Smartphone industry is getting to be the most exciting industry to watch around. While Nokia and iPhone are battling their lousy patent wars, Google has unveiled the Nexus One which has got raving reviews so far (doubt every body who writes about it would have used it). People have already started talking it to be an iPhone killer?
Apple , Nokia, Samsung, Motorola , HTC control around 70% of the smartphone traffic among themselves (source admob report) out of which Apple has a lions (well not exactly) share of around 32 %. Whilst the smartphone market existed for quite sometime, Apple redifined the market by its innovative iTunes based business model and unique tie-ups with single carrier to make the product exclusive and more demanded. This month the AppStore downloads have exceeded more than 3 billion downloads and needless to say a significant revenue to Apple.
In bare naked truth , Apple has created a big revenue stream by letting the innovative deveopers across the world to go crazy on their imagination, providing them a good infrastructure (iTunes) to sell their products and presenting the customer a great device to tap this apps. In essense it is an ideal ecosystem of customer, developer and apple.
So far so good. But Google seems to have a different strategy which tells
1. No carrier lockin
2. Operating System is OpenSource (go and modify on your own)
3. Standards are pretty much open and you wouldnt need a specific make of a laptop/desktop to create apps (like Apple)
While Apple has to play a defensive game of protecting its turf, Google has nothing to lose but everything to gain. The Nexus one demonstration (if it were to be believed) portrays a fantastic 5 MP camera . Noice Cancellation and ultrafast processor for making it a great device esp for Gaming which could take Nexus to a different plane.
Needless to say the smartphone industry got revolutioned only after Apple and Google is a follower but doesnt need to go through the learning curve and risks like Apple did. It just needs to do better than Apple (which is quite hard) and take the features to masses where it could strike it hot.
Inspite of the revenue that iPhone generates it accounts for only 1% of the cellphone market and there is a huge customer base who could turn to smartphone usage if the entry barriers are lowered. I think this is exactly what google wants to capture.
Google could heat up the play by the following strategies
> Promoting the carriers for stickiness (unlike the struck ATT with Apple)
> Connect the Apps to Google AppEngine
> Provide a cool interface to buy apps (like iTunes)
> Consolidate it various apps to a bundle
This would help Google in many ways
> Increase Android adoption and hence make avenues for getting it more matured
> Gain strong entry into the Smartphone (remember Apples rejection of Google Voice etc)
> Make competitors like MS and Apple work more harder and make them spend money over a new avenue
Whatever said and done , the space is heating up and getting interesting to watch.
Nokia , Are you listening?
Needless to say the smartphone industry got revolutioned only after Apple and Google is a follower but doesnt need to go through the learning curve and risks like Apple did. It just needs to do better than Apple (which is quite hard) and take the features to masses where it could strike it hot.
Inspite of the revenue that iPhone generates it accounts for only 1% of the cellphone market and there is a huge customer base who could turn to smartphone usage if the entry barriers are lowered. I think this is exactly what google wants to capture.
Google could heat up the play by the following strategies
> Promoting the carriers for stickiness (unlike the struck ATT with Apple)
> Connect the Apps to Google AppEngine
> Provide a cool interface to buy apps (like iTunes)
> Consolidate it various apps to a bundle
This would help Google in many ways
> Increase Android adoption and hence make avenues for getting it more matured
> Gain strong entry into the Smartphone (remember Apples rejection of Google Voice etc)
> Make competitors like MS and Apple work more harder and make them spend money over a new avenue
Whatever said and done , the space is heating up and getting interesting to watch.
Nokia , Are you listening?
1 comment:
You made some good points there. I did a search about the topic and barely found any specific details on other sites, but then happy to be here, seriously, thanks.
- Lucas
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