Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
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Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
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Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#2Sorry, but you don't seem to be offering anything new here. We know there are large capital costs for hardware businesses. We know network effects exist for phone applications. We know UI performance is a key issue in smartphone adoption (currently).
Maybe "It's Hard To Build A Smartphone In 2013" would be a better title. But to suggest people will be using iPhones and Androids in the year 2050...Yikes. I pray that future doesn't come to pass.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#3I think many of the author's points are valid, but I do still believe that companies like Blackberry and Nokia can build Android or Windows Mobile phones successfully, as they won't have to deal with a) user inertia from changing to a new OS or b) developing entirely new UI and operating systems.
As far as I can tell, there won't really be any new carriers or any new operating systems, but that doesn't preclude competition in the hardware space.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#4With a bit of tongue-in-cheek...
1. Data networks
It's an open question of using WiFi as the universal carrier - we're not at that point yet; but it's not a question of using existing GSM networks. It's going to be hard for carriers to deny, after some point, minutes to paying customers.
2. The cost of entry - OS, cloud store, apps
This happened time and again. Remember when Linux has appeared on the stage? Seen porting projects, like Wine, PetrOS, Mono? Realize that Android was built not from scratch, at least concerning interfaces? Second time is almost always cheaper - and in our times, by a wide margin.
3. Access to hardware components - need good hardware...
No. I don't care much if the phone is 5 mm or 2 mm thick, 100 g or 250 g heavy - just like a word processor user doesn't care if letter appears on the screen in 10 ms or 90 ms after he hit the keyboard. At some point it becomes irrelevant, and competition shifts elsewhere. See Firefox phone as another example.
4. Retreat to the low end
Yes, you see it. The fact that the product is a commodity doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
5. A disruptive UI
It was surely a pain to switch from sleeky Nokia UI to strange future of IPhone, no? How about Sugar, from One Laptop Per Child project, which was done anew?
6. Be realistic?
I certainly see a point in what you're saying; but don't you see the power of fashion - ones all important things are by default? As soon as changes become unimportant, returns dwindling and defaults good enough, attention goes to other things - a similar thing happened in automotive world, where a lot of customers buy not the functionality, but trendiness.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#5There's a very strong argument here but the claim appears to rely on the author's expansive definition of "smartphone", in which he encompasses app stores, cloud servers and networks. Perhaps he has a point about the difficulty of investment in taking on these well established players in the field, but I don't feel it's entirely accurate to claim that smartphones themselves cannot be successful.
A new phone with a bare-bones linux-like OS designed to piggy-back on existing networks may have a small place in the market, and others like Jolla that seek to grow toward something big may pick up fractions of a percent as well. Even surviving a decade with a low, but consistent, share is a success (e.g., Apple in the 80s).
Finally, there's the novelty and growth of industry to consider. The current big players in the smartphone market are already scrambling to address the emerging wearable revolution. The "internet of things" is right on the horizon as well and there's no telling where the chips may land. To be fair, the author did mention innovation as a key to potential success. We should consider the grander implications of a constantly evolving business model and offering in that sentiment, though. It's not just a matter of making a neat new feature, but of the entire game changing every 5 years.
While the author makes plenty of good and valid points, I don't think the outlook need be so bleak.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#6Sorry, but you don't seem to be offering anything new here. We know there are large capital costs for hardware businesses. We know network effects exist for phone applications. We know UI performance is a key issue in smartphone adoption (currently). Maybe "It's Hard To Build A Smartphone In 2013" would be a better title. But to suggest people will be using iPhones and Androids in the year 2050...Yikes. I pray that f…
I guess the point is that it will become like the PC desktop ecosystem. There are new OSes all the time, but which OS broke the 4% mark in the last 20 years? Perhaps OS X, but Mac sales are dropping. The PC market is being disrupted not by another PC but by a change in paradigm to mobile. The mobile market is fast approaching a place where it takes risking billions just to start competing.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#7* A few new Android manufacturers may join the game*
For anyone interested, Fairphone are doing so pretty successfully right now.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#8Sorry, but you don't seem to be offering anything new here. We know there are large capital costs for hardware businesses. We know network effects exist for phone applications. We know UI performance is a key issue in smartphone adoption (currently). Maybe "It's Hard To Build A Smartphone In 2013" would be a better title. But to suggest people will be using iPhones and Androids in the year 2050...Yikes. I pray that f…
The way I read this article, It is less about building new smartphone but more about the next technology shift that is going to change the direction. Basically, as oft repeated Ford statement goes, 'if you asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horse'. So, at this point, smartphone business is settling into a faster horse business.
So, I would really expect the next big thing to be not a be an iPhone but something utterly different. Neural implants, anyone?
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#9There's a very strong argument here but the claim appears to rely on the author's expansive definition of "smartphone", in which he encompasses app stores, cloud servers and networks. Perhaps he has a point about the difficulty of investment in taking on these well established players in the field, but I don't feel it's entirely accurate to claim that smartphones themselves cannot be successful. A new phone with a ba…
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Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#10This guy is so ex-Nokia, it's sad. He rates the latest Maemo/whatever as a higher chance of market presence than Firefox OS. OK, Nordsman... we understand you are grieving for your lost mobile device business... but you can do it in private.
Linux, via Android, commodified smartphone platforms by giving away the OS and thus commodifying the position of mobile device hardware manufacturers. This was coming anyway, but was a brilliantly timed commercial play by Google to head off Apple's strength in devices. Google's allies were the carriers, who were unhappy with Apple owning (via signup-time credit card) who they perceived as their customers.
FirefoxOS and that new Jolla thing the Nords are working on basically use exactly the same hardware and OS platform (ie. Linux). There's no huge investment there, the investment is in higher layers of the software stack, and in FirefoxOS' case in marketing to different segments (the developing world, which still has 'growth', and necessitates less competitive component acquisition for manufacturing batches).
To say a small team can't do something similar is plain wrong. I'd say the effort required is similar to launching a new Linux distribution. As long as there is a niche you can cater to, there is no reason it won't survive and thrive. CyanogenMod is only the beginning: cross-pollination is a good thing.
Start with preferably https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/ (or otherwise http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html) and begin thy mission to conquer portable computing!
(Edit: Added content after the initial paragraph after it was downvoted. Fair enough, it was a bit snarky :)