Dan Farber of cnet news.com writes about the recent release of the iPhone SDK and the effects this will have on the brewing war between Google and Apple for control of mobile computing in the next 10 years. Although Farber wants to say that the battle will not be between Apple and Google but between Google, RIM and Microsoft, I think he is wrong on this count.
We are at the tipping point of mobile technology. To anyone who has used an iPhone before, it is easy to see how someday a device that fits in your pocket could replace a laptop, especially if a user only needed word processing, e-mail, image editing, and web surfing capability. In this sense the coming battle is going to be between Google and Apple, because what Google has managed to do is create a mobile OS that is both easy to use and good-looking and appeals to carriers and manufacturers because it can be freely modified to suit a specific purchaser's needs.
Microsoft and RIM, to be certain, will play a large role in which permutation of mobile technology will become the 'de nouveau' progenitor of the next generation or itineration of mobile computing devices. However Microsoft and RIM are limited in the sense that they can only cater to business customers. What the iPhone has demonstrated, quite remarkably, is that personal, private demand dictates the demands in the business market. It should not be surprising, but there is little attention paid to this fact in the current analyses of the mobile market. Apple's iPhone is making waves in the business world not because of its capabilities. When I was interning for a small private equity firm in London this summer, almost all of the executives there were drooling over the iPhone. This is not because it possesses some capability which the RIM blackberry does not: by all accounts, the Blackberry is far and away the most capable business mobile device on the market. The reason they were jonesing for one was simple: they found the iPhone aesthetically pleasing, and the 'personal tech' features such as youtube videos and google maps far exceeded the Blackberry's.
This means that Google must first and foremost create an operating system that appeals on a visceral level (it seems like they are well on their way). If Google can stimulate on a purely sensory level, then the game is Apple's to lose, and Google's to win. Farber, in the article above, quite astutely points out that the current distribution model for the iPhone means that Apple must face the same problem with its iPhone as it faced with Mac OS: whether or not to confine it to its own hardware or to license it out to other manufacturers. Apple has of course taken its traditional view and is aiming to create a reliable revenue stream from hardware sales instead of software licensing. But this is exactly why Apple has so far failed to make a dent into the enterprise market for software computers, and it is exactly why Apple will not penetrate the business mobile market. Google, on the other hand, has the chance to succeed where RIM and Microsoft have both failed (by creating an operating system that is intuitive to use and pleasing to the eye) and also to succeed where Apple will undoubtedly fail, by creating a mobile operating system that can be used by any handset manufacturer and adapted to any carrier network. This is crucial for the success of any OS in the Business world, and Google seems well on its way towards realizing this goal (even more than RIM has so far).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment