Thread: The N900 Strategy and Why the iPhone is So Hard to Beat
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cb474 is offline cb474
2009-11-13 , 00:31
Posts: 203 | Thanked: 68 times | Joined on Oct 2009
#38
Originally Posted by DaveP1 View Post
I think you are right for this year. However, as processor power increases it becomes more and more feasible to run full browsers on a smartphone. At that point, it could become a Safari vs. Chrome vs. Firefox battle. The first smartphone that can implement this will take the lead (and I have high hopes for the N1000/Maemo 6 platform).

Still, Google doesn't care. As long as the smartphones are ending up at a Google web app, they make their advertising money. Android is just a strategy to force the smartphone market to make working in the cloud an expected feature of all smartphones.
Yeah, those are good points. I would certainly love to see Maemo end up winning that battle (and hopefully maintaining it's more open source orientation). Although, as you point out, Google wins either way, which is why their strategy is so formidable.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely convinced that people want to reproduce the desktop experience, as is, on the mobile devices. It struck me recently that one of the reasons netbooks are so popular is not simply because they're inexpensive and very portable, but because they essentially have simplified the desktop (a little bit in the direction of platforms like Android, iPhone, WebOS, Maemo). I think people like the simplification. Interacting with the cloud through a web browser is kind of a mess. There are too many non-integrated options right now. It's confusing and a barrier to entry, for a lot of less sophisticated users. Interacting through a single portal, be that a website or a set of device integrated applictions, makes things easier for a lot of people. In this regard, a mobile OS that is highly integrated across applications and in the could, so that the distinction between browswer and desktop/OS is completely seamless, I think might be the most appealing thing to the mass market. Ironically, this was originally Microsoft's vision, until they got sued (for anti-competitive reasons) out of too deeply integrating Internet Explorer into the desktop.

In this regard, I found this video of Nokia's vision of mobile technology in 2015 really interesting:

http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-visio...video-1163237/

It's a vision of an extremely cloud/desktop integrated interaction with the world. I just couldn't help feeling everytime they say "Nokia" in that video, if they just substituted "Google," it would be believable. I don't see anything in Nokia's service and app portfolio right now that remotely suggests they could pull this off, whereas Google is already there in some ways. How is Nokia going to catch up? Do they really have the resources and developers to compete with Google in the cloud/desktop? Maemo is amazing and very forwad looking as a platform. But Nokia's cloud services are a bit lackluster.