Category Archives: Mobile

Mobile

Openly Mobile

Posted on by

The mobile handset market tipping point has arrived, and it is a wonderful thing to watch. In very short order (relatively speaking) the mobile market has seen: Google/Android advance a Linux mobile operating system Symbian convert to Open Source Motorola release Eclipse-based mobile development tools Verizon open its network to certifiable devices not sold by Verizon Wi-Fi handsets are now commonly sold by network carriers, eliminating some data network revenues In short, the mobile market has opened up and this trend will accelerate (which is seemingly impossible, but I never bet against an avalanche). Two dominate forces are causing this to happen: competition and customer resentment. In a rare moment of governmental lucidity, regulatory agencies in charge of frequency allocations made sure that no company could monopolize the cellular industry. This came as a huge surprise to AT&T who is unaccustomed to real competition, and it showed in their perpetual … Continue reading →

Wireless Wedge

Posted on by

Closed systems make money. Open systems make money. And the two dynamics are co-exists … for a while. I’m pondering these realities as I comb through reports in the wireless market, where Silicon Strategies has a new client. The evolution of the wireless market will soon make a shift and the smarter vendors are rapidly adapting to the inevitable. First, a musing on closed and open markets. In closed markets, the vendor has control by virtue of either a monopoly or through customer lock-in due to the high cost customers face in switching to different technologies. The IT technology industry was a closed market for a seeming eternity until the folks at Berkeley began porting and promoting their flavor of UNIX (which could be considered the original computer virus). When Sun Micro and other vendors began using open standards (like UNIX) as a wedge into the market, the closed system … Continue reading →

Matching Expectations

Posted on by

I want to brag about one of our clients and use their main product as a micro case study in product identification and whole product definition. Mobile Complete provides a unique service called DeviceAnywhere (which I don’t think is a great name for the service, but Silicon Strategies Marketing was not engaged with Mobile Complete during their initial branding efforts). What DeviceAnywhere does is allow you to remotely use real, live mobile handsets for testing mobile applications. They give you access to hundreds of popular devices, in regions all around the world, and the ability to test every aspect of the device and your application. Before DeviceAnywhere, the market had two options: use emulators for testing or buy one of each phone, for each carrier, in every country and carry monthly service charges for all of them. The later is an extremely expensive option, and even wealthy companies like Google … Continue reading →

G-Phone = G-Force

Posted on by

There must be a new virus in Silicon Valley because whenever Google sneezes, a lot of people fall ill. The latest wildly spreading contagion is the under-disclosed and over-hyped G-Phone (or GPhone depending on which news writer is sober enough to meet his deadline). Google has let slip it is doing something in the mobile space, and the few clues have led many to believe they will introduce yet another mobile operating system, butting heads with Windows, Symbian, and a hoard of completely unaligned Linux mutant variants. There is good reason for Google, or anyone else to want a piece of this action. It is a huge industry and one that is growing at previously unimagined speeds. This rate of growth shouldn’t be surprising because the industry gives people cheap, portable personal computers with built-in telephony and music capabilities. Cell phones are the unified communication hubs that never materialized in … Continue reading →