A feature by Michael McCarthy on the Wireless Resource Centre reports on a speech made by Stewart Walsop (a venture capitalist) where he discussed who will be on top of the market in 2007. He says that it won't be Nokia, Handspring or Microsoft. In fact, he says that these will have 0% of the market, each. He is putting his money on BREW.
Some of his argument centres on the fact that he doesn't reckon on users wanting to use their phones for word processing and the like (because they interfere :roll: , while putting a camera on a phone is just silly (we'll see about that eh?);
[quote="Wireless Resource Center"]
It's important to note that you can work statistics in this industry any way you like, but there is still one bottom line. For example, of the 900 million cell phones sold worldwide in 2001 (compare to 120 million PCs!), more than half were bought as replacements. But 100% were bought so people could talk to other people.
The key lesson: To most of your customers, a cell phone is first and foremost a telephone. Features and applications that help people make a phone call are playing into this key fact. Features and apps that get in the way of people talking on the phone are likely to fail.
So at the top of the list are features that enhance the telephone experience. His example: an integrated directory lookup service that can check any phonebook anywhere to find a phone number and dial it.
Next on the list are apps that fill time between calls�games, location services, chat�because they don't interfere with talking on the phone.
At the bottom of this list are apps that interfere with calls or compete for talk time. PC-type applications, productivity applications, mobile commerce, all get in the way of making a call. People just don't want to compute on their phones, he argues. And it's not just apps affected by these rules: They apply to the device itself as well. The Nokia Communicator, newly released in the U.S., is a nifty small computer, but you have to close the lid to use it as a phone. There is also the appropriateness issue; just because your gadget can play music doesn't make it a stereo�or a stereo replacement.
So the closer you can stay to the top of this list, the better your chances of success.
He thinks the music and photo boom in Japan and Korea may be just an early-adopter fluke. Video telephony, on the other hand, he thinks is cool�you can look at people while you talk to them.
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There really is a lot in this to take in, with some bits more useful than others so take a read and let us know what you think.