Who is to say that cellphone networks will even be relevant in 10 years? What if city-wide, state-wide, country-wide WiFi were to be developed? Such a public works project would blow the market completely open. And in emerging markets, mesh-WiFi might be the only way to get data to everyone.
Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
71–80 of 177 posts
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#72> 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.
> Every attempted "competitor" I've seen that stands against the iPod Touch either costs more than the touch or is reviewed as unusable garbage. Maybe this speaks to Tim Cook's operations wizardry? If no one can get components at the same quality or price as Apple then they're stuck either selling a crappier device for the same price or a good device at a higher price. If you can't beat Apple in hardware price or har…
There expensive one, the Galaxy Player 5, cost more than Apple's offering.
And they all ran Android 2.3
Similarly, there was Archos. They made a whole family of Android player devices at the 2.3 era, and where infamously buggy.
Sony made the Walkman Z as a phoneless counterpart to the Xperia Z. It was $250. Supposedly a fantastic device, but that's not really undercutting Apple very well when Apple was selling iPod 4 devices for less.
I mean, Black Friday doorcrashers this year were iPod 4 at $130. I can't think of any android counterpart I'd want at that price. Maybe Motorola can figure out a phoneless Moto G with the right nudge from Google.
A big problem is also marketing - these companies are only now figuring out how to market their handheld devices in the carrier-controlled countries since up until then they just handed the devices off to carriers and maybe put up a few ads.
Meanwhile, Apples had their own stores.
Samsung could stop shoving money into ads and could start putting together coherent store-displays of their non-carrier product line. Sony should revive their store-brand too - they were Apple back when Apple made beige boxes. Sony could be Apple again - they've stopped the race to the bottom and seem to be investing in quality. I'd love to see Sony put together a coherent adversary for Apple using the Android/Win8 ecosystems. They even have the kind of market breadth and to put together a counter to the iTunes/App Store with their gaming and media holdings.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#73Curious that the article doesn't mention the word "patents" once. That's what stops you from even starting to build a Smartphone of your own - you'd violate dozens of patents and be sued into oblivion. The only reason manufacturers are able to do it now is because they all have portfolios of their own and are in a state of cold war with everyone else.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's the thing though, companies like Apple pretty much ignore the whole "phone" and SMS thing, Apple has even shot the operators in the back with iMessage. You're right that it's easy to make a phone nowadays with off the shelf components, like the article mentions that's exactly what the chinese/asian OEMS are doing now. The question is whether you will be able to make something that can compete with Apple /…
That is very true. I do feel that the best phones out there today as far as sales maybe the iPhone and the Samsung S4? Will in 5 (?) 10 (?), be like the first iPod, big clunky and obsolete. And the huge phone makers of yesteryear: Nokia, Blackberry etc are now small. I can easily see in a 10 years period a a new player entering the market with success. (if they can keep from being bought by the big 3). Facebooks phon…
In the free/open space, we already have fifty billion variants - Linux, the various BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), GNU Hurd, ReactOS, OpenSolaris, Haiku etc.)...
Do you want more? I mean, I get the whole diversity thing, but after a while, I suspect you get diminishing returns...
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#75> the iphone changed the game
> no device can enter the market without carrier help.
The iphone was successful exactly because it sold to rich people before, with no carrier help. in fact, in the beginning the carriers would throw anything at you to move you from an iphone. In fact, the reason you have to pay a "smarphone fee" until recently was because AT&T greedily charged a mandatory $30 extra for "iphone data" if you ever wanted a subsided iphone.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#76This guy is missing the fact that in a lot of European countries, and elsewhere in the world, carriers mean squat . The carrier is often simply the provider of the SIM card you put in the phone, so carrier support is in no way needed for a phone to succeed. You don't need to be successful in the US to be successful.
They still mean something in those countries, because carriers there still have agendas, marketing budgets, partnerships and retail stores even though they may not dictate cell phone features.
where i came from, you'd actually made fun of people that had the phone from the carrier billboard.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#77cough Ubuntu cough In all seriousness, if he means smartphone from a hardware perspective, I might actually agree. The startup costs there are crazy high. But, if he means software, no. Ubuntu is doing it and doing it very, very well. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it. All Android using hardware manufacturers are crazy to continue with Android now that Google owns Motorola. Look at the Moto X. Nothing can…
Another reason you can't make new smartphones is lawsuits. I imagine Ubuntu OS will be sued out of existence by patent trolls should Samsung adopt it. They don't have an army of lawyers like Android/Google.
Today even the most open android phone have the bootloader and radio firmwares closed because of patents.
no matter how good ubuntu will be, it will end up only being offered ancient radios by qualcomm and the likes. and they won't be able to work around since the standard is patented by dozen different people. You'd probably will only have single band phones in the begging. or maybe i just worry too much...
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#78The article is kinda paradoxal... > the iphone changed the game > no device can enter the market without carrier help. The iphone was successful exactly because it sold to rich people before, with no carrier help. in fact, in the beginning the carriers would throw anything at you to move you from an iphone. In fact, the reason you have to pay a "smarphone fee" until recently was because AT&T greedily charged a mandat…
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#79This guy is missing the fact that in a lot of European countries, and elsewhere in the world, carriers mean squat . The carrier is often simply the provider of the SIM card you put in the phone, so carrier support is in no way needed for a phone to succeed. You don't need to be successful in the US to be successful.
All these articles do. It's annoying.
Re: Why You Can't Build a Smartphone
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
The iPod wasn't just an infusion of cash to keep the company alive, to me it really looks like the start of the whole mobile line that today runs iOS.