Article: Move over Smartphones, "Mobile Devices" are here

Motorola DynaTAC, 1983

Mobile phones have come a long way since Motorola released the first phone in 1983, after 15 years of development and spending over $100 million for it. The phone was introduced for almost $4000, but with the primary intent of calling people. Things have evolved significantly and far more rapidly in the 90's and more so in the last couple of years.
While the 90's and even till 2005, the mobile market was mainly focussed on the hardware design. The phones were mainly differentiated with the different design patterns that brought in the feature along with them. The Software side of things was almost standard and one could move from one phone to another within the same brand, without much of a learning curve. If there was any curve, it was left to the hardware side of things.

The launch of Symbian and Nokia N series of phones seemed to have triggered a trend, in which the major players like Nokia introduced multiple phones that not only did the basic phone, but also music, media and some basic internet.

Nokia N Series

I remember buying one of these phones after reviewing and monitoring the development cycle for almost over 6 months and only to realize that the within 6 months of my buying the phone for an exorbitant price, the phone was already replaced with an upgraded model. It was a good learning exercise, but I didnt realize it then, that this was just the beginning of the future.

The mobile revolution was truly initiated by Apple, with its introduction of iPhone almost 4 years back on January 9th, 2007. It is interesting to note that it has only been 4 years, but the mobile revolution has almost had 5 generations already. Apple took the entire mobile industry by surprise, when it made the most simplistic design of that time, removed the physical buttons and moved the focus from hardware to software. The change was definitely adopted and after the iPOD market share, Apple definitely made it big again in the consumer market and improved its market share significantly. Apple introduced the iPhone exclusive to some carriers around the world and only for GSM network, still their growth has been exponential 

It took a while, but Android from Google introduced with Nexus One set the competition train started. Though the user interface of Android, was more similar to iPhone but it was more open and flexible than iPhone. More importantly the Android platform was not limited by carrier, technology and more importantly by design choices. Unlike Apple that restricted the customer choice to variations by 8GB or 16GB, the Android phones gave consumers the much needed choice that they are used to, but also provided a competing software interface to go along with it. At the current rate and proliferation of Android, it is likely to surpass and dominate the mobile market heavily. The use of Android is definitely not limited to phones, but has been seen around in eReaders, Home Appliances, TVs and almost every other thing.

Microsoft after having different attempts at the mobile market since Windows CE, Windows Mobile OS has entered the market one more time with Windows Mobile Phone 7, with a completely new and innovative design. This is definitely good for consumer choice and for having competition. The approach taken by Microsoft has been a wait and watch and more importantly with the benefits of both Google and Apple strategy. While the Microsoft platform allows for different configurations of the phone and hence choice of handsets and carriers for the consumers to pick up like Google, they have taken the conservative and curated approach to Applications like Apple. It is yet to be seen if this approach is going to pay off in the long run in terms of market share.

In CES 2011, every major hardware manufacturer like Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola have gone head and announced devices that are sleek, thin, eye candy and more importantly powerful. The specifications on some of these devices are so good that even the Desktop I owned few years back seem underpowered. The announcements are still coming out of CES 2011, but one thing that surprises me is the fact that we are still calling these devices as "smartphones" and all that is being discussed is about the "smart" part. Everyone seems to have ignored the fact that these are meant to be phones.

In all the previews and reviews that are coming for these devices, the focus is very rarely on the call quality or anything related to that. People are more concerned about the display, the pictures taken from the phone, if the phone has HDMI port, if it can take HD videos, but nothing about how good is it for calling. The last time we heard any thing related to the call quality was when Nexus One was launched by Google. They had added the noise cancelling mic in the rear and there stopped anything to do with "phones" in the "smart phone".

The recent phones like Motorola ATRIA, LG Optimus are powered to be like laptops that they even come with Laptop docks and should just be called as "Smart Devices" that have the app to make calls. Making call is just an add on feature for these devices and not the primary focus any more. The GSM slot on these devices are meant for tapping onto the data signal and not voice signal. The life of these phones are for a period of 2 months, since they are announced, as within 2 months, there are other phones announced that exceed the formers capability in all areas, other than battery.

I hope someday, someone will stop calling these devices to be phones. As they clearly are not their prime objective anyways.

Author: Vinod
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