Monday, November 07, 2005
When User's create the phone
During some conversations with myself, came across this thought. Looked quite interesting to me.
What if not the OEMs and not the operators, but the users decide what the phone looks like. A user goes and purchases a phone from the market only for the hardware specifications it has. Probably it has got no OS on it, and is not in a usable state now. He goes to a portal to create a Softwate package for the phone. He selects that he wants to put Symbian OS on it. He selects what all applications will run on his phone. After watching a nice preview of things, he then decides to create a binary, and download it to the phone. And the phone is ready to use.
Quite simple, isnt it?
The beauty that I appreciate in this entire scenario is the power it gives the user to choose. He very rightfully acts as a judge, and evaluates the softwares and then use it. Just because Nokia stands with Symbian, he does need to be stuck with Symbian while using a Nokia phone. At a point of time, he thinks that no symbian is not the look, performance I require, he goes and creates another binary using Pocket PC OS. I agree that not all the users are savvy enough to go do all this for their mobile phones. So let it be, they should also be able to purchase the same phone with the pre installed software from the OEM's at an added price of course. The only hitch that comes to my mind on the first thought for this approach is that the current phones do not have any open port through which one can download an OS image. But well all that can be worked out, if it seems to offer value.
What do you say?
Comments:
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Well, the reason the current model works is because most of the users do not want to undergo the hassle of flashing an OS themselves.
Even in the PC industry (and I'm not talking about India, which happens to be kind of an exception) most users buy PCs with pre-installed software, although the same hardware might be available with pre-installed Windows or Linux to choose from.
Now that is a model that some OEMs are moving to. Palm, for example, just introduced a Treo device based on Windows Mobile, an erstwhile competitor, while they continue to sell devices based on PalmOS.
Sony Ericsson sells devices based on 3 different OS, Motorola has 2 and so does Samsung.
It doesn't seem that Nokia will follow suit anytime soon, in their bid to maintain control over the industry, especially with their recent acquisition of stake in Symbian. Whether that bid succeeds or not is something time will tell. It's getting interesting though with Motorola and Samsung picking up market share at Nokia's cost.
The fun has just begun :)
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Even in the PC industry (and I'm not talking about India, which happens to be kind of an exception) most users buy PCs with pre-installed software, although the same hardware might be available with pre-installed Windows or Linux to choose from.
Now that is a model that some OEMs are moving to. Palm, for example, just introduced a Treo device based on Windows Mobile, an erstwhile competitor, while they continue to sell devices based on PalmOS.
Sony Ericsson sells devices based on 3 different OS, Motorola has 2 and so does Samsung.
It doesn't seem that Nokia will follow suit anytime soon, in their bid to maintain control over the industry, especially with their recent acquisition of stake in Symbian. Whether that bid succeeds or not is something time will tell. It's getting interesting though with Motorola and Samsung picking up market share at Nokia's cost.
The fun has just begun :)
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