From the New York Times comes a quick article about competitive forces in the mobile phone industry. The level of competition is very high, timelines can be long, and there is little margin for error.
The decisions that are being made now will affect mobile phone design, of course. The telecoms then have to sort through competing standards and schemes to create valuable calling plans and packages.
What operating systems will end up on handsets? Google is developing Android. Microsoft has Windows Mobile. Apple has adapted OS X for its mobile phones. Many mobile phones run Java.
As I mentioned on 20 February 2008, Symbian has more users than any of these competitors combined.
What features and file formats will be supported? Users want music and video, and web applications. Companies want enterprise applications, built-in security, and cost management features.
At a higher level, what systems will be used to serve, store and send data from the Internet to mobile phones? Users and companies want to work with current, relevant data. But local data storage is limited on small devices. Storing data on the Internet provides automatic backup and retention.
Java and Flash are battling at the network level, while Microsoft deploys Silverlight. Google is adapting its Gears API to support mobile phones, while Android will support cloud computing from day one.
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