For some odd reason we are doing a ton of work right now on the potential future of smartphones (as online video systems, as Ad systems, as drivers of mobile change...) ad thus
Stephen Fry's article on them is interesting (hat tip
Neville Hobson for pointing it out) as he is not your run of the mill geek, being a well known UK meedja personality (and, shockingly, being clever, witty and all that to boot), He notes that:
Firstly, he echoes what those of us outside Planet Mobile said the minute we saw it:
The conclusion that no observer can fail to come to, whichever side of the tribal divide they inhabit, is that the iPhone has Changed Everything when it comes to smartphones. Without so much as a blush, all the major players have presented to the world over the last few months an ‘answer’ to the iPhone. The point, it seems to me, is not to win or erode the share iPhone already has, but to stake a claim in a marketplace that in three or four years will see the majority of the world’s mobile phone using population, who now have ‘ordinary’ cell phones, switch over to smartphones. The potential rewards are enormous. No wonder everyone’s toes are being dipped into the water.
Secondly, he gets the bragging rights for coining Fry's Law in this note about the Tower of Babel that was Planet Mobile pre iPhone:
We should remind ourselves of the state of play before the arrival of the iPhone four and a half digital years ago in June 2007, (Fry’s Law of Digital Time states that 1 calendar year= 3 digital years). There were smartphones, in those far off days, that used the Symbian operating system, Nokia and Sony-Ericsson principal amongst them; there were smartphones using the Palm OS, though these were being (wrongly and sadly in this writer’s opinion) phased out and replaced with Treo units ‘powered’ by the third major OS, Windows Mobile, which could also be found in other devices, notably and most successfully those manufactured by the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. And, expressly for the businessman, there was the Canadian firm Research In Motion’s famous BlackBerry.
Yes, there were 2bn or 4bn or whatever users, but it was pointless as you couldn't reach them all with one application that worked on all devices. No, in fact it was Sod the User time:
Ever try to connect to a wireless network on a Sony Ericsson P series or WinMob smartphone? The contempt implicit in these foul, fiddly behemoths was breathtaking. The profound ugliness of Nokia’s e range, the horrible underpowered nightmare of Sony’s UIQ devices, the quite staggeringly insulting ghastliness of Windows Mobile… for two years I kept believing that the manufacturers and software developers in this field would eventually get it right and produce something as truly usable as the old Psions, the old Palm Pilots and Treos, while utilising the newer technologies and capabilities of the 21st century
.
Imagine if.......:
Don’t you sometimes long to be CEO of a company like Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia or Microsoft? So that you can say to your coders, your designers, your development teams and your software architects: “Not Fucking Good Enough. I haven’t said ‘Wow’ yet. I haven’t gasped with pleasure, amusement or admiration once. Start again. Not Fucking Good Enough.”
The scary thing is they probably were gasping with pleasure when they saw the devices, such is the nature of Planet Mobile.
Anyway, what follows is probably one of the most urbane and witty reviews of shiny geek toys you will ever have read - and its not PR puff either, its an enthusiasts voice. This is the sort of stuff you can read, then look at your future scenarios and go - yes, I think
this is how it will turn out.
Which brings me on on to Fry's Law - its an interesting way of thinking about prediction and scenarios, ie that there at 3 "seasons" in a year, 3 peaks and troughs etc. Haven't thought how to play it in yet, but it feels like a "keeper"
Incidentally, I asked the kids (my instant tech futurology panel) about his thoughts and they just looked at me in that "yes, its obvious" way and then said this:
- Well, it will really take off when its a game s machine - some of the games are already very good - and the PSP is old stuff now, and...
- Whats changing with mobiles is that phoning is just one of the things they do.
'Nuff said.....
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