Landscaping - One Year Later

About a year ago, I was invited by INmobile.org to moderate a dialogue within the INmobile community focused on the mobility space, wondering "who eats who?," and including a parallel conversation pondering the nebulous space between fixed and mobile, what I deemed "nomadic," specifically in the context of netbooks. I was recently asked to update my viewpoint and, since INMobile is closed to non-members, my update (slightly tweaked) is copied below (and, notably, blends in multiple musings from other recent blog posts).

What a difference a year makes...

Let's re-set the stage. Imagine a consumer electronics continuum - a simple line stretching from "mobile" at one end, through "nomadic" in the middle, ending at "fixed" at the far end. In the mobile bubble, you find cellphones, single-purpose devices like music players, digital cameras, gaming units, etc. - all meant for on-the-go, mostly-everywhere use, some connected to a network, others connectible, some requiring an intermediary (e.g. a PC) to connect. In the nomadic bubble, up until about a year ago, you'd find laptops, e-Readers, GPS devices, portable video players and the like. Portable, yes, but designed for a more nomadic experience - sort of "fixed on the go," most capable of a network - wired or wireless - connectivity. In the fixed bubble, you'll find TVs - big ones these days - desktop computers, gaming consoles, DVRs, even component stereo systems for true audiophiles (maybe even a turntable).

Now, overlay across that continuum both a component layer (chip-sets, cables, routers, and the like) and a software layer (OS's designed, until recently, to support individual classes of devices in individual bubbles, bolstering the unique nature of each individual bubble). Now further imagine a brilliantly-colored rainbow stretching behind the continuum, representing the richness and vast depth of multimedia content - music, video, Internet, etc. And, yet further, imagine a vast grid behind your continuum and rainbow, representing the various flavors of connectivity, from copper to coax to fiber to 4G - the world of access. And, finally, imagine the whole mix floating in a sometimes-stormy, sometimes-calm cloud-like mass - the Internet.

This is the world we live in. Or lived in. A year ago. Today, convergence is taking place in some areas, collision in others, chaos in yet others.

Most interesting to watch over the last year has been the bulging and overlapping of the mobile and nomadic bubbles. Apple's iPhone burst free of the mobile bubble two years ago in a bold foray towards nomadic with the world's first true mobile computer. Google's Android is capitalizing and mainstreaming this momentum, with HTC, and to a lesser extent Motorola (which has bet the farm on Android), and a host of others deploying or planning to deploy that mobile computer OS in true numbers. Meanwhile, in the wake of Apple's iPhone introduction, we witnessed the nomadic bubble push its edge towards the mobile bubble, with last summer's much-hyped netbook revolution. A short-lived revolution to be sure - the advent of the iPad and the multitude of clones to follow have very likely set the stage for a woot.com exit for the netbook players.

Some CE venders span the continuum from a hardware perspective, e.g. Samsung and LG, which deliver phones, smartphones, laptops and TVs. HP's acquisition of Palm strengthens their potential in this context, but that's a story yet to be written, and I wouldn't assume (nor, however, entirely rule out) a happy ending. Yet others - Apple and Google - have grander aspirations. Apple has had phenomenal success in tapping the content rainbow to bolster its hardware and software solutions, has also built an entirely new industry around mobile applications, and has even made a not-yet-successful foray into bridging further into the fixed realm with Apple TV. Google, leveraging it's Internet roots, has delivered a world-class mobile OS married to its online solutions, is also fiddling with breaking through to the home big screen with Google TV, and, yet one step further, is now deploying high-speed broadband in select markets to get into the access game (and I' hazard a guess that a Google wireless MVNO is a not-too-distant prospect). One-time global wireless leader Nokia is also attempting to break out of the mobile bubble with its Ovi-based content and application solutions, but is trailing, and not terribly closely, and has some critical decisions to make about its aging Symbian OS. And then there's Microsoft, the ultimate wild card...

I guess what I'm getting to here is, well, the end of the wireless industry as we once knew it. While that may sound overly-provocative, please understand that I'm not saying that wireless broadband isn't key to our digital future, rather, that wireless-enabled devices are merely additional nodes on the Internet. Mobile phones, smart phones, mobile computers, laptops, netbooks, tablets, e-readers, digital cameras, e-meters, etc., etc., are all just nodes on the net. The industry is broadband, connected devices, and multimedia content and services - wireless is just one flavor of access. The cloud is absorbing the bubbles.

So what does all of this mean for the key players in what was a "wireless" industry? Some potential implications:

- From the mainstream, volume-oriented CE manufacturing side, HTC, Samsung and LG are best positioned to continue to succeed. Motorola, which does not manufacture its own devices nor develop its on OS, has effectively become a sales and marketing organization.

- From the mobile device OS perspective, Google's Android has the best shot at near-term dominance and a clear chance at becoming a truly global de facto standard (and not just in mobile devices). The other contenders, the Nokia-Intel MeeGo and the LiMo Foundation's open mobile Linux, will need to accelerate at dramatic rates if they are to stay in the game (Nokia needs to stop re-organizing and re-discover its history of innovation and execution). As long as the Apple ecosystem remains closed to other venders, scalability to Android levels is unlikely, all-the-more so if multitasking and Flash are not enabled in its devices (both forgivable in my opinion in terms of the iPhone, but not at all forgivable on the iPad).

- That said, Apple will continue to maintain its innovative edge, and should be expected to disrupt the market again, setting new trends, new directions and a new pace for others to follow. Indeed, while Apple will no doubt continue to successfully evolve its business model leveraging its strong position vis a vis content delivery, where I'd really like to see their next innovation would be in yet further simplifying the user experience (and here's where I borrow from my most recent post). Take QWERTY for instance. While those of my generation and the one or two that have followed might still have an affinity for this user interface, it's dated, and, frankly, not terribly efficient. What will we be using in 10 years? Touch is all the rage today, and will remain a key element of the UI experience. Voice activation will also become more and more common, but has it's downsides in terms of use in public places (privacy, ambient noise, etc.). Gesturing certainly has promise, as does facial recognition and/or expression reading, as well as virtualization. I would not be surprised if over the next decade Apple's innovation makes QWERTY and old-school telephony keypad UI's the exception, not the rule.

- Network operators - fixed and wireless - will continue their battles of the bundles, but from a consumer solutions perspective, there's is increasingly a utility business, like it or not. We will see more and more mergers as this field winnows down to two or three at best. (Side note: The real value growth for operators is in the enterprise space - providing SMEs and MNCs alike high-value, end-to-end communications and hosted and/or cloud-based enterprise services).

- The major content players will continue to struggle, just as operators will, to evolve their business models so that players like Apple and Google cannot continue to suck the value out of them.

It's a brave new world...