I usually agree with Senor Cringely. He writes thoughtful, longer pieces about tech and he often portends grave changes in the industry. Today, however, I’m not quite sure he’s hit the nail on the head.
His piece posits that there is an 85-10-5 split in most markets, most notably the phone market. In this case you have 85% feature phones, 10% smartphones, and 5 odd ducks like Nextel and MVNOs bringing up the rear where the feature of interest isn’t quite smart but not quite mass market – walkie talkie features being a notable example.
He then extrapolates Samsung’s plan to stop producing “smartphones” for the mass market as proof that what they are actually planning is to produce smartphones masquerading as cheaper feature phones. Instead of trying to beat WinMo, Symbian, or OSX, they are going to use Android in a highly customized way to offer smartphone features at feature phone pricing. Fair enough.
His next bit of extrapolation is a stretch. He believes that Android will essentially turn Windows Mobile into an also-ran and could completely subsume Symbian. His expectation would be a world in which the feature/smart/odd duck percentages mentioned above turns into an iPhone/Android/Everyone Else trichotomy. While I’d love to be smoking his happy grass and while I’d love for Windows Mobile to get the heck out of my life, the chance is slim to none. He writes:
If I had to bet right this moment on the mobile 85-10-5 of 2011 I’d say iPhone, Android, then RIM, Symbian, or something completely new from behind Door Number Three.
Why iPhone over Android? For exactly the same reason why the iPod holds that approximate 85 position among music players, including ones using open source software. iPhone has a really great SDK (light-years ahead of any other right now). The App Store distribution platform is great, but locked on too many points. This is a careful timing issue for Apple. If they open the APIs too quickly they risk being blocked. They need to open an API once they are perfectly sure it is the right one and the right way to export that function. Apple is going to relax the restrictions progressively when they better understand the use cases and what are the best APIs. In the meantime it is giving an advantage to Android, but one that I think a year from now Apple will have reclaimed.
Here is my concern: to project the success of the iPod onto the iPhone is tempting but essentially incorrect. The iPod is a CE device. It requires little investment after the initial purchase and frequent and sometimes unnecessary updates encourage brand loyalty. It is a verb, like Google, rather than a formal noun.
The iPhone, on the other hand, is like a MacBook Pro. It’s perceived as exclusive, it’s a bit more expensive, and once you see one you find that you can’t look away. But that doesn’t change the fact that the average consumer will still get the $9.99 RAZR with 10-year contract because of perceived quality issues with networks and phone models. There’s a reason why Verizon runs those “Can You Hear Me Now”/ “You’ve got a whole team behind you” ads and it’s not because their network is better. Networks are highly subjective and my AT&T experience can be excellent while yours is horrible. Perhaps they have incrementally more coverage in areas you frequent. Then, once you’re locked in at a carrier there is very little impetus to switch. Therefore, at best only 1/4 of mobile customers has the opportunity to try the iPhone and over that a miniscule fraction will make the jump. Carriers complain about churn but they never seem to crow about the middle-aged suburbanites who will go through the next twenty years paying $200 a month for a crappy phone in a sad recreation of the salad days of Ma Bell where your grandma leased a rotary for $10 a month.
So, at the risk of having to turn in my fanboy badge I can’t agree with RXC in this case. I could see a 60-20-20 spread with Android in the lead, and WinMo/RIM/Symbian and iPhone picking up the last two slots. I know I’m cheating lumping everyone into a 20% chunk but I think you’ll note that there is no space for feature phones in this equation and that Android will become the de facto feature phone OS.
I think its really funny how everyone predicts WiMo’s death, when it currently has the lead in smartphone marketshare right now. Android as of right now has 0% marketshare, so let’s see how things play out, mmm’kay?
yes WiMo has the lead right now but microsoft messed up their lead with MSN and went along way towards killing windows with vista
google, in case you havent noticed, has been growing like mad and is poised to take over the world :)
no one has any confidence in microsoft anymore
Windows mobile already has stylus support, if buttons of the screen are made bigger it will work for finger touch. Next version should have that otherwise it will die the death, there is no future for all keyboard high end phones.
