- They're better than you. Nokia, Motorola, HTC, and others have been doing this for years. They have dozens of phones on the market, brand trust, and experience to make hardware and an integrated OS.
- You're not ready to support hardware. Google products (excepting the Google Search Appliance) are all software and are offered without warranty of any kind. In fact, many are still tagged with "beta." You can't do that with a consumer electronics device. You have to offer warranty support, distribution channels, a call center, and a "finished" product out the door.
- People already have phones. That's right. NEW phone sales are slowing with carriers now requiring two-year contracts. Ask any consumer what they hate about their carrier. Count how many times "two year commitment" shows up.
- Software can stay carrier independent. Look at the iPhone and how the lust for the word "unlocked" drives people to spend so much more for them. The Nokia Nseries, including the internet tablet, are available on all GSM carriers without commitment.
Imagine, if you will, Google for Maemo. This will incorporate a series of software package to run on top of Internet Tablet OS and will combine Google products:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Documents
- GTalk
- YouTube
- Picasa
- Blogger
- Jaiku
- And (fanfare) Google Gears for offline use
8 comments:
Spot on Thoughtfix! If Google concentrate on their core products and bring them to as many platforms as possible, why why they need to produce hardware? Worked for Microsoft with Office (well, they only needed two platforms in the end, unless Linux really starts to take off).
Ehm, I don't know what boulder the US has been living under (for the n-th time), but in the rest of the world, 2-year contracts have been the norm since the beginning of time. And the "rest of the world" tends to sell a *lot* more phones than the US.
Mind you, a lot of the strange, ugly phones that you US people seem to like aren't sold anywhere else. I don't think anyone will miss them...
Google is NOT making the phone. They are supplying the OS, and they are doing so based off a company they bought that produced exactly that. They ARE sticking to software. From the little we do know about "the phone", it is nothing more than an OS and software stack/dev kit.
It is however a set of standards that most of those companies you mentioned, Motorola, LG, Samsung, etc. are implementing, allowing a single software program to run on many platforms supposedly.
While I don't know that it will be successful, I am in favor of efforts to provide an open platform for all of my electronics. In the meantime however I will be going with the OpenMoko project shortly and using my n-series tablets with that.
Seablade
isnt it possible to use most of the google suite of software on the n800 is you use the mozilla browser?
Ummm... Nokia released the IT-770 in 2005 it wasa beta device.
Why can't google do that?
Completely agreed, Thoughtfix. Honestly, until draconian cellular contracts that are a kickback to the days where they were business exclusive devices, I ain't gonna have one in my pocket.
I think google should shake up the market in mobile hardware, they should at least attempt to make mobiles better, then maybe it will serve a kick up the backside for the other mobile makers out there not to be sloppy.
Am I just a suspicious sod, or is there something behind the fact that Google apps work so poorly with the N770... ?
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