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Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

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Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#51

Post by mortenjorck »

bobbles wrote: post #24
willvarfar wrote: post #15

I was at UIQ back when the iPhone "happened". It really was as pivotal for the industry as he says. I quipped that the iPhone made us irrelevant and Android made us redundant. I was surrounded by people with strong ambition and vision, at UIQ, Symbian, at our owners Motorola and Sony Ericsson, who wanted to build the iPhone and knew how to build the iPhone long before the iPhone was announced and before they knew any…

Well they do have that "Special Projects" division.. I'm sure they'll be cooking up something nice for 2014.. at least I hope so

Yours is not an uncommon sentiment, but it’s not really a fair picture: Observers often see the Apple of the past decade as releasing a category-definer every few years (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and awaiting the next one (iWatch! iScreen!).

Really, though, Apple's blockbusters of the 2000s are best seen as one continuous thing: the iPod paved the way for well-designed, vertically-integrated mobile devices (that it was a music player is almost incidental) and the iPhone and iPad are really bookends of a single smart device revolution.

Seen this way, Apple has had two world-changing category definers in its history, the Mac and the iOS device. That’s one every 24 years, if we count to the midpoint between the iPhone and iPad introductions. Will they do it again? Maybe, but I wouldn’t expect it to be just around the corner.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#52

Post by ac29 »

fingerprinter wrote: post #45
joshmarinacci wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is doing it well? How many phones have they sold? What is their installed base? What % of marketshare?

It's this type of comment that really disappoints me about HN these days. Ubuntu just released V1 of their phone in October. Anyone who knows phone manufacturers and carriers knows how long they soak something in their labs. Ubuntu has all the pieces in place to be an awesome option. Plus, they have their carrier advisory group with some great names showing their is some carrier interest. Ubuntu has a company behind…

Canonical released a phone in October? I think you're mistaken.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#53

Post by delicious »

I once read a lovely article online (which I've never been able to find again, I think it was by a founder of tripod?), recounting the early days of search engines. He was thinking of starting one, but the market was already filled... then came another search engine, and now there really was no room for another one... this iterated over several engines til he finally got to google. And added: now it's really filled...

Of course, today google still rules, yet they act incredibly threatened by facebook; and niche engines like duckduckgo are making inroads.

Is this true for smartphones? All we can really say is that he (and I) can't think of a way to enter... but that doesn't mean there is no way.

  Just as I wouldn’t suggest anyone build a new line of PCs or cars
Like electric cars...

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#54

Post by lotyrin »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #49
lotyrin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animated spinning ... things... rectangles? Around the planet logo. Rendered into a canvas without any throttling.

Hmm. I could have sworn I was using requestAnimationFrame.

Maybe. If you are, then you're doing so at 60fps at least, when this scene seems like it'd be fine slower than that.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#56

Post by ctdonath »

TheLegace wrote: post #17
jamestomasino wrote: post #5

There'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…

Exactly rather than focusing why a smartphone can't succeed, I'd like to see how and why a phone can succeed. If anyone thinks that the mess in the Play Store and the development environment of Android doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth they should really re-consider thinking that Android is going to be around forever. I would like to ditch this platform the first moment I get. There are a lot niches that are no…

I'd like to see how and why a phone can succeed.

There is an enormous market for a good dumb phone. Or, well, idiot savant phone: makes calls, makes calls well, and does nothing but makes calls. Between those who just don't want a smartphone, and those who carry enough computing power to not want yet another Cray 2 in a pocket, there's a large niche for a phone that is just a phone, syncs contacts effortlessly, eliminates every unnecessary/redundant call step, is just the right size & shape, uses every available network aggressively & seamlessly, leverages every service to save money, and has as clear & pristine a sound as makes audiophiles drool. Instead, we have fat folders with idiotic interfaces designed to make you spring for a smartphone just to get something thinner & easier.

I saw Smith Corona collapse. A market for typewriters remains to this day, decades later, untapped. Dumbphones are following the same path: a viable market wrecked by an industry dazzled by the sometimes undesirable glitz of a competitor.

Whither the iPhone nano? Many want it.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#57

Post by drawkbox »

Pxtl wrote: post #11

> Challenge: you are now competing with the iPod Touch. It disappoints me that nobody does this. Every attempted "competitor" I've seen that stands against the iPod Touch either costs more than the touch or is reviewed as unusable garbage.

Tons of games are sold on Touches, still a big part of handheld gaming. Noone has even challenged it, yes tables/pads now are there and minis to add more options but for a long time noone even tried after Apple. The game appstore market was initially won with iPod Touches.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#58

Post by matthewmacleod »

ctdonath wrote: post #56
TheLegace wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly rather than focusing why a smartphone can't succeed, I'd like to see how and why a phone can succeed. If anyone thinks that the mess in the Play Store and the development environment of Android doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth they should really re-consider thinking that Android is going to be around forever. I would like to ditch this platform the first moment I get. There are a lot niches that are no…

I'd like to see how and why a phone can succeed. There is an enormous market for a good dumb phone. Or, well, idiot savant phone: makes calls, makes calls well, and does nothing but makes calls. Between those who just don't want a smartphone, and those who carry enough computing power to not want yet another Cray 2 in a pocket, there's a large niche for a phone that is just a phone, syncs contacts effortlessly, elimi…

I don't really believe this market exists. And even if it does, I expect it's tiny - otherwise, manufacturers would be targeting it.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#59

Post by biftek »

I've been thinking this for a while, but I have a feeling there is a decently large market (at least enough to sustain a small company and team) for really nice "dumb" phones.

No data; just text, and talk (and in my vision a really nice camera) with the ability to sync/backup contacts etc.

Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone

#60

Post by seiji »

mortenjorck wrote: post #51
bobbles wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they do have that "Special Projects" division.. I'm sure they'll be cooking up something nice for 2014.. at least I hope so

Yours is not an uncommon sentiment, but it’s not really a fair picture: Observers often see the Apple of the past decade as releasing a category-definer every few years (iPod, iPhone, iPad), and awaiting the next one (iWatch! iScreen!). Really, though, Apple's blockbusters of the 2000s are best seen as one continuous thing: the iPod paved the way for well-designed, vertically-integrated mobile devices (that it was a…

Huh whatnow?

The original iPod (and modern iPods minus the Touch) don't run iOS at all. The iPod gave Apple the time to stall until they could build what Steve wanted to make in 1999, but the world didn't have the capacity to create yet.

These days, Apple is the forefront of both industrial design and fabrication capacity. They aren't in the past—they are in the present and they are moving the world along with them, not waiting for it to catch up to them anymore.

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