>I usually agree with Senor Cringely.
Really??? He’s been more wrong than Jim Cramer on Mad Money.
Maybe that should read “I usually enjoy Senor Cringely.”
I wanted to rate you comment up but SezWho is being a bucket of fail right now.
++usually
@ John, what do you think of my article on the Android taking down the ringtone biz with the free ringtone editor in there?
Apple won’t have anything to do with one.
I’m loathe to admit I agree with -some- of Cringely postings but the writings are often reserved in my mind as a prereq to /. Flame Bait 101.
Mobile devices due to the wide variation in tasks, markets, and other indicators outside of “being a phone” will guarantee efficacy to even the most niche of solutions that garner adoption in the first place. Developers will flock where they flock but markets that have demands for solutions will want something -now-.
The real news flash is viable possible platforms for innovation (including *yawn* voice communication) have more competition than ever before.
It’s very exciting — but death watches and doom prediction is a bit premature in the mobile spaces.
Rants don’t lend to research against indexes of top mobile devices in various vertical markets with a draw down to system requirements, available vendor solutions, and 2 year product road maps — this is what investment analysts do. The information provided by investment analysts don’t end up on PBS.ORG usually and very likely not in opinion pieces.
I think Apple is the one in trouble. As Apple has become more popular, people are starting to see that their systems are very locked down. Sure, the iPhone has BEEN a big hit, but just getting the current 3G release out the door has been a bit of a publicity nightmare for Apple (reports about bad connections and questionable AppStore inclusions).
MS could also turnoff their Exchange Server license, and that would be a big problem for Apple competing with RIM for the buisness market.
LOL. Have you seen their Q3 earnings?! Go read that… LOL.
Android is the only player in the market that plays with similar rules of WinMo, both are not locked for a certain manufacture or carrier, both are very and highly customizable, and both have pretty good potential to evolve, WinMo on the other hand is getting great momentum from manufacturers like HTC, with the new HTC touch lineup of mobile devices with great features and value for money, it is very unlikely to predict a death of an OS that has this much consumer based and investment.
I think such prediction is lame
Android is the only player in the market that plays with similar rules of WinMo, both are not locked for a certain manufacture or carrier, both are very and highly customizable, and both have pretty good potential to evolve, WinMo on the other hand is getting great momentum from manufacturers like HTC, with the new HTC touch lineup of mobile devices with great features and value for money, it is very unlikely to predict a death of an OS that has this much consumer based and investment.
I think such prediction is lame
One thing that I still don’t understand is how the open source Android works with Google’s business model.
Sure, right now there’s a whole lot of service lock-in on the phone. But what stops another headset manufacturer from taking the open source project and wiring up another service?
Has Google just spent a lot of investment to level a playing field that was already tilted in their favor?
Google model here is simple: trying to being in a good place if MS will play hard game. In addition, Google want to be anywhere you can search, and not give any competitor the edge to win anywhere. (Think that MS will be the default search engine – Google will not let it happens). Schmidt is so afraid of MS that he will do anything, really anything to offend MS. His philosophy is: OSF is out (offend Sun Forever), OMSF(Offend MS Forever) is in.
Think of inertia. As a player becomes bigger, it becomes harder to beat it and so on. But if this carries on, people hate it. So when MS became too big, there was a lot of action in Linux.
Think of dichotomy. Businesses pay top dollar for what they need. Ordinary people hang around deal sites and forums, hoping against hope that they don’t miss a deal or worse, a trend.
Think of roadmaps. How the roadmaps of Palm, WinMo, Symbian, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android affect each other. Which roadmap peaks at what time and why and for which users.
iPhone is locked down but idiot proof. Jobs doesn’t trust us with even the battery change. Also iPhone has an American focus. Also iPhone is a concept establisher. Because Apple has the highest brand awareness and hype, it is in charge of establishing the concept of a smartphone.
