At yesterday's MEX meeting, John
Forsyth - who is on the leadership team with the Symbian Foundation - maintained that in certain circumstances, the entirety of a handset vendor's software R&D budget is being wasted on maintaining such a physically large number of handset models. Yet he still appealed for handset diversity. MEX – the Mobile User Experience – is an annual affair hosted by Marek Pawlowski and held in Central London. It's a kind of mixture between a conference and a technical workshop. Some figures which Forsyth shared with us included the fact that the Top Five handset vendors were launching
a new model around once a month in 2000 only to see this increase to around 1.5 models a week until there was a peak around 2006.
At yesterday's MEX meeting, John
Forsyth - who is on the leadership team with the Symbian Foundation -
maintained that in certain circumstances, the entirety of a handset
vendor's software R&D budget is being wasted on maintaining such
a physically large number of handset models. Yet he still appealed
for handset diversity.
MEX – the Mobile User Experience – is an annual affair hosted by
Marek Pawlowski and held in Central London. It's a kind of mixture
between a conference and a technical workshop.
Some figures which Forsyth shared with
us included the fact that the Top Five handset vendors were launching
a new model around once a month in 2000 only to see this increase to
around 1.5 models a week until there was a peak around 2006.
Another
fascinating point Forsyth revealed was that while he maintained a
database of some 20,000 requirements from a typical mobile operator,
the handsets which fared best in the market met the fewest number of
required attributes. This was a thinly disguised dig at the Apple
iPhone, I reckon.
Essentially he sees the operators' fixation
with a 'tickbox' culture as stifling innovation in the handset arena.
He joked that the one software platform would be the ideal solution –
because obviously the winner would be Symbian. On a more serious
note, however, he conceded that two to three different platforms
would be good for the entire mobile software sector.
Forsyth joked that the Symbian
foundation's major goal is to be both neutral and independent. Yet
most observers see Symbian as being biased. Obviously a lot of good
PR needs to be done to rectify this image.
The essential message Forsyth was
putting across is that bug fixes are consuming too much R&D/software
budget, whereas what the handset market needs is for a lot more
imaginative ideas to reach fruition. That means overcoming the
industry's current inertia.
What struck me is that handset
manufacturers could benefit from a modular approach. It's a concept
successfully proved by Triumph with motorcycles, for example.
Consumers should be able to take modules which they want – say a
Wi-Fi capability while omitting other capabilities they don't want –
like a camera.
The resulting handset would be easy to
maintain because there's just one basic engine and a concise set of
modules which would interact predictably. That just leaves the thorny
question of taking the pain out of upgrading the handset.
It
struck me that handsets could be supplied with a very basic
configuration and the owner's preferences could be pulled down off
the Internet. That's not just obvious items like content – photos,
ringtones and addressbooks, but also the choice of browser and UI,
even. If you don't want touch-screen, you don't have to take it.
There was an impressive turn-out of
delegates at MEX from all walks of the mobile industry – although
operator representatives appeared to be most in the firing line! I
definitely recommend it for next year.
