Why Mobile Innovation Outpaces PC Innovation

Sandrina sends in an opinion piece from TechCrunch that discusses why mobile systems are developing so much faster than the PC market. The article credits Intel with allowing hardware innovation to stagnate, and points out how much more competitive the component vendor market is for smartphones. Quoting: "In PCs, Intel dictates the pace of hardware releases — OEMs essentially wait for CPU updates, then differentiate through inventory control, channel / distribution and branding. Intel and Microsoft win no matter which PC makers excel — they literally don't care if it's Asus, Dell or HP. In the smartphone world, it's the opposite. Dozens of component vendors fight each other to the death to win designs at smartphone OEMs. This competitive dynamic forms an entirely different basis for how component vendors approach system integration and support. Consider Infineon, which supplies the 3G wireless chipset in the iPhone. In order to stay in Apple's graces, Infineon must do everything necessary to help the hardware and software play well together, including staffing permanent engineers in Cupertino or sending a team overnight from Germany. Do you think Intel does this for Dell?"

Comments

Re:Chip juggling

[jedidiah]

>> Apple is good at switching its chips out.
>>
>
> That's because enormous chunks of its operating system are not written in ancient, unmaintainable x86 assembly code. Everybody else is stuck with Windows.
>

Nope. It's because a good portion of Apple's core user base will take any amount of abuse that Apple dishes out and gladly take it with a "Thank you more sir".

Sensible portable MacOS is a fairly new phenomenon.

The iphones don't count as an example of this phenomenon because they use a separate API from MacOS.