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I know everything you say you want can be done now and a lot of it just depends on 'Where you are now' .... GPS is ok if you're outside and the sky is clear and you have a minute or two to spare, the Google method (cell location) is cool but you need to allow it to be more precise (should be user configurable).
If you want instant you will need a combination of both and have them always on to have the services in a second. This will come and I think a lot of new products are just over the horizon... I do totally agree with the multiple phones issue... it’s such a killer to go from PDA to Symbian to Blackberry, the lead time is huge, support is difficult and every 18 months you have to re-write most of it again...
Still, I think it’s a pretty exciting industry to be in and I love to see people around the world using our software.
I wont be giving up just yet.... :-)
What are people's opinions on the role of the regulator here? My view would be that supporting UK innovation should be a primary goal of what they do, given the importance at the national level of a thriving mobile ecosystem. At present, if you look at their top level mandate and principles (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/sdrp/) there is some stuff about 'competition' but nothing which provides a clear position on where they should go next with respect to the wider mobile ecosystem.
Is anyone aware of any specific work that is underway in this regard? The readership of this site could prove a powerful lobby group...
As you know, your entire wish list, and more, is achievable. Right now.
However, they say 'Neccessity is the Mother of Invention'. As such, only when it becomes a neccessity will such seamless and integrated services be offered - and used.
Ewan's New Mobile World Order enablers:
Truly, utterly flat-rate data, inclusive of everything. Almost Nearly there for most networks, especially if you talk about browsing on the small screen (even Vf's 500MB inclusive deal should do the trick).
Many networks are now truly open, not blocking any ports. Those that aren't will loose customers.
Speed/latency: HSPA 7.2/2.4 is a huge step forward, as the 3G iPhone will show next Friday when the first week's Google browsing figures blow away the previous records set by the 2G verison.
Coverage: >90% of people have good-to-great 3G coverage, and if you are on 3 or T-Mo it's probably HSPA to boot.
Client vs. Web apps: PC-based AJAX combined with true MB broadband has pretty much utterly demolished the need for apps on PC's (proof point: Google Maps / Flickr). Mobile AJAX browsers will become default by the end of this year.
Handset processors / batteries: Very fast-moving segment over the last 2 years. The line is thouroughly blurred as to where the bottlenecks now are - in the handset, the mobile RAN layer, the MNO core, MNO internet connectivity or the internet in general. All have improved markedly, and will continue to do so as pinch-points become apparent and are acted upon.
Business models and MNO reality: Entrepreneurs are realising that MNO's simply CANNOT allocate the requisite staff, time, portal or website resource to push even a tiny fraction of things out there to the base. Do you expect BT or Tiscali to introduce you to everything the web has to offer on your PC? NO! Don't rely on MNO's to do so for the mobile. They will pick & chose a few winners, but their marketing dept is measured in a few handfuls of product managers.
The Apple App store will do very well indeed. Others will follow.
As Constantine says, the next 10 years will be brilliant. The Normobs will one day soon assume the wonderful iPhone-like mobile internet experience, all joined up, with all Ewan's pain points removed is a new invention, pulled out of the box last Thursday.
Chin up chap!
/m
edit After writing this, I feel pretty vindicated by Dean Bubley's latest post on how Nokia are getting all webby-AJAX'y on yo' ass with very low-end S40 handsets.
w00t!
*snort*
Let me put it this way - java on mobiles: a common platform with a well- known specification and minimal requirements. OpenGL ES. 1.1: a common platform for all mobiles, with or without 3d acelleration, with a well known and open specification from one end to the other. Both platforms are well used, there are numerous development tools for either, and it doesn't require licensing to use them. AJAX - mobile web 2.0: ability to deploy xml- specified applications with server- side and client side deployment, finally making the operators unecessary for the actual operation of the applications. The handset makers (or independent developers) might only have to create small interpreters in various visual shapes to display the "apps".
Result: nothing. Result: mobile operators claim exclusivity on deployment. Result: mobile operators spend insane amounts of money on making their own device- specific standard that no one else can use. Result: Apple launches "Apple shop" and claims they invented widgets. Nokia will follow soon with their own widgets - that are both INCOMPATIBLE WITH ANY OTHER ***ING PLATFORM! Result: SHITE!
I tried lots of apps with an S60 phone and unlimited data plan and basically found none of them compelling enough or integrated enough to make me want to keep using them.
I see two problems:
1) Operator control
2) Integration of the software on a phone
The operators have spent so much money that I just can't see them letting go very much.
1) I think it was mentionned that for MobileMe Apple are installing kits at the Telcos. How else does a developer send a notification to wake up a phone so that it doesn't need a permanent battery sapping 3G link?
How are developers going to get reasonably cheap access to location info? (this might get solved when every phone has a GPS)
Will operators become more open with IMS systems? I doubt it.
Without these types of services the applications you can offer are more limited.
2) I hope that Android manages to show what can be achieved when add on apps are first class citizens. I don't think that dumb data pipes to the internet are enough for a properly open system. Something like Opera mini shows what a great job a reformatting proxy can do but it doesn't integrate with the rest of the system. The google mail app is quick and usable but it doesn't do proper push mail.
There may be some shining examples of great apps but it just doesn't make a compelling system at present.
Personally I've had an appalling experience with T-Mobile data, across different handsets and locations countrywide, and despite various technicians examining my account. One let slip that this wasn't an unusual experience. Sometimes (maybe a quarter to a third) it's great - instant connection, fast. Around half my attempts at any sort of internet connection, using different apps on both mobile and PC (with phone as modem) fail to even connect on T-Mobile. The other quarter of attempts work well for a few seconds then slow down, pause inexplicably for minutes, or just drop the connection. Having worked with network infrastructure previously, I know all the hallmarks of weak, underpowered, just-can't-cope infrastructure and back-end servers at T-Mobile when I see them.
