So, a couple of weeks having past since the not-terribly-surprising announcement of Google’s HTC-built Nexus One, let’s take a moment to reflect on some potential impacts…
The easiest-to-perceive near-term winner is Android. With Motorola firmly committed, a host of other venders delivering Android-based solutions, Verizon unveiling a family of Android devices, the up-and-coming mobile OS has some serious momentum.
In terms of other and potentially greater upsides, I'm still a believer that the Linux-based Android will drive opportunity for other Linux-based solutions, such as Nokia’s Maemo (and even Palm’s Linux kernel-based webOS), provided that some semblance of interoperability is established for the various mobile Linux flavors. Indeed, if the commonality across flavors becomes a conscious initiative of the various parties involved – growing a very and globally scalable ecosystem for application developers and service providers - the threat to Apple’s closed iPhone OS and related service and application offerings becomes a real one, at least a couple years down the line…
A perhaps less-perceived upside is Google’s bet on proving the market for unsubsidized mobile devices. I’ve harped on this topic in the past: Americans will pay 100’s of dollars for digital cameras, music players, video players and mobile gaming devices, but they expect their mobile phones to cost $49-$99. While this intuitively seems absurd, it’s perfectly understandable, given decades of carrier subsidization of devices in exchange for long-term consumer service plan enslavement.
Three years ago, Nokia’s Multimedia Business Group took a crack at driving the “unlocked” and/or “open” market opportunity in the U.S., with some quick success haloed around the N95, but couldn’t break the carrier stranglehold on the channel to the consumer, couldn’t evolve ahead-of-the-curve mobile computer demand from geekdom to mainstream, and, frankly, couldn’t have vied with the likes of Apple’s iPhone, even if they’d somehow convinced a carrier to allow them to compete on a subsidized playing field.
Almost three years later, Google's emerged to pick up the unlocked, unsubsidized banner – just as they did the net neutrality banner almost three years ago (talk about convergence…). Google’s Nexus is a litmus test. Should Google break the subsidy expectation mold, trust that a Google MVNO (rumored to have been under heavy consideration over the last 12 months) will follow, by this time next year, if not sooner. Open to any GSM+ device, optimized for Android, ultra-optimized for Google-sponsored devices and its wealth of services, applications and online offerings.
Google is onto something here. It’s not dissimilar, but much broader and deeper, than what Apple has been at for the last two years in terms of it's marrying all things "i." It’s also akin to what Nokia has aspired to achieve with its Ovi, but again, Google’s ambition may be broader and deeper. Google seems to have cottoned on to the most recent value shift in the telecommunications/Internet environment. Ten-plus years ago, the value was in the network, fixed or mobile. As network access commoditized, value shifted to devices. As the device space became more competitive, value shifted again towards content and content-oriented platforms, then, naturally, next, to services (content –related or otherwise), in some cases (e.g. Apple), marrying combinations. The last year has seen value shifting again, temporarily but with vigor to applications (particularly in but not limited to the mobile space).
Google seems to be betting on the next shift, one that is arguably already underway: Value defined by a seamless, cross platform, fixed, nomadic or mobile, OS agnostic experience. More than ever, as the world has become more complex, as social networks have become as much if not more virtual than physical, people are looking for solutions that will offer consistent, comfortable, familiar, trustworthy and quality experiences. With its wealth of online assets and services, its fixed Internet prowess in general, its muscle into mobile, both in terms of OS and sponsored device(s), Google is well on the way to capturing an end-to-end opportunity that Microsoft once only dreamed of…
…kinda makes the last couple weeks’ worth of competing comparative reviews of N900s, iPhones, Droids and Nexuses seem almost trivial.
Indeed, I think 2010 is shaping up to be game-changing…
