back to article The death of mobile innovation?

I’ve written before about the demise of competition in the Old Kent Road/Mediterranean Avenue end of the mobile market, but I’ve always thought that the Park Lane/Park Place and Mayfair/Boardwalk end was safe. We’ve got Symbian, Windows Mobile, more flavours of Linux than Ben and Jerry could dream of, Palm with two OSes and more …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Let me be the first to say...

    ...wtf!? Maybe because it's Monday morning, and my café latté enema hasn't kicked in yet, but if this is satire, surely it would come equipped with a punchline?

  2. AntipodeanAdventure
    Thumb Down

    Can we see less from this author...

    "and Infineon is only a supplier to the impoverished and maverick Apple."

    Don't know where she's been in the last two years, but if that is her 'analysis' of Apple then what does it say about the rest of the article. I would hardly call sitting on > 50 billion in cold hard cash "impoverished".

    Can you guys put a virtual rubbish bin on the website for articles? > certain number they get flushed.

  3. Tom Cooke

    Eerily familiar

    Looks like it's up to Obi-Wan Kenobi,er I mean Apple, to defend us from the Evil Empire. Now where have I heard that theme music before? DAH-dah-dah-dah-di-DAH, dah-di-DAH...

  4. Francis Fish
    Happy

    I think the article is ok, read it all the way through

    Apple are the *only* big user of Infineon, I agree impoverished is an odd choice of word. But if Apple start using something else?

    Innovation will come to a halt without competition. The article is saying there isn't anywhere near as much as you'd think and is sounding a warning. I think that's fair enough.

  5. Dave

    Monopolies

    It seems to me that if all of Qualcomm's customers got together and bought Qualcomm, they could then put all the patents into the public domain and probably save more in fees over ten years than the cost of buying up all the stock.

    As for Android, I did consider a G1 but it's got too much of Google built into it (I don't have a Gmail account and don't want one), so I went for a Nokia E71 instead.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Innovation...

    While it's not a good idea to have no/little competition, I don't think innovation will come to a halt after all mobiles have to be innovative in order to sell - the main selling points of new phones are a) it's looks b) the latest gimmick (or innovation), take away innovation and all you've got is the last handset in a different case which won't sell so well...

  7. F1reman
    Happy

    Quite interesting

    I think what is trying to be said is:

    1) Because of one reason or another everyone bar apple are using/going to be using Qualcomm

    2) Qualcomm is a plc and also not a very nice company because they care too much about their bottom line and their shareholders, who are institutional investors, don't care about anything other than the next big investment opportunity.

    3) Because only qualcomm are in use innovation will be quashed and we as the consumer will suffer as a consequence

    4) The only folks who don't use Qualcomm, Apple, are about to go in to administration

    The apple mis-step was made in order to reinforce her article. i.e. if Apple are strong then Qualcomm maybe not such a big threat....but the Apple comment was unecessary and ironically, undermined the article.

    Qualcomm not very nice company? No. Really? Name me a 'good' company. Define good and evil. Etc.

    But the thrust of the article is good:

    When AMD started ctaching up with Intel, Intel released multi core. If AMD had not got strong we'd still be with overheating Pentium 4', right? Possibly. Intel have a long road map but the long term view can be changed. Only perhaps 18 months is set in stone. Besides, most economists will argue that monopoly bad, competition good.

  8. Catherine Keynes

    Sorry, there was a pause in that sentence

    Apple is clearly not impoverished. Infineon is used by the impoverished and by the maverick Apple. I didn't mean that Apple is impoverished. Sorry.

    Mobiles have to have innovation to sell to consumers, but that's not how networks buy them: they do it by a checklist of features against price. HSDPA? add $3, no AVRC? take off 50cents. If anyone except Apple had tried to sell the original iPhone (2G, no MMS, their own apps store) they wouldn't have seen any interest from the operators.

    Thar's why making the OS and chipset a commodity is such a dangerous thing.

    Cat

  9. Adam Starkey

    "and Infineon is only a supplier to the impoverished and maverick Apple."

    Most likely that sentence is just missing a comma.

    Calm down people.

  10. Catherine Keynes

    "Good" Company

    ARM

  11. c
    Coat

    conclusions from a flackey premise

    Last time I looked there have only ever been a few 3G chipset manufacturers. In fact there are more now than there were 5 years ago. infineon do stuff with a lot more companies than apple, EMP are also expanding their customer base into traditional "qualcomm land" in Korea. That broadcomm have gone by the wayside should be no surprise to anyone. In short the authors views are based on dodgy and innacurate observations

  12. Miguel
    Thumb Up

    ST-Ericsson not a big enough competitor?

    Something I cannot understand: why is it bad that the three European mobile platforms makers (ST, NXP-Philips and EMP-Ericsson) create a big enough joint venture to compete against Qualcomm?

    Theoretically at least, they have product portfolio, R&D muscle and customer base to continue building chipsets, software and mobile platforms for a long time. And, for competition's sake, it is probably better to have two big companies than one huge dominant player + three or four dwarves...

  13. Ramazan
    Jobs Horns

    @Tom Cooke

    Rage Against The Machine, dude? :) Apple won't fight the Evil Empire though, it's crippled by Darkness of Greed itself to its very bones.

  14. Ramazan
    Thumb Down

    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

    Catherine, you are terribly wrong. There's no such thing as Good Company. Or as they used to say in US of A, good redskin is a dead redskin. There MAY be good non-profit organizations though, like FSF, but even they are not good for everyone.

    IMHO, people will just get what they deserve - shitty-Telly-Vision[s], bullshit music (like Girls Aloud), crap phones (like Nokia), OSes (you-know-for-yourself), vendors (Siemens), telecoms (pick your local random one, that'll be it 100%) and governments (same here ;)).

    Problem isn't about lack of innovation among mobile telecoms/vendors, it's a whole lot more about lack of personality in mobile users: they just don't have their own, very personal opinion, they don't have a feel of style and beauty, they understand nothing in ergonomics being impaired in brain by Windows' GUIs, and of course they can't distinguish good from evil while pretending they can.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Qualcomm are C****

    Having owned a Tytn2 and now (through an unexpected forced upgrade) a Touch Pro, both with woefully inadequate, unresponsive and buggy (gps power drain anyone?) qualcomm chipsets - i am not happy about the way things are going.

    anyone remember the 3d graphics acceleration fiasco with the tytn2 drivers? same thing is happening on the touch pro - why? because if you buy a qualcomm chip, you dont buy the right to use it - you need licenses for that. maybe thats HTC's fault - who knows - theyre all as bad as each other.

    i abhor how qualcomm operates. they should be ashamed - they probably are and probably dont care because theyre too busy rolling around in their pits of money. i am making sure that my next phone and any other technology i purchase is not based on qualcomm hardware (and not a HTC device).

    Booooooooo Qualcomm.

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