First of all, I would just like to introduce myself briefly, as I will probably be writing on this blog from time to time. My name is Hillel, and I work as a Technical Writer for a large telecommunications company in Israel. On the side, I am a gadget freak and a tech enthusiast. I am on Twitter under the name hilzfuld. OK now down to business.
I just wanted to throw a little theory out there. This is something that has been going through my head a lot recently, figured I would put it down on “paper”. In the rapidly changing cellular industry, I am noticing a theme that, in my opinion, reached its climax this week. I am referring to the fact that hardware is really becoming less and less important, whereas the operating system on which the phone runs, is becoming a crucial factor. Let me explain. For months, people were talking about the Gphone. This mysterious phone that Google was going to release. Google, however, as usual, was one step ahead of the game, and was not interested in designing the hardware, but rather the operating system, ie. Android. The big competition in the cellular world is no longer who can make the slimmest handset, it has become an ongoing war between huge corporations like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Symbian (to just name a few in no specific order), who can make the best and smoothest platform or operating system.
This is also very apparent when talking about the IPhone 3G. There were many enhancements included in the second version of the IPhone, but none more talked about then the SDK, or the app store. The enhanced headphone jack or the new slightly rounded sides are not what excited people, or at least not as much as the ability to add applications to the IPhone.
What did I mean about it reaching its climax this week? Well, Palm recently announced the release of their Palm Treo Pro and guess who is not making the hardware for this phone? Palm! They are having HTC design the hardware and they are going to worry strictly about what lies beneath. I don’t know about you, but to me, that seems like a clear indication that this industry is becoming a software-dominated one.
-Hillel
