Mobile phone design efforts over the past two years appear to have taken the handset as far as it will go, for now, if the handsets coming out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, are any indication.
The forefront of innovation today is where, in reality, it’s always been: invisible and inside.
Industrywide efforts have increasingly focused on the “user experience” – already an avidly pursued goal when Apple Inc. upset the cart with its mindshare-grabbing iPhone last year.
But the pace of innovation on the chip and software side of the handset has quickened as interest grows in GPS-enabled, location-based services, mobile access to the Internet and social networking – all designed to take the user into a spiraling funnel that transfers wealth from millions and billions of users to network operators, software giants, advertisers and their many partners.
That push – and the frenzied design work of the past two years – goes a long way in explaining the lack of striking form factors or handset excitement at the show.
“The user interface and (software-based) services have certainly taken center stage, both for operators and device manufacturers, continuing a trend we started to see last year,” said Carolina Milanesi, a London-based Gartner analyst.
Software center stage
This thesis was underscored, as well, by the spate of software-related headlines that took place before, during and after the Barcelona conference:
● Microsoft Corp. made a bid for Yahoo Inc. (which demurred), while buying Danger Inc., which jump-starts a software-based, youth-oriented mobile market to complement the computing giant’s prosumer/enterprise play with its Windows Mobile operating system.
● Nokia Corp. bought Trolltech, giving the Finnish behemoth a leg up in meeting myriad opensource, Linux-based initiatives pursued by Google Inc. and handset rivals that back the LiMo Foundation, among other Linux efforts.
● Global distributor Brightpoint Inc. cut a deal with Google to pre-install the latter’s mobile search and maps products on handsets it distributes to the world’s operators and resellers.
● And at the show, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications said it would incorporate Windows Mobile into some smartphones, a bid for greater enterprise market share, particularly in the United States, where the JV is weak.
Also at the show, Google’s Android partners – such as Texas Instruments Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and Freescale Semiconductor – displayed dummy demos to establish that that Linux-based project will in fact bear fruit later this year, as promised.
Rewards
The upshot for business-as-usual in the handset industry?
In the future, this may well mean that pre-announcing handsets – such as those, for example, running Android – may require more than waving partially baked prototypes. No longer will cool-looking devices under glass suffice to entice. Advancements in the user experience are not easily conveyed by a rote list of improved specifications. One naturally fears that the now-ubiquitous and obviously fantasy-tinged use of marketing videos will be stepped up, as will the high-stakes, live, onstage demo – more effective, but more perilous.
Granted, specs aren’t going away. Native or assisted GPS is increasingly a must-have feature in the mid- to high-tier, to deliver location-based services, which may open the door to mass adoption of mobile advertising and transactions and physical/real-time social networking.
Display size is set to increase, to accommodate the user’s experience. The 5-megapixel camera has become the new, high-end standard. Processing speed and memory already are being pumped up, at least at the high end, as are power management functions that conserve power.
Gun-slinging specification lists will still go head-to-head for apples-to-apples comparisons.
Packaging issues
But the recent trend toward smaller, thinner designs has bumped up against expectations for advanced functionality that require improved (and, possibly, larger) batteries and displays. The handset, and how it is presented, is set to morph again.
Now the direction is inward, where functionality invisibly relies on operating systems, user interfaces and software that enables long-promised connectivity to people, information and entertainment.
Barcelona provided more evidence for this thesis.
Nokia’s biggest launch in the high-tier was the N96 upgrade to its popular N95 handset. A bevy of specs were improved in this handheld computing marvel that eschews thin for Swiss Army knife functionality. Analyst Mark McKechnie at American Technology Research dubbed the N96 and N95 “on steroids.”
Apple answer?
But everyone wanted to know: Where’s Nokia’s answer to Apple? Where’s the rival touchscreen device? The interest, to a degree, made a mockery of Nokia’s 40% global market share. Who really cares if Nokia has emerging markets locked up, when others are beating it to market with the most attention-grabbing innovations carrying the fattest margins?
Nokia had to demur to the quasi-mystical “third quarter,” possibly with fingers crossed. “Stay tuned” has never been a particularly convincing sign-off. The Finnish company’s challenge obviously is how to respond with a fully baked touchscreen technology, without appearing to follow.
And Nokia, increasingly, does not launch handsets without an accompanying service and content component, which clearly puts it in the same innovation league as Apple. Still, with many of Nokia’s announced services still nascent, and handsets pre-announced, attempting to connect the dots can lead to hyperventilation. To mix allusions: We’re not in Kansas anymore, but we haven’t yet arrived in the brave new world either.
Few doubted the Finnish vendor’s ability to produce the goods. But Apple – which did not participate at Barcelona – nonetheless drove the conversation with its UI and, admittedly, its industrial design.
Moto absent
Those who fell – alas, a list of one – may well have fallen on the software sword, too. Whatever former contender Motorola Inc. had to offer in Barcelona was easily eclipsed by parallel events far away:
CEO Greg Brown’s trial balloon in search of investors for Moto’s handset division and the company’s possible tie-up of its infrastructure division with Nortel Networks Corp. grabbed headlines. The news focused on a litany of denials of interest from Moto’s rivals, from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to Sony Ericsson to LG Electronics Co.
Software was implicated.
Analyst Tero Kuittinen at Avian Securities L.L.C. said recently that Moto’s handset woes may reflect “that something has gone awry with … messy legacy software … that has finally buckled under the weight of the new complexity of next-gen features.”