Similarly, Symbian has a European focus. Just like Apple would never get aggressive in Europe, Nokia would never get aggressive in US.
I am not saying that all that I have said is the truth or that I am an expert. I am only trying to point out the sort of symbiotic thinking needed to understand such markets.
Cringley leaves out something. The iPhone, RIM and Palm model (hardware and software) is very different from WinMo, Android, and Symbian (software only).
While we have three entrants in each category, I believe that we’ll see a battle over which model prevails BEFORE we see whether WinMo survives.
If the hardware and software model wins, we could easily see MSoft buy one of the ODMs and then the battle will be joined.
my G1 says Google on the back. So I would say they are in the hardware market eventhough HCI is the manufacturer
I think this is a great point and why I vote for iPhone, RIM, and Palm (but not so much Palm) to succeed / keep growing. There is something to be said for being able to develop for a very consistent platform. And as noble of a vision as Android is, a developer can’t get any guarantees about who will be using your app on what phone. One can’t make assumptions about things like 3G, GPS, a keyboard, touchscreen, etc. if the goal of your OS is to run on as many phones as possible.
It will take time to Android come top on the Windows Mobile
You must be kidding me.
Have you tried the G1? Nothing about the device is superior to the iPhone, with one exception –
I was able to order the device online, get it the next day, turn it on, enter my gmail un and pw, and the phone was completely set up. All of my contacts and calendars were in place, and I did not need to connect it to my mac.
But it is all downhill from there. The device is bulky and heavy. My 5 year old loves the iphone, but only likes the flipping motion of the G1 (she hates by Blackberry 8310 except for the camera with flash).
I still have no idea where to go to get apps for the G1. They should have included access to a mobile site for this on the phone … like the apple did.
The camera is very slow compared to the iphone and BB
The browser is fast (give credit where credit is due).
Not that Android is a bad device, it is just lacking in terms of what the iPhone provides. I do think that they will quickly pass Blackberry if they do not get the Bold to market quickly and support it with a killer app store.
Windows and Symbian are not even players in the North American market anymore. Palm is dead.
“I still have no idea where to go to get apps for the G1. They should have included access to a mobile site for this on the phone … like the apple did.”
The Market link in the main app folder? Maybe you should return your G1 so someone who wants more than a pretty chassis can buy it.
The point of the article is that Android is poised to succeed because it is spearheading the push for feature phones to get a real unified operating system with previously smartphone-exclusive features. Apple will not own that space because mass-market is not what they do.
Everyone who is judging Android on the G1 should wait a year or two for some other manufacturers to jump on (and they definitely will). Android is not tied to HTC and neither is it tied to Google.
Give android 2 years and I think it will be on top. Look how many manufacturers are jumping on board. Microsoft its only a matter of time!
Windows mobile mostly targets corporate users where the competition is between RIMM and Microsoft. One reason Microsoft is in the lead is the whole corporate e-mail, security policies etc. abilities that are far more advanced than its competitors. iphone et al are competing in the upper-class portion of the what is referred to in this article as 10 dollar phone market so the comparison doesn’t really have a good basis.
Mobile phones are complex devices:
They bring together hardware and software and require retail distribution plus application distribution.
In the PC world there was IBM-PC/MSDos, Apple Mac and CP/M.
Now there are way too many operating environments.
On the hardware side Samsung is the leader: they produce form the chips and deliver finished phones to shops. Thus they control 100% their channel.
On the application side Apple has probably the lead: Appstore and iTunes.
Nokia has a bit of everything: making the phones using third party chips and Symbian, but missing out on the applications.
But they are leading in the number of phones sold. twice as much as Samsung.
Google has now to learn how to sell hardware into retail stores, something quite different from selling a web service to businesses (AdSense). Microsoft learned about the difference between software in retail and hardware in retail the hard way: XBox360 A company with experience in retail.
The mobile phone market will be decided by the decisions of Nokia and Samsung.
In the eighties JVC proved that the best (engineered) product is not the winner in retail sales.