I encourage you to pop over to the MEX blog and read a recent entry by Marek Pawlowski on how value is slowly draining away from the operators and toward application and handset developers. He describes how the main brands he sees now are the providers of the useful third-party applications he uses to make his mobile do the things he wants, as he wants them – from syncing contacts to uploading images and beyond. In his case, Vodafone is just a carrier signal underneath, and even then only when he can't pick up Wifi.
I can totally understand this feeling. I just got the Nokia N93, pictured here, and in the past five days have pretty much avoided Cingular, my operator, and loaded as many third-party apps as I needed on to the handset. The main brands I experience now? Nokia and Flickr. I run over Wifi every chance I get (though I still can't make voice calls with it, but all data is now going over hotspots, not my carrier's data service).
It is somewhat analogous to the early days of the Internet, where ISPs tried to control the user experience, and eventually the dominant services and brands became third parties like Google, or hardware providers who offer services, like Apple and .mac, or Microsoft and its online services. I almost forget that my bandwidth comes from Time Warner.
Operators will have to become application providers more and more if they are to stay in the game for more valuable users. Meanwhile, I'll just keep playing with my toy.
October 24th, 2006 at 5:54 am
And how you suspect account Nokia 888?
October 24th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Yes, it’s an empowering feeling. The carriers attempt to be Programming Executives for the wireless web, at a time were user generated content is king and flexibility in delivering content is key to success will be seen in the end as a marketing blunder of gargantuan proportions.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:25 am
I could not agree more. Time will prove this out. There is going to be a tremendous amount of mobile content and apps as we move forward, and that is not what carriers do best. Many others will do that better and more efficiently.
October 25th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Nice futuer seeing. But at third-party countries Wi-fi isn’t so developed. They can go there
October 27th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
And forget about paying $1.49 per minute to call Europe from my mobile. I loaded up my phone with cool applications that bypass the carrier altogether – Skype, Globe Dialer, rebtel. I can get rates to the UK for 3.5cents from http://www.globedialer.com – so screw the carrier!
January 25th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I couldn’t agree more, but my optimism is tempered by how slowly this has happened so far. That said, the pace of change is increasing, and perhaps there’s a “tipping point” ahead – iPhone, MobileRated, Google, etc.
March 19th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
At first glance, the Nokia N93 is huge. Closer inspection reveals that, er… it IS huge, but that there’s a good reason for it.