ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO GO...
In a post titled "Total eclipse of the fun" two days ago, I outlined five constituents (consumers, cellphone vendors, advertisers, online content and service providers, and internet telephony companies), that will likely help break down the the wireless industry's barriers around their vertically integrated networks in the next few years. Well, a leading member of the second constituency just announced a new battering ram yesterday.
Nokia announced three new "global" phones under the NSeries banner yesterday. I wanted to specifically highlight the N91, pictured below without and with its keypad out (click for larger image). The phone has gotten a positive anticipatory buzz from the trades, tech media, mobile web sites, and wireless wonks.
From my perspective, t
he phone is notable for three reasons:
1. It's one of the first phones built specifically as a "mobile jukebox", or put another way, an iPod with a phone.
2. It has a 4GB hard drive, enough for 3000 songs. They make the device almost like a mini PC with a price tag to match. Without carrier subsidies, the retail price on the N91 is expected to be close to $1000.
3. It supports WiFi AND USB 2.0, along with the usual multiple cell phone standards, and bluetooth. These two connections in particular, along with bluetooth, give the phone easy and open access to data transfers to and from PCs and Macs at high speeds, bypassing the wireless carrier's phone networks, and thus their tariffs.
And there's the rub. Although the phone is expected to be available later this year, no wireless carrier partners have been announced either overseas or in the US that will carry the phone yet.
The issue for carriers continues to be a business model one...their interest is in making their network, via the phone, be the primary conduit through which data goes in and out of the device, making the two an indispensable "media hub".
The carriers already have a bad rep on crippling other open gateways into new phones, with Verizon the latest to face consumer ire and possible lawsuits on charges of crippling the bluetooth feature on some new phones, like the Motorola V710. Motorola and Apple have reportedly had difficulty getting US wireless carriers to roll out the Motorola iTunes phone (alleged picture below).
Of course, the PC industry has similar aspirations, with both Microsoft and Apple having specific designs on being media hubs that serve as the gateways to devices of all types. Historically, other vertical industries have been unable to withstand the economic force of Moore and Metcalfe's laws.
The wireline phone and cable industries were the most recent example of this in the nineties. Until recently, they tried to build "portals" around first their narrowband, and then their broadband DSL and cable offerings (remember AT&T's Worldnet and cable's @Home?). For both, the dream was to maintain usage, and a la carte pricing for content and services.
Over time, some of them, like SBC realized where their strengths lay, and focused on growing the DSL broadband business, in partnership with horizontal portals like Yahoo!, resulting in one of the leading providers of broadband connections and services in the US.
Now the wireless carriers are making a similar quixotic attempt to keep the whole pie to themselves. Again, it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Inevitably, we will see one of the wireless carriers do the smart thing and partner with one or more horizontal players to break out vs. their peers. Until then, there'll be a lot of cool new wireless phone/gadgets with very little to do and few places to go.
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