrier is worth the money.
Intelligent Life on Earth
They still make simple telephones. They still make simple cell phones. You can stop complaining by simply buying one of these simple devices instead of a complex device.
You pointed out the issue yourself: you now have different needs. YOU (and your wife) decided that your needs were different, meaning that YOU decided that the ability to simply dial/talk or answer/talk was not enough. If you want your phone to do more, you have to put up with complexity (meaning you have a learning curve to deal with).
Do you really think that if your phone system in the 50's and 60's were CAPABLE of transfering a call from one handset to another that it would have been any more intuitive then than it is now? Conversely, if all you could do on today's phones was dial or answer (no speeddial, hold, transfer, speaker, voicemail, forward, display, etc., etc.), do you think anyone would have trouble using it today?
You want to keep it simple? Don't expect anything more than the simplest function.
BTW, I'm not unsympathetic. I too hate it that my brain resists the effort to learn how to use a new device. The effort (short-term pain) is the price I pay so that I can benefit (long-term gain)from the device's functions. But I don't see how it can be done any easier. These manufacturers hire UI designers: I certainly know they do a better job of laying out the functions than I *ever* could! But there simply is no way to pack a bunch of neat features on a tiny device so that a person could just look at it and know how it all works!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
If the actual figure is 80 in-use phones per inhabitant, that does not necessarily mean 80% of people have phones, since some people have several phones (e.g. home/work or new model/slightly unfashionable model or network A/network B (admittedly the last can be just achieved using different SIM cards)).
Because UMTS and GSM/GPRS use entirely different modulation schemes, there is NO WAY to make a phone for both systems that is not excessively expensive and/or large with good battery life.
Because of the fact that cdmaOne and CDMA2000 have very closely related modulation schemes (In fact, they're almost identical), a CDMA2000 phone only needs one receiver/IF system and one transmit subsystem to use 2G, 2.5G, or in the future 3G networks. At worst it needs two RF frontends for dual-band capability, but everything from the IF on can be shared. To make a combination GSM/GPRS and UMTS phone, you need a complete receiver chain and a complete transmit chain for each network type, since they not only are on different frequencies, they have different modulation schemes and require different IF passbands. It's possible to gain some flexibility by using IF-sampling and software demodulators/downconverters, but such techniques are currently somewhat more costly and MUCH more power-hungry than "traditional" RF/IF subsystems.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
So far in the market, it seems that for "convergence" devices, consumers have rejected devices that are PDAs with mobile phone capability (Thera (WinCE), I300 (PalmOS), I330 (PalmOS)) in favor of devices that are phones with PDA functionality (Kyocera 6035 (PalmOS), upcoming 7135 (Also PalmOS), upcoming Samsung I500 (PalmOS), and most Symbian devices are primarily phones.)
Yes, I agree, Palm has been doing a crap job with their hardware since the Palm III. I don't see why anyone would want to buy a "geniune" Palm when Sony's PalmOS devices are so much better. (Or if you're looking for PDA/phone integration, either a Treo or Kyocera - The Tungsten W is going to be DOA in the market because it's phone capabilities are crap.)
I have a 6035 and I love it. PQAs + CDMA data = wonderful convenience.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
MSFT has succeeded in the PC market for two reasons:
1. Luck
They were lucky with their initial MS-DOS contract
2. The networking effect
All that came after 1 (luck) has to do with the networking effect known to affect computers: There is a cycle of platform software being dependant on availability of popular applications, and applications being dependant on the popularity of the platform. Later, proprietary file formats (office) also played their part.
The networking effect is what kept MSFT in the lead after their initial luck (just like IBM earlier in the mainframe market).
Now this cannot be transferred to a totally different market of mobile devices:
1. The file formats cannot/need not be the same, thus MSFT looses their lock-in advantage.
2. New operating systems (whether called Windows does not matter, since it is not windows no matter what) because of a radically different HW platform means the cycle of operating system and applications is broken.
MSFT would have to start all over, without having the advantages they have been able to rely on in the past 20 years. Thus we start with a level playing field for the first time since long.
We (as consumers) are very lucky that this time (like the mini market (UNIX)) but unlike the mainframe and PC markets before, the platform is quite open (Symbian) and the specs of the underlying hardware and protocols (GSM and 3G) are all open and can never be controlled by a single vendor. This is also a big difference, which shall make it impossible for MSFT to repeat their past success and tactics.
You can.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's