Breaking the walled garden?

It is still early stage but it is getting clear that the phone is no longer an application itself, it has become a platform supporting other applications. Before the iPhone hardly anyone ever downloaded an application, but it’s getting more common today. The new app stores, like Apple’s iTunes, have a disintermediating effect on the market. The business model of the Apple app store splits revenues between content developer (2/3) and Apple as platform holder (1/3), cutting out the mediating position of carriers who, as a result will also loose their income from ringtones etc..

And it is not just Apple out there as Google (Android), Nokia (Symbian) and Microsoft (Windows) are reaching out for their piece of the cake as well. While Apple created a new layer in the mobile value chian it also choose its own walled-garden strategy while monopolist Google choose openness as its core startegy. Nokia choose an entirely new more web 2.0 like concept where the distinction between site and application is completely blurred. So, the logical question to ask is which plans the carriers will develop in order not to become the mere commodity seller. Most likely they will move into becoming the best network provider (delivering security, global access, quality of service) since the front-end market will be difficult to play for them.

The end of the mobile ‘phone’?

Haven’t we seen this before with the Desktop Computer. First it was the processor  (286, 386, Pentium) that mattered most and created market domination (compare: in mobile this would be gsm, gprs, umts-phone etc). Then brands like IBM, Compaq, Toshiba or HP (mobile would be Nokia, Samsung etc.) became the powerhosues and now it is more about Apple versus Microsoft (in the mobile field it is symbian, microsoft, apple, google) So it feels like the mobile has caught up with the desktop. Which makes me wonder what will happen after this War of the OS? Will we see a next-generation-mobile-device or will the mobile become ‘just’ an enabler for more consumer services?

At least one lesson to be drawn is that yet again walled gardens are great to skim the market and even better to make something really work without the dreadful process of defining a market-standard. But in the end ALL digital walled gardens will either be broken, opened up or worse, new technology will allow anyone to ignore the walls and ‘just’ use them as an foundation for new layers and players.