Making Sense of the Cellphone Landscape 185
Charlie Stross has a blog post up that tries to make sense of the mobile phone market and where it's going: where Apple, Google, and the cellcos fit in, and what the point of Google's Nexus One may be. "Becoming a pure bandwidth provider is every cellco's nightmare: it levels the playing field and puts them in direct competition with their peers, a competition that can only be won by throwing huge amounts of capital infrastructure at their backbone network. So for the past five years or more, they've been doing their best not to get dragged into a game of beggar-my-neighbor, by expedients such as exclusive handset deals... [Google intends] to turn 3G data service (and subsequently, LTE) into a commodity, like Wi-Fi hotspot service only more widespread and cheaper to get at. They want to get consumers to buy unlocked SIM-free handsets and pick cheap data SIMs. They'd love to move everyone to cheap data SIMs rather than the hideously convoluted legacy voice stacks maintained by the telcos; then they could piggyback Google Voice on it, and ultimately do the Google thing to all your voice messages as well as your email and web access. (This is, needless to say, going to bring them into conflict with Apple. ... Apple are an implicit threat to Google because Google can't slap their ads all over [the App and iTunes stores]. So it's going to end in handbags at dawn... eventually.)"
Re:Buzzwords! Buzzwords! Buzzosphere! (Score:3, Insightful)
3G will be the next standard feature (Score:2, Insightful)
As WiFi migrates from Laptops to Desktops 3G chipsets will start to be standard items in Netbooks, then Laptops. This will help push data only plans down in price. And then 3G will migrate everywhere. Your car, your GPS (handheld, bike, car), cameras, etc etc.
Five years from now your 3G provider bill will have a list of your many 3G enabled devices. Perhaps one or two might have traditional voice plans. All will have data plans.
Carriers that allow you to aggregate devices and total transfer at reasonable prices will survive.
Carriers that stick to the current voice plus optional (expensive) data will not.
The only question is how long it takes to get there.
Re:I Just Did... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and no mention of Nokia in the summary (and quite dismissive in TFA).
It's not only about Maemo, it's about a phone manufacturer that has 40% of total market (of which smartphones are what, 15 - 20% now? Why do you talk only about them?). Over 50% of smartphone market. The only phone manufacturer that keeps itself comfortable financially (others are either struggling or mobile phones aren't their main product; except RIM perhaps, but they sell corporate service rather than phones). Only one their product (1100) is the most popular consumer electronic device in history, it vastly outsold families (like "iPod") from other manufacturers. A year ago there were 3 billion phones in the world, now there are around 4.6, and it's largely thanks to Nokia. Phones, companies which enable this kind of uptake is what's defining 21st century landscape.
Re:What's the value of an unlocked US cellphone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there something I don't understand? I don't think unlocking a US cellphone has any additional value than an unlocked US cellphone. The phone's most value is on its original network and it's almost worthless on any other network.
Why would you think that? How is a phone worthless on another network? Do you even understand what unlocking is?
Here in the UK, lots of little shops offer to unlock your phone. And people pay for it, because its worth moneys to have an unlocked phone.
Re:Awesome.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm with Telstra due to my remote location, and I pay exorbitant prices for voice and data.
Isn't that how utility distribution works? If you live by yourself 400 miles from the nearest town, why shouldn't you pay exorbitant prices for a company to run 400 miles of line/pipe/whatever to serve only you? I don't know anything about your situation or whats going on with Australian telcos, this is just an honest question.
Re:"Apple are..."? (Score:2, Insightful)
Tired of Highlander biz analysis (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm so tired of the PC-style ignorant logic that there cam be only one of anything. HBO and ad-supported TV co-exist quite nicely, and so do Apple and Google. Even with the Windows PC and Microsoft's deliberate monopolization and lemming tech industry, the Mac has done very well. In phones, there is even less chance of us ending up with only one system because the uses are more diverse and the user base is many times larger.
It is also tiresome to keep hysterically talking about how Google is going to kill everyone in phones. It's 5 years since they bought Android and they have less than 2% of the US market, less than 2008-2009 Palm.
Having said that, I agree that Google wants data only. Why wouldn't Apple want that also? iChat is about 8 years old. In 4G we will probably see the entire market move to data only because voice calls will require only 1% of the 4G pipe and video calls will be more popular.
Re:What's the value of an unlocked US cellphone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your GSM phone was probably locked to the original provider. That is why it is important to buy an _unlocked_ phone.
All operators in Europe are basically on the same frequencies. I can go to any country in Europe and my phone "just works". If I don't want to pay roaming fees then I can stick in a local SIM and it "just works".
The problem in the US is that your stupid providers choose/got assigned different bands to operate on. So phones physically have to be capable of working on those frequency bands. In most cases Nokia will make them work on one or the other (so AT&T or TMobile), but not both.
If you want to find what frequencies each network supports you can check them all out at GSM World. They also cover UMTS 3G networks. http://gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml [gsmworld.com]
Re:I Just Did... (Score:3, Insightful)
Verizon pissed me off by never letting me use my own camera for free. They had good coverage, though. With the Motorola Droid, I'd consider going back to them. AT&T pissed me off by screwing up account details with Apple, which eventually led to my iPhone being borked by Apple. T-Mobile has been good to me, with voice coverage at least as good as AT&T, and reasonable G3, and excellent EDGE coverage. When I wanted to go to Europe and use my G1 with another SIM card, T-Mobile send me the unlock code for free, with no fuss. My plan (voice + unlimited data) is only $60/month, a full $10 less than AT&T or Verizon. I hate my G1 (the hardware sucks big-time), but I'm super-excited about both the Nexus One and Sony Ericson Experia X10. Well... I'm a LOT more excited about the Nexus One. Give me one of those, and I'll probably be a long-term T-Mobile user.
So, I predict that T-Mobile will not piss you off in a month. It will probably take three.
Re:Awesome.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Finland has half the population density of the US, yet is almost entirely covered, including things like trains, subways and ferries. The claim that US carriers can't leverage economies of scale with twice the population density, higher plan prices and exploitative contract lock-ins seems a bit incompetent to me.
This would make Apple very happy (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the competition between Google and Apple is the issue here, but the point about telcos as commodities seems spot on. Apple could sell unlocked phones just as easily as Google, there have been rumors about a Verizon iPhone for months. Also, having the telcos as commodities doesn't hurt Apple's ability to be an "experience company." Apple's machines plug into the same internet, the same power grid, the same USB connectors, etc. as all the rest. The way Apple controls the experience is buy selling both the hardware and the software together.
Re:What's the value of an unlocked US cellphone? (Score:1, Insightful)
All operators in Europe are basically on the same frequencies. I can go to any country in Europe and my phone "just works". If I don't want to pay roaming fees then I can stick in a local SIM and it "just works".
On the flipside, I can get on a plane and fly 3000 miles from New York to San Francisco, step outside and my phone still works with no roaming fee, and no need to swap SIM cards. The same goes if I get on the highway and cross three state borders. In a country like the US the ability to roam to different countries is a nice feature, but not a particularly critical one.
Europe is also partitioned into a number of political subdivisions each about the (physical) size of a US state. Unlike the US, however, Euopeans have to pay roaming fees (or swap SIMs) each time they cross a border. In that environment of course there's a lot of attention paid to roaming and compatibility. (Though, unfortunately, not to the economic impact of making consumers pay roaming fees if they want to take a 60-mile train ride.)