MattMaroon.com

A lot of people, in response to my post (and similar ones from other people) about why I think Android is in a good position to capture huge market share and the iPhone is not, seemed to take issue with the importance of an open platform.

Most of them mention the iPod as an example of a proprietary product triumphing. The problem I have with that is twofold. For one, it triumphed only over other proprietary products. And for another, it did so because mp3 player (the Touch excepted) is pretty much a single function device, whereas a mobile device (which is the technologically correct term for a cell-phone these days) is a multi-function one.

When you think about an mp3 player, it’s really just a hard drive and a sound card, and a screen that mainly tells you what song is currently being read from the hard drive and coming out of the sound card. (Many of them allow you to play videos too, so despite how few people seem to actually ever do that, maybe it’s fair to say some iPods are a dual function device.)

What exact benefit might a platform have for a portable media player? The answer is, not much. Maybe a third party developer could mix in some new equalizer presets. But really people only have a couple desires when it comes to an mp3 player.

In fact, the only reason they come in more than one form factor at all is storage capacity. Most people just want something small that can hold a normal person’s media collection, which is why the Nano sells so well. Some people like me have massive music collections and want to watch the occasional TV show on a plane, so there’s the classic style. And there’s the Shuffle, which I’m not really sure if anyone ever purchases, but maybe it’s just for people who are too poor to buy the Nano and only own 3 CDs because most of their collection is still on 8-track.

Even if you look at competing devices from other companies, you see they mainly line up into the same form factors. And as soon as people make affordable 100GB flash chips, the “Classic” form factor will vanish quicker than a line of blow backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, and we’ll be left with nothing but the Nano and maybe the Shuffle.

The computer, on the other hand, could be anything. It could be a communication device, with which you can make phone calls or send emails. You can surf the web with it, do your taxes, watch video, play games.

It’s much the same with a mobile device. It can’t do everything a PC can, but due to its size and the fact that you always have it with you, it can do a lot of things the PC can’t, like snap a photo at an opportune moment. It’s not a single (or dual) function device, and just like the PC and the web page, it’s limited only by the imagination of developers and the desires of end users.

Apple, of course, realizes that. It’s why they got into the business. Single function devices are all on the endangered species list, except without the chance of recovery. They’re like the dodo birds the minute the first cat got off the boat. It’s just a matter of time. They’ll be consumed the minute everything they do can be reduced to a feature of something else, which in the case of the mp3 player would be the cell-phone.

The iPod is no exception, and it is going to go extinct with or without Apple. It’ll be a few years, but it’s as inevitable as Lindsey Lohan returning to rehab. (onsumer digital cameras, similarly, probably won’t be far behind. ) So they made their iPhone because if anyone is going to eat their primary product line, they want it to be them. And they mixed in a platform to try to stay ahead of the curve and increase utility. They even tossed the things developed for it onto iTunes, to give developers a strong incentive to do a good job.

But already the cracks are forming in the walls. While everyone in the tech industry has spent the last two decades under a Microsoft dictatorship and is anxious to leave, they don’t want to end up in another one. And unfortunately, trading Gates for Jobs is just trading Mussolini for Hitler. He’s a little more charismatic and a lot more polished, but at the end of the day he’s just another evil autocrat. Windows, for all its flaws, doesn’t have a kill switch. When someone writes a program for Windows, they know they’re going to be allowed to sell it and that it’s going to run, regardless of whether or not Microsoft has a competing product. When someone wants their Windows PC to do something that requires different hardware, they know they’re going to be allowed to add it in.

And it’s the same with Android. If a customer wants a full touch screen, they’ll have that. If they want a Blackberry knockoff, that too will be available. Probably even the old “free after contract” clamshell will be waiting for them. And if a developer wants to build an app for Android, he’ll have full access and won’t be subject the whims of a corporate overlord with competing interests.

It’s PC vs. Mac, web vs. AOL, all over again. And just as Mac had a jump on Windows, and AOL on the net, the tides will turn. And just like last time, Jobs won’t give up control until it’s too late, because that’s not his style, and it’s not how Apple works.

I am, of course, using Android as a proxy here. I mostly mean that some open platform will succeed. I’m guessing it will be Android, because it has the most support. The OS itself only needs to be good enough, as Windows arguably was when it took the lead, because people buy phones mainly due to the form factor, because the different things people do with their phones are best served by different physical designs.

And the total market cap of the companies behind Android dwarfs Apple’s and Microsoft’s (whose Windows Mobile platform, despite being significantly more open, suffers from a range of challenges beyond the scope of this post) and Symbian or whatever other platforms may exist. And other contenders, like Openmoko, just don’t have the backing to make a dent, and probably never will now.

 

This entry was posted on September 18, 2008 at 2:22 am and is filed under tech . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.