Mobile Market Wrap-up for Sept 25, 2009

by | Sep 25, 2009 | Mobile Market Wrap-up

Welcome to this week’s summary of the mobile market.  There wasn’t any huge news this week but Net Neutrality captured a few headlines that gave us all a lot to think about in terms of mobile internet.  The FCC announced two additional proposals for Net Neutrality: non-discrimination in terms of network traffic and transparent management in terms of an ISPs network management practices (e.g. traffic blocking at peak hours).  Reading several articles this week, the big question for the mobile market is how will Net Neutrality impact wireless carriers, or will it?  As expected, the rules currently do not apply to wireless carriers and they wouldn’t have it any other way since they complain that mobile internet is more bandwidth constrained.  I don’t get it since isn’t a service provider’s job to provide better service.  If the bandwidth is constrained, then fix it.  Seems like a double-standard to me.  It’s the same as me saying that I didn’t make my mortgage payment because I didn’t have enough money… the bank will still take my home won’t it?

To add to this week’s Net Neutrality news, AT&T filed a complaint with the FCC asking that they investigate Google for possibly violating telecommunication laws with its Google Voice application.  According to AT&T, Google Voice is guilty of “blocking some calls to rural areas to cut down on network access expenses.”  I’m not familiar enough with the Net Neutrality laws but I think this debate and investigation will lead to more transparency in the mobile market which is good for everyone.

Well, it looks like another mobile OS has just tossed their hat into the crowed ring – this time it’s Linux.  I’ve been hearing a lot about Linux based phones for a while now but this week Intel announced their Moblin 2.1 for phones at their developer’s conference.  Also on the Linux front, Samsung announced their latest LiMo (Linux Mobile) phone and said it will support Vodafone’s 360 service.  Linux-based phones are expected to reach more carriers over the next year.  How can the mobile market support all these different multi-platform operating systems?  It can’t.  Based on what we’ve seen with the PC market, I predict that only two or three OS will survive over the next 4 years.  So which ones will end up gutter – Android, WebOS, WinMo, LiMo, Symbian?  I think it’s time to say bye bye to WinMo and WebOS.  If you don’t believe me that the mobile OS space is too crowded, just look at these articles from this week alone:

This week there were a lot of interesting, random news in the mobile market.  Here’s a long list of the ones I found worthwhile:

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