Mobile Freedom
Mobile phones; they’re a tool we all use every day and over the past twenty five years of development, they have revolutionised the world we live in. In the western world we have evolved from analogue, wired and static communications, to 24×7 universal wireless access via internet connected mobile device. This evolution has led to greater freedoms with users able to utilise their phones as they see fit, even in oppressed nations like Iran where recent protests were reported on Twitter by Iranian mobile users faster than any international news agency could ever hope for.
Surely then a long term trend for convergence of devices resulting in handsets like the iPhone with the ability to install applications and therefore effectively customise a device to suit a user’s needs can only increase this freedom further?
Unfortunately, this is far too idealistic and ultimately simplistic. Take the iPhone for example; If you asked pretty much anyone on the street which phone gives you the ‘freedom’ to install apps, nine out of ten times they’ll say the iPhone. However is this real freedom? Yes you can install any application you like, but only so long as Steve Jobs likes or dislikes the application/it’s content/or the words you use to to describe it and lets it into the iTunes App Store. If Steve Jobs doesn’t like an app, your iPhone isn’t getting it. Period. Therefore by more users buying (over 24 million people bought an iPhone last year) such tied down platforms, they’re vilifying this kind of behaviour of effective corporate censorship.
With open platforms such as Symbian though, even though Symbian is also owned by one organisation (Symbian Foundation, funded by Nokia), there are hundreds of rival application stores to choose from with hundreds of thousands of applications available within the ecosystem. None of these stores is dominant, so developers program for the platform, not to placate the terms and conditions of a particular store, or corporate agenda. This allows for consumer freedom of choice of store, application and therefore functionality of their devices.
Furthermore, what if after six months you don’t like your iPhone or N97? You’ve then invested in each platform, and a consumer could lose all the applications they have purchased during a platform shift. Therefore even Symbian isn’t true freedom in this world of mobile applications.
However, surely true freedom could be provided by a model such as the Wholesale Application Community (a community working group of 35 telecoms companies that includes Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Orange and Samsung) announced at World Mobile Congress last week. While the Wholesale Application Community has been created entirely out of jealousy at the rampaging success of the Apple App Store; if it’s implemented effectively and follows its core principle of platform and corporate independence, this would allow users true freedom of content, functionality and migration between devices.
A freedom these devices should theoretically always deliver, however corporate agendas could well disrupt such idealistic plans…
This is definitely an interesting subject to think about. I personally own an iPhone and it has become almost essential within my daily routines. Whilst I agree with the notion that the App store is restrictive in a sense, I feel that perhaps the argument is lost in translation when applied to the freedom that we generally associate with the opportunity that devices like the iPhone, or indeed alternative smartphones, offer.
An example of the freedom that I enjoy is the ability to communicate with my business clients almost anywhere I go. If I need to make some small changes to one of their websites on the fly, quite often I can jump right in on my phone and have those changes propogated across the entire internet in seconds. The true freedom comes with the way that you use a device.
Having said that, I believe that we agree the markets for these applications will work best when opened up for from restrictive business practices and platform dependency. This could even be in a similar fashion to the Adobe AIR programs that we are starting to find on our desktops. These free the application developers to work on a single code base for multiple platforms. We really have just started to scratch the surface with mobile media and I’m sure we will see many developments in the time to come.
Keep up the good work!
Great blog!
I am very interested in this so-called “network effect” of products or services. The more people own a specific device or platform, the more valuable a platform is. For example in the case of the Iphone, more users means more incentives for programmers to create apps. More apps means more users. This is often referred to as the bandwagon effect that creates a positive loop.
In itself more value is good for users but you are correct in pointing out that this might lead to monopoly positions in which firms can decide which apps can be sold or used on their devices.
The network effect also makes it very difficult for new open access platforms to gain enough critical mass (and user base) to break the dominance of the incumbent monopolistic players in the market.
Corporate agenda’s are therefore likely to dominate the mobile phone market for a long time to come.