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Making Sense of the Cellphone Landscape

Posted by kdawson on from the handbags-at-dawn dept.

Charlie Stross has a blog post up that tries to make sense of the mobile phone market and where it's going: where Apple, Google, and the cellcos fit in, and what the point of Google's Nexus One may be. "Becoming a pure bandwidth provider is every cellco's nightmare: it levels the playing field and puts them in direct competition with their peers, a competition that can only be won by throwing huge amounts of capital infrastructure at their backbone network. So for the past five years or more, they've been doing their best not to get dragged into a game of beggar-my-neighbor, by expedients such as exclusive handset deals... [Google intends] to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like Wi-Fi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at. They want to get consumers to buy unlocked SIM-free handsets and pick cheap data SIMs. They'd love to move everyone to cheap data SIMs rather than the hideously convoluted legacy voice stacks maintained by the telcos; then they could piggyback Google Voice on it, and ultimately do the Google thing to all your voice messages as well as your email and web access. (This is, needless to say, going to bring them into conflict with Apple. ... Apple are an implicit threat to Google because Google can't slap their ads all over [the App and iTunes stores]. So it's going to end in handbags at dawn... eventually.)"

7 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. I Just Did... by LearnToSpell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Picked up an N900. T-Mobile unlimited for 10 bucks a month. Could probably get away without it anyway, since there's so many open hotspots around in NY. I hate AT&T. Hate Verizon. Probably hate T-Mobile in a month. :-) There's no way I want to pay 80-120 bucks a month though. Ridiculous.

    --
    Haida Manga
    1. Re:I Just Did... by sznupi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, and no mention of Nokia in the summary (and quite dismissive in TFA).

      It's not only about Maemo, it's about a phone manufacturer that has 40% of total market (of which smartphones are what, 15 - 20% now? Why do you talk only about them?). Over 50% of smartphone market. The only phone manufacturer that keeps itself comfortable financially (others are either struggling or mobile phones aren't their main product; except RIM perhaps, but they sell corporate service rather than phones). Only one their product (1100) is the most popular consumer electronic device in history, it vastly outsold families (like "iPod") from other manufacturers. A year ago there were 3 billion phones in the world, now there are around 4.6, and it's largely thanks to Nokia. Phones, companies which enable this kind of uptake is what's defining 21st century landscape.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
  2. I know what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I want an Android's brain in an iPhone's body.

  3. All in the data by MrDoh! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Pretty soon, we'll be buying phones with data plans and the voice plan will be optional (if needed at all).
    All we need is Google to get their phones coming with a VOIP client as standard. Big unique selling point that no matter what network, or if you're not even on a network but just have wireless at home/work/in car/train/plane, you can make/receive calls.

    Using phone numbers and keeping a local phonebook of addresses makes as much sense as using IP numbers in a browser to get to a website. Google providing their DNS to allow new services to be added like this was another one of the steps needed to be done. Google Voice is a stopgap, their newly acquisitioned VOIP stuff is the next step.

    Shortly, it'll be standard to call someone using an email address and the data-networks will route as needed to their phone/home/business.

    --
    Waiting for an amusing sig.
    1. Re:All in the data by kurt555gs · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When I call up the phone app on the n900, the menu asks what typr of call I want to make:

      cell
      skype (dial out minutes required)
      google talk (to some ones computer)
      sip (I have a gizmo5 account liked to my google voice number)

      The N900 can also get incoming calls from any of those, and treats them the same as a cellular call.

      If I wanted to pay moe at Skype for a call in number, it would handle that to. All of these work over 3G or WLAN.

      It is seamless to the user.

      --
      * Carthago Delenda Est *
  4. Not a fun conclusion... by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here's one reason for the Nexus One that I haven't seen yet.

    Google wants it's employees to use Android and test new versions and be inspired to come up with interesting applications. The best way to do this is to give all your employees phones. If you're doing that, you might as well come up with a cool phone. It's not like Google doesn't have the money to do this.

    So, no, there's no ulterior motive about breaking the cellphone companies' grip on the market. There's no plan to sell it through T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, or even Mosaic telecom. All there is a phone that Google can give to their employees for testing and being creative with. That's it.

    I know, I know. It's far more fun to believe that these corporations are doing all of these things as a battle that we can sit back and enjoy. But the reality is usually far more mundane.

  5. What Makes Sense by The+Wild+Norseman · · Score: 5, Funny

    So for the past five years or more, they've been doing their best not to get dragged into a game of beggar-my-neighbor

    Because the game of "bugger-my-customer" is so much more fun...

    --
    "A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book