New phone manufacturers

I was checking out Google moderator the other day ,when I came across this interesting answer from computer science legend/father of UNIX Ken Thompson to a question on Androids future comptetiveness in the mobile space…

Someone asked:

“Android, will it be able to compete with Apple or Symbian.How long it has to go?”

Ken Thompson answered with:

“Eventually all smart phones are going to look similar and the popularity of a phone will be based on other factors such as service contract, price, coverage, support, user interface, etc. Android will probably stay in the mix simply because it is an easy way for new phone manufacturers to get into the game.”

I think Thompson is spot on here. When you consider the companies that are behind the smartphones we see around us everyday, among them are virtually no smaller players. Fifteen guys working on a new smartphone out of a house somewhere in California is a picture that may seem a bit hard to imagine. The major reason for this is probably because the phone OS selection has basically been consolidated among a set of fairly similar devices by the existing big players in the mobile space.

Android is (in my opinion) a seriously disruptive OS, because it distributes the power to port a largely customizable OS on to any number of devices, including ones that a couple guys with a couple of ideas can build themselves. So, just as the 90’s was an era filled with some guys in a garage cooking up the next big website, The 2010’s will have largely the same type of climate, except smartphones will be where most of the action is. Developments in the web will be a direct result of the developments within the smartphone web space. This mostly means that as mobile computing becomes more sophisticated, the web apps that we use (both mobile and desktop) will follow.

No smartphone is perfect and most smartphones are ‘just ok’. Increasingly, we have to settle with a particular phone because of certain reasons. If smaller companies and startups were able to create their own devices, we would probably start being able to find a “perfect” smart phone for us. I don’t think consumers are as loyal to brands as most people think, especially when something clearly better comes out. If it looks better, feels better, and is easier to use, that smartphone will almost surely make that person consider a new phone. If a greater number of companies came out with their own smartphones built on top of their special Android mix, then we would all have more and better choices of smartphones overall. I think Android will play a large role when the mobile space reflects this environment in the 2010’s.

Read it here

Photo by - brianfling

Mobile social media / Augmented reality

I normally try to avoid the phrase “social media” but since thats what is used to describe the current crop of popular web apps, I’ll make an exception and use it in the title of this post. This article @computerworld describes the concept of “SoMo” or rather “Social Mobile Media”. Social mobile media encompasses funtionality that web apps such as brightkite and radar offer. The main theme of SoMo is being able to do the things you do with web applications on your laptop or desktop on mobile devices. With the ability to create social networks on the go and connect to your friends in the same area as you, serendipity(one of the more pleasant surprises in life) will occur more often in our lives. In the article the author mentions that…

“How we experience the real world will increasingly be augmented and enhanced through the screen of a mobile phone.”

then links to a service I had never heard of before called ‘Layar’. The theme here is ‘augmented reality’. If you are wondering what that is, this Nokia research video shows whats up with it…

Widespread adoption of this technology will be very dependent on how its marketed and how current and future smartphones utilize it.  Speaking of which, heres what it looks like on a G1…

I think its safe to say that much of this is still in the R & D phase, but if you live in the Netherlands and you have a G1 or G2, you can check this out now.  According their website, Layar should be dropping in the states sometime this year.  In the meantime, G1 owners should check out Wikitude for a glimpse of what augmented reality is all about.

Photo by - epredator