I, Phone

I've recently upgraded my phone. Having lived with a Nokia Lumia 800 for two years, I've now bought a Lumia 1020 – the one with the 42 mega-pixel camera. I used it to make the above image during a recent visit to Margam Park in South Wales. I've done a bit of post processing, but I think that the camera has done a great job in difficult lighting conditions.

Anyway, I can sense some of you shaking your heads at my bizarre decision to buy another Lumia, but I've enjoyed owning the 800 – I've certainly stood out from the zombie hoards of the Android/iOS duopoly.

In any case, I actually like Windows Phone. It’s very simple and intuitive to use and it compares well with Android in that the phone comes with the latest version installed and will get regular updates for the rest of its life. And the desktop sync on my wife’s Sammie SIII is appallingly bad, whereas the 800 has always worked like a charm.

Then there’s the iPhone. Some of my friends and acquaintances think that I'm a Microsoft zealot, railing against Apple in the face of all the available evidence. This is not true – I own an iPod Touch, for God’s sake, the 64Gb top of the range model no less, which I really like and use every day.

My beef isn't with Apple in general or any of their products in particular. It’s with their fanbois, who insist on berating me and everyone else about the superiority of Apple products, both in person and through the media. And I'm afraid that they’re just plain wrong.

So, let’s get one thing straight. The fundamental difference between Microsoft and Apple isn't about one of them being being design led, or having superior corporate ethics, or anything so intangible. It’s all about business models – pure and simple.

Apple provide cheap or free software on over-priced hardware. Microsoft make over-priced software to run on commodity hardware. That’s it in a nutshell. The rest is all marketing.

I suspect that the TCO of either company’s comparable products over, say, five years is about the same, although my 1020 is a damn site cheaper than an iPhone. [Let’s quietly draw a veil over the Surface and the long forgotten and unloved Zune, shall we?]

And that neatly brings us back to Windows Phone and its one main downside, which is the lack of native apps. A couple of years down the line from the first real tranche of Windows Phones, very few businesses have ported their apps over or are looking likely to. But then, I mainly use my phone as a communications device – text, email, voice (remember that?) – which it’s really very good at.

As to the future, I think that the continued dominance of Android and iOS is less certain than some might imagine.

The installed Android base is fragmented and that will only get worse as newer versions are released and manufacturers continue to ignore the need to update older handsets. It remains to be seen at what point developers will find it impossible to make apps that will run across enough of the installed base to make it worth their while.

Add to that the fact that the market for Android handsets is a manufacturer’s bloodbath. Only Samsung are able to make a profit off the back of a mind-boggling marketing spend required to shore up their position as an aspirational brand running an OS more associated with the budget end of the market. The likes of Sony have to scrabble with the other also-rans attempting to differentiate their product, which drives further fragmentation of the OS.

Android may eventually turn out to be the real life example of the Tragedy of the Commons that economists have been looking for.

As for the iPhone, it may be huge in Europe and the States, but not elsewhere – Apple have completely failed to crack China, for example. Like many other innovators, Apple may well see its lead eroded and finally overhauled by commodity manufacturers offering a Good Enough^tm product at a fraction of the price. Its only way out of that bind is to innovate some more, something that it still has to prove it can do without Steve Jobs.

It also amazes me that we haven’t seen an OS developed in China or Africa on the world stage yet.

[Mobile phones are a big deal in Africa, where landline networks are generally lacking. However, the smart-phone has yet to really penetrate that market, which is still dominated by cheap and robust feature phones. Whilst the major players are still focusing on Western and Asian markets, Africa is likely to make or break them in the next few years.]

That might just be a matter of time. In any case, I wouldn't bet against Windows Phone finally emerging from all of this as the dominant mobile platform, not just yet anyway.