Comments on: Is Mobile Really Global?

By: You need a foundation before you take out the walls

You need a foundation before you take out the walls — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:55:45 +0000

[...] been trying to put my finger on an easy to way to illustrate this and today I was pointed to a post by Mike Rowehl (who runs the Silicon Valley Mobile Monday events) that hit it home for me. If I was looking to [...]

By: McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Business Observations: November 11, 2008 Edition

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:58:49 +0000

[...] Is Mobile Really Global? [...]

By: Sachendra Yadav

Sachendra Yadav — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:53:57 +0000

I don’t buy the Nokia “billions of devices out there” argument one bit. It might make sense for handset manufacturers but not for application developers

You make an excellent point about application developers targeting the right audience and right market. In India, only 1500 iPhone units were sold in 3 months from it’s launch. Reason, too costly. In India ARPU for GSM customers is $5 and for CDMA customers is as low as $3 (I bet China/Africa is at the same level) which is significantly lower than that of US/Europe markets.

If developers are choosing iPhone, then there’s a lot of economic sense in it because it sells in places where people can spend money on the applications that are part of its ecosystem.

By: Reda

Reda — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:49:17 +0000

i might sound as a cliche but everyone needs to have some sales skills and one-line claims can be very effective and easy to learn (which is the case when saying: “you need to start thinking about the billions of devices out there in the market”)…and is definively easier to learn and sell than a long elaborated well-thought explanation ;-)

By: Steven Hoober

Steven Hoober — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:14:30 +0000

Hmm. Maybe you are talking about us, because it’s rare I go anywhere that other mobile designers, developers and gurus in general are not raving endlessly about iPhone.

Global ecosystem is not why I think it’s silly to design for it. Even within the US market, I try to get clients to work with all (remotely modern) devices. Why?

1) Social networking. Most products we work on have at least /some/ social component. Even those that do not explicitly, often do in an off-channel, face-to-face manner. Why show off the cool product to your friends if they cannot use it? But explicitly social products are useless if 80% of your friends simply cannot use it.
2) Why limit yourself? Use of other devices is very high, and it’s early for mobile interactive; it’s nothing but growth.
3) What is the future of the iPhone? You don’t know, I don’t know. Designing and developing a flexible, class-based solution means the next iPhone with softkeys, or a keyboard or a tiny screen or whatever will be simple to build as an extension of existing products. Entirely aside from all other devices, or the next great thing not from apple.
4) It’s bad design practice. I am seeing too much iPhone centric design. Wait, scratch that, I am seeing too much iPhone ONLY design. To the exclusion of all else. I have seen people say (not imply, but say) iPhone or WAP. NO one product is worth this level of locking down your design that tightly.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:02:03 +0000

Great post. I think it’s very important that people get over the illusion of a “global mobile market”. There has never been such a thing and not likely we’ll see one anytime soon. There might be 4 billion phones out there, but it’s not like it’s one, easily addressable market. It’s a little like saying that there’s a billion+ people in India and another billion+ in China. What if they all bought shoes from me? ;-) Huge opportunity, huge market, but for some reason they don’t all buy shoes from me… the global mobile market illusion is a bit like that. Wishful thinking.
iPhone is already a very nice market and it is a nice, albeit closed, ecosystem that Apple has created around that. The iPhone is the best thing that has happened to the mobile ecosystem in a very long time, now all the other players (handset makers, carriers etc) have to do a much better job. It’s the change we need;-)
Android is interesting, but I think other mobile linux efforts will have a much bigger impact over time.