cellular-news: "Windows could attack Symbian OS"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.cellular-news.com/story/10749.shtml' target='_blank'>http://www.cellular-news.com/story/10749.shtml</a><br /><br /></div>"PC and PDA vendors could seriously swing the smartphone market in Microsoft's favour, according to wireless telecoms research and consulting firm, ARCchart. If the PC and PDA vendors do enter the market, ARCchart estimates that by 2008 it would cut the Symbian operating system's market share lead to just 8% points above the Windows Mobile for Smartphone (WMS) platform, giving Microsoft an overall 33% market share.<br /><br />The PC and PDA vendors have yet to play their smartphone hand. However, they are well suited to operating in the increasingly commoditised conditions of the mobile handset market, and they have established sales channels into which they can sell smartphone products. Dell in particular has been notably reluctant to enter the market because of Nokia's hegemony, and the role of the network operators in the product distribution chain, but both these barriers will diminish over time."<br /><br />This is a very interesting article, and it supports the strategy that Microsoft has been talking about since 2000 - commoditize the market, take the power away from players like Nokia, and allow anyone with a brand to make a phone. It's a long term play that will require some level of standardization so phones don't get locked up in carrier tests for eight months, but I think it holds a lot of potential for being the way things go in the future. Only time will tell - what do you think about this approach?

[possmann]

YES! This is exactly what I've been ranting about - I could care less about the carrier value added features - all I carry about from the phone carrier is the reliabilty of the signal, speed of data transfer and coverage. Who cares if T-mobile has their "T-zones" - geesh! focus your money on building up the wireless infrastructure, increasing your coverage and speed/reliability and blow those little carrier specific tweaks off completely. Get the SERVICE out and stop tweaking the pee out of every new phone that comes out and inevitably delaying the release for months... :roll:

I want to be able to buy my phone from a PHONE hardware vendor - not a carrier - and feel confident that it will work on any network that is GSM/GPRS capable.

so there!

:x

[TANKERx]

What I find sad about the article is that Microsoft isn't in the market to produce great and innovative products; If it was, it would achieve success and increased share by innovating instead of undercutting the opposition.

Why can't it succeed on what it makes rather than the size of its wallet?

Anyway, some of the statements are, IMO, from the Ministry of the Blimmin' Obvious. For example, "Nokia will see its current 36% handset market share eroded" is what you'd expect. As more people enter the market, there'll be fewer slices to go around and those with a lot will inevitably lose some.

Variety is the spice of life and a bit of competition for Symbian can only be a good thing. I'm sure there'll be some soon :roll:

[Kris Kumar]

I want to be able to buy my phone from a PHONE hardware vendor - not a carrier

I agree, the key word being Phone Vendor. I would hate the commoditization. Its good for the price or choices, but would kill the quality. I feel that SE, Nokia, Ericsson, Moto and other phone manufacturers have invested a lot in the core cell technology R&D. Which benefits the consumer. When HP and Dell get in the fray, they may offer cheap phones (with good software ie MS WinMobile :-)) with outsourced manufacturing but may not be able to provide the same cell voice quality, battery life etc.

I agree, the cellphone carriers in US do waste a lot of money on services and tweaking their phones, when they should be improving the coverage.

Kris

[Mike Temporale]

When HP and Dell get in the fray, they may offer cheap phones (with good software ie MS WinMobile :-)) with outsourced manufacturing but may not be able to provide the same cell voice quality, battery life etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dell, HP, and the others outsourced the handsets to likes of Motorola or Samsung. I'm certian that they would pick a manufacturer that has a good record. So you will have cheaper costing handsets with excellent voice quality, battery life, durability, screens, etc..

[possmann]

I was thinking of buying direct from moto - screw the link of where I live and which carrier I use... The link on the Moto web site should read what frequency/signal type do you need? Then give me a selection of phones based on that critereon and allow me to select all the other HARDWARE features I would want with my phone - oh yeah, and OS

[ShivShanks]

It's a long term play that will require some level of standardization so phones don't get locked up in carrier tests for eight months, but I think it holds a lot of potential for being the way things go in the future. Only time will tell - what do you think about this approach?

Actually this is already possible with GSM phones (at least in Europe/Asia). The one thing that I love about GSM phones is the SIM card feature. So just buy any phone and pop in your carrier's SIM card and you are done. Of course in the US some GSM carriers SIM lock the handset but that can be worked around. What I hate the most about CDMA phones in the US (even though I like the CDMA technology) is the lack of SIM like features. China OTOH refused to allow CDMA into the country unless a SIM like feature was added and so Chinese CDMA phone do have something similar. Its just that we US consumers are such dorks to take this ******** from service providers of not allowing handset portability within similar technology. I guess like the number portability, the FCC should come up with handset portability. Its just another ploy by the carriers to lock people up into their services. Eventually the carriers will have no control over the what handsets and what content is accessed over their networks. It will happen. Remember the AOL/Compuserve walled gardens in the early days of net? Nowadays who cares? Its all the wide open internet. All this T-Zones, Get-It-Now and Vision crap will eventually be forgotten and ignored and people will have full easy access to the net. Heck I can already kind of do it on my i500 :) Its a matter of time before it happens in general. And yes the carriers will try their best to stymie this but eventually will lose. Of that I have no doubt.

[ShivShanks]

What I find sad about the article is that Microsoft isn't in the market to produce great and innovative products; If it was, it would achieve success and increased share by innovating instead of undercutting the opposition.

Why can't it succeed on what it makes rather than the size of its wallet?


So are you saying that Microsoft doesn't innovate at all, or are you saying that thats what the article says? I don't think thats quite an accurate characterization. WM2003 is innovative in the sense of slimming down and adapting WinCE/PPC to a mobile phone with very good integration with the phone part of it. You should see how badly the Palm OS in my i500 integrates with the phone (I like it for other reasons like touch screen, form factor, high speed 1xRTT data at fixed rates etc). Also Windows Media 9 on WM2003 is killer. No other SmartPhone OS has such good multimedia support. Plus you get the familiar Windows platform both from an end user and developer point of view.

[Andrew_Opala]

Just out of interest, to what services do you subscribe and how much do you pay for these services? Also, how much did you pay for the phone and was it subsidized?

The reason I ask is that I doubt that Microsoft being in or out of the market will save anyone any money or increase quality. I believe Microsoft will just be making more money from its wireless OS division, and securing another outlet for it's pool of developers.

How do you think these services will change in value or price if Microsoft we to enter the market fully?