The other psychology issue is the users - they don't realise what they can get, what is out there. And when they do, they fear data costs. So, flat rate data is essential, and we're slowly getting there. The rest is well probably everybody's fault. Or everyone could make improvements to increase consumer awareness - phone makers, OS makers, sales outlets (although mobile phone sales staff are INCREDIBLY ignorant of just about everything), and software vendors themselves. Clearly more responsibility lies with people with money to market better. Kudos to Nokia for example for plastering Maps 2.0 posters everywhere I went recently.
I agree with the other comments - things will brighten, and probably quite rapidly. We have mainly Apple, and secondly Google to thank for that. Major gold stars for iPhone and Android on that front.
The new thing about it is that it's graphically pleasing. Well - if you rule out Nokias music- store or N-gage - because either of those are similar types of apps.
So when Apple manages to sell phones and start the Apple Store - I hope you realy understand that nothing new happens. It's still a one- device platform (soon to become "two device platform"), and is even more restricted for developers in terms of connection services than any of the existing platforms have ever been. Compared to java, it's a remarkable joke. Even if their specific device- dependent platform happens to use commonly available technology for implementing their program, of course.
In other words, there's no magical barrier that has to be broken here by making the Apple Store popular. The magical barrier exists, like carefully laid out in the main post, in the mobile industry's fetish for platform exclusivity and closed device dependent solutions. And frankly, that has nothing to do with whether or not the leadership in the phone- industry are hung up on old technology. I know many old programmers (also in the mobile phone business) who can draw up process- diagrams that perfectly explain an abstraction of a multi- layered network, more than well enough to successfully implement widget deployment systems of various kinds.
So when we're talking about psychology here, I think we should be specific enough to say that the problem many people see is that the platform- dependent and operator controlled solutions won't take off. That people will not buy bad mp3 recordings on the phone, or want to browse news on a tiny screen on portals the operators allow you.
Just remember that for example Opera mini - an aberration in terms of the mobile industry, in that it can be deployed on just about all devices at the moment, in all kinds of resolutions and layouts, and read actual web- content as it's intended to be watched - is still a very popular browser.
Now - why do you think that is? Is it because the psychology of the buyers don't think the web is cool enough on a mobile? That people won't log on to twitter with their mobile browser? It's just not the case. But the problem is data- costs - and why spend exorbitant amounts of money on something you can do on your computer, if it can wait? In the same way - why in the world spend your battery and money on a developers specifically and platform dependent solution if you can do the same on your computer?
Again - it's not that the Apple Store will break any boundaries in anything except brazen exploitation of underinformed customers. While the ones who want to seek actual platform- independent solutions are seen as the enemy, who wants to hollow out the mobile industry's core: the exclusivity that forces customers to pay them. While in reality the only way to actually make these new services available on the phones, as well as economically viable, is to adapt to the actual standards.
But as long as the sickness of platform exclusivity remains in the mobile business - then it's a waste of money. Analoguous to what's going on now is the Internet Explorer html implementations, against the actual standard - how many didn't predict that if Microsoft wasn't allowed to do this, then they would lose market- share. And that it was only fair and proper to allow Microsoft to fuse their very bad implementations into their system, so that in order to actually display pages properly, you'd have to use IE? While in reality - that's not necessary, and it makes no difference whether you're using one browser or the other if the html is actually coded well. Neither does it ruin IE's popularity to adapt to the standard, rather than having people adapt to it. In fact - making sure we're doing away with things like this has done quite a lot for web- development in general. Because it opens up for actual competition, and allows people to look at the possibilities of the platform, rather than just the limitations.
So sure - there's psychology involved. But it has to do with users not trusting the solutions they're offered, and not seeing the use of them. The Apple Store is no exception, something you can see from the actual sales (while ignoring the hype and constant flow of inane advertisements) for a while.
For example - ask if people have tried SE's playnow index, or nokias music store - and you'll hear that sure, people have tried it, but they don't know what they're really buying (good quality, bad quality, right version, bad version, is the price comparable, etc.), and they think the shelves are very thin with applications. And for example - owing to SE's brilliance in marketing talent - you can still only download the java- version of google maps from the playnow pages, even if you have a smartphone. And to find the applications for those phones, you have to look around quite a lot. And even then - we just have so few pages where people review the phones and the opportunities with the phones that there's no wonder people don't use them.
In the same way phone- reviews always - and why this is I cannot understand - orient themselves around the manufacturer's sales- pitch. Never do I read something like this when people review computers, or computer program suites. They'd be laughed off their site if they did - just listen: "Dell constructed a good computer on this model, and office applications are particularly good. You can also buy music with it over the internet, as well as use IM with particular in- built clients, which come integrated into the browser and PIM application. If you wish to install 3rd party software, you can even do that".
But again and again - even when people do know better - that is how the reviews are written. Some even go to great lenghts (like mobile-review.com) to avoid mentioning 3rd party support for applications, as this is not "part of the sales package". And therefore should not be included in the evaluation of the product.
So yeah - there's psychology involved. But it has nothing to do with certain people's infatuation with yet another platform- dependent solution to pull money off ignorant users. And besides - there's got to be a limit to how many weather- applications you can sell - even to iPhone users.
Ewan, we're going to chat soon :)
Yes, it would have taken longer over EDGE, or on a crappy browser, but this isn't bad.
Now try doing the same thing in Chelmsford, UK (an example of a provincial town with a few nearby cinemas).
That being said, there's nothing like people getting it. And for that, I'm kind of happy that we can have these rants and push things forward.