Introduction
This jumble of thought has poured itself out of my brain in the few days following the Exposium. It’s interesting to read what my immediate thoughts were. I’m still trying to grasp the direction the industry is headed because for me this is a fascinating questions. The mobile industry will becomes a central plank of everyone’s live. We are sitting on the edge of a paradigm shift in mobile communication and information. The way this happens, the way it is implemented will have far reaching implications for all of us in the future. They way the river chooses to flow in this mobile revolution is hard to predict, but which ever way it goes it will change the way we live and see our world.
The Symbian View
It is difficult to explain the Exposium and it its atmosphere without understanding Symbian’s view of the world. It one sense it is not a traditional business viewpoint. Many people I have spoken to argue that Symbian is doing and will do business in a fundamentally different way. It is not about creating a monopoly, but rather a collaborative future within the industry. This smacks of corruptions, but it shouldn’t, it is not. It is better than the basic monopolistic model because there is far greater scope for competition and innovation. However you get the benefits of competition without the bad things – that is to say fragmentation, and incompatibility. Indeed Symbian very ethos is infused with the idea of innovation with fragmentation through inter operability and open standards. This ethos within Symbian is difficult to explain, I’ve attempted to do so above. What you should take out of it is that Symbian stated way of doing things is fundamentally different. Whether you buy into their ideas or not it is something that is the key to understanding some Symbian attitudes.
For example people often question why Symbian are so relatively silent – no powered by Symbian stickers on their phones – this is partly because they’re not making the phones, but also intentional. They don’t seem them selves as important at the user end of the market. They are the engine, and people don’t need to know about them or understand them. Their ethos sees users as choosers without being concerned by the underlying technology. This has been well demonstrated in the past in the mobile arena. People may care somewhat about phone brand, but at the end of the day they want their phone to do want they want it to, be it calls, messaging or internet – at the end of the day they don’t care about enabler. Symbian’s attitude here is in marked contrast to others within the market, both Palm, and especially Microsoft, are attempting to build share by emphasizing their OS. This appeals to the geeks, but at the end of the day the mass user market won’t care who powers their phone, so long as it does what they want it to.
The Ecosystem
Therefore the OS providers need to concentrate on two things, firstly making the OS as good as they can and as flexible as possible, it needs to be open standards based to ensure interoperability – no one is going to dominate this vast market – while interoperability is not an issue on the desktop it will be in the mobile sphere because of the many different competitors at OS, manufacturer and operator levels. Secondly the OS’s have to build a community or an ecosystem round them. How big this ecosystem is really up to them, but in truth the larger and broader the better, Microsoft seem themselves provide everything (browser, media player, web services; their approach is part of a complete MS package), Symbian provide the basic OS and core programs they leave space for browsers media players, video recorders and more importantly services both consumer and enterprise). A large surrounding ecosystem is the way you get the most innovation and the best things.
Its important to remember that there are 3 levels within the mobile industry. Firstly the OS to manufacturer relationship. Clearly the manufacturers prefer Symbian. They are allowed to customize, they get access to the source code, there is built in flexibility which is not only available but encouraged. Equally, if not more, important in the handset operator relationship. Operators too want differentiation and a unique selling point. Here there are two approaches, firstly cut out the manufacturer and do phones yourself, this has been tried and is partly successful. Consumers like certain brands of phones and trying to do everything causes the operators to over reach. Secondly operators can customize through software and services – this is clearly the way to go. A big ecosystem with lots of options is better because there are more services and software option to be added. The final link is the least important in some ways, operators to consumers. Consumers are interested in brand and whether something does something (maybe in that order). Consumers want things to be easier to do, they care about the user experience. A richer user experience is possible in a large ecosystem because there is variety and innovations. Therefore consumers without being aware of it will favour the large ecosystem (because not only do they have several options for say IM, they also have the most innovative solutions).
The ecosystem will drive innovations and better user experience. The better ecosystem will belong to Symbian because its very ethos is based around it. It is this truth more than any other which means in all likelihood it will be Symbian powering the mobile phone.