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."

Comments

looking at cellular use objectively

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

cell phone companies have advantage

[pbranes]

I think cell phone manufacturers have a distinct advantage in this area because they have been working for years at making a product that is both user friendly, extremely small, and runs in real-time with no crashes.

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.

Re:cell phone companies have advantage

[interiot]

• they have been working for years at making a product that is both user friendly, extremely small, and runs in real-time with no crashes.

To some extent, the stability has been somewhat related to the fact that past phones didn't allow 3rd party apps on the phone without being closely inspected and signed. Now that there are open development environments (eg. WindowsCE, Symbian), cell phone stability could drop to WinCE/PalmOS levels.

And to be fair, cell phones aren't 100% stable... dropped calls are sometimes the software's fault, it's not always obvious that this is the case because it's easy to assume it's due to radio interference or cell tower issues.

I was waiting for this war

[abhikhurana]

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.

Promise me something?

[MacAndrew]

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.

Change in Mission Statement

[MartinB]

I think it was pretty inevitable as MS realised:

1. In the vast majority of profitable markets, they're as close as they're going to get to achieving the old Mission Statement
2. Once market saturation of PCs had occurred, selling into that market is no longer a cash cow, but a steady, lower residual income of gentle upgrades (now that the Win9x codebase is dead, and Office is as developed as it is, there is no good reason for most organisations to do more than patch and buy new licenses for new machines). So to keep stockholders happy (who remember are not paid dividends - it's all based on shareprice growth), they have to find another market where there could be double digit %age growth year on year.

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.

Re:80% italy - why?

[MartinB]

Italy has a pretty low saturation of mobile phones compared to (say) Finland, where the market penetration is over 100% of adults (ie there are more adults with more than 1 mobile phone than there are with none).

And you wonder why the 2 globally dominant mobile phone operators in both consumer sales and network kit (Nokia and Ericsson) are Finnish...

Microsoft is screwed...

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Wrong analogy

[r_j_prahad]

With Microsoft getting involved, it's going to be more than a mere collision... it's going to be a train wreck.