Several months ago I conducted a straw poll amongst friends and colleagues and found that over eighty per cent had at one time or another owned a Nokia phone, but that fewer than one in twenty did so now. More worryingly for Nokia virtually no one had Nokia, even post Microsoft partnership, on their consideration list for their next phone. Rumours and the experience of those who have used the Window’s Mobile 7 powered phones suggest that the next generation of Nokia’s phones will attract interest and sales, but perhaps there is a deeper issue as well.
Recent press coverage and online commentary has highlighted the increasingly heated battle between iOS, Android, Blackberry OS and WM – and it seems that the operating system has come to the fore in phone purchase decision making. A quick survey of local phone stores confirms that people decide on OS first and then device.
So what does this mean for Nokia and the other device manufactures? Apple and Blackberry are the exceptions since device and OS are exclusively and tightly bundled. But for the rest is there a danger that they become generic and commoditised? It is already apparent both from a glance around your typical phone shop, and from the slew of patent-infringement claims, that there is actually little difference between the vast majority of handsets. Nokia was possible the last to have a distinct style to its handsets. Now, my guess is, that the dominance of the iPhone as well as the demands of conforming to a common operating system, are creating ranges of look-a-like phones.
The beauty of this for Google in particular, as developer of Android, is that although we’ll upgrade our phones every couple of years, we are increasingly loyal to one operating system. It’s not just the way the OS works and our getting accustomed to that; we are effectively locked in by the ease of transferring data, contacts, photos etc. between handsets using the same OS. The flip side is that as phones become smarter, and the amount and importance of data they contain increases, the hassle and risk of switching OS increases. The value of this data, plus the opportunities to capture more and us it to target advertising is the obvious overall benefit to Google.
Once we’ve ‘bought in’ to a particular OS the way we select a handset becomes more and more of a lottery influenced by brand advertising and the advice (possibly determined by commission level) of the sales assistant.
So, will the mobile device market go the same ways as that of computers: manufacturers churning out clones of a standard spec at low margin whilst the software developers reap the benefits? The signs are there, as noted above. However, there is still plenty of room for innovation. Phones are increasingly multi-tasking devices, but have retained a form factor similar to the ‘traditional’ mobile phone albeit more screen-centred. However, there could be numerous other options – depending on personal use and preference.
Almost a decade ago I saw a reference design by a company called IXI Mobile that deconstructed the ‘phone’ into a selection of individual devices that communicated via Bluetooth. At the heart was a GSM device the size of a matchbox that contained the SIM and acted as the hub of a personal network of devices. Depending on your needs you could use it with a headset, a flat screen, a keypad or several other devices. Each worked singly or as part of a cluster, all communicating through the hub. I don’t know what happened to IXI, but it seems to me that the time is ripe to break away from the generic clones and re-think the mobile handset.
