In this definitive editorial, a week after the Go:Play event, Rafe Blandford looks in detail about Nokia's new Ovi strategy and its core components and then predicts how it will evolve and connect to other mainstream Internet players over the next few years.
Read on in the full article.
"Most operators have thier own plans around service offerings and will be very reluctant to ship handsets with anything that takes the customer relationship away from them. Operators fear becoming a mere utility whose sole reason to exist is to maintain the network."
The problem isn't network operators making content, it's network operators trying to control both the network AND the content. When people are locked into one network through locked phones and contracts, that's arguably an abuse of monopoly.
Phone networks just don't like competition in any shape or form. They do everything they can to avoid competition, both from other networks and from other content providers. Competition means you have to lower your prices, provide clearer prices, and provide a better product, none of which appeal to the management of phone networks.
This might have been acceptable in the days when mobile phones were optional luxury items, but mobile phone networks are now becoming an essential public utility, like electricity or water, and ought to be regulated just as tightly. In many cases mobile phones are the only phones that people have, and landlines are beginning to disappear fast (or perhaps never existed at all in the poorer parts of the world).
Yes, I agree with this. The operators have been holding things back long enough and it's time to open things up. They should learn from IBM who many years ago took the - apparently - unusual step of releasing all the patents for the PC. Everybody, including IBM, got rich as a result.
Im just wondering. Will the games on the n73 and the games on more powerful devices such as the n95 be different in terms of graphics? And i think the network operators should get a grip. . . . If they cant do there job properly why not let nokia do it for them? After all if i werent for nokia the operators would make half the money they do now.
Actually you're missing Nokia Photos, it's mentioned on ovi.com already.
Good point, I should have mentioned this more explictly, although at the moment it seems to the collection of service / tools associated with Gallery rather than a unified service in the same sense as N-Gage.
The most comprehensive wrap-up & commentary I have seen so far - good work!
tommi's right, rafe. best one yet.
you rock.
i gotta make sure i get you on ovi.com as soon as possible. your perspective is highly valued.