Mobile manufacturers are running scared.
Market share is collapsing. New products are being sold to customers with no benifits, obvious or otherwise. There is little to no innovation, mobile tablets are everywhere with poorly designed software and rushed products design, and to top it all off we have Apple losing its sheen. The old heirarchical business structures just can’t compete on speed of innovation with modern tech startups and thats precisely why I say we need a disruptive 3.0 in the mobile product space.
Heres the bullets:
- Innovation – Over the last 3 years mobile phone design has pretty much centered around “copy Apple”. It doesn’t matter what actual features your customers are begging you for (*cough* flash *cough*), just copy Apple and you get to keep that cushy CEO chair. What has this led to? Well how about every single product on the market today being an almost exact cookie cutter of any other. That would be awesome, if they could actually get the software right. and they certainly can’t.
- Software – Many would argue the true key to Apples success lies in its simple to use software. We’ve all heard it, “it just works“. and it did, but not so much anymore as any user of Apple Itunes will gladly tell you. Its partly a DRM issue I know, but people are starting to wake up to Apple not being that great and easy to use after all. This leave a huge market of people looking for something that really does “just work”.
- Flash – If you can get flash working on a mobile device. I mean real flash. I know it sucks battery like nothing else, but we need it. WE NEED FLASH. There’s always an argument against, whether true or not, and on flash its claimed to be intentionally crippled to encourage app sales. For this reason, it would be best to release flash as an “unofficial” addon, in stealth, under the radar to appease all concerned. Flash lite just isn’t going to cut it.
- Tablets – An absolute joke. Dell streak, 5 inches of useless. Motorola Xoom (reviewed elsewhere on this site) is $800 of why bother. The common thinking seems to be; let’s get a laptop and cram it into a tablet add a streaming Twitter/Facebook feed and ship that mofo for the price of an Ipad. And yet, with a little forethought, mobile software developers could easily embed some damn awesome functionality within a tablet at the OS level. If only they actually cared/hired the right talent/had the incentives.
- Sharholders – As part of fiduciary responsibility, this is the bottom line. With markets fluctuating on shorter timescales and with fewer investment firms looking for those solid blue chip long-term investments, its all about 6 month and 12 month ROI. Resulting in stagnation. Nokia fell by the wayside with shoddy product and shoddy software. HTC succeeded by offering serious tech for the geeks and is doing well. Motorolo hasn’t got a clue. Sony’s given up on copying Apple and is cleverly leveraging their entertainment division.
Modern mobile devices are all about the software and thats where we excel.
The market is absolutely ripe for the picking for a serious, modern, venture funded, agile startup made up of the right team to come in and clean up. To build a mobile device, modify it creatively and make their millions.
Its $100 million right there for any of you reading this. Do you dare reach out and take it?
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