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Android and iOS phones? They might as well be any generic cheap Nokia, flavour du jour. Did Finnish culture have profound effects on the 40-60% of mobile phone

by djhn 11y ago

Android and iOS phones? They might as well be any generic cheap Nokia, flavour du jour. Did Finnish culture have profound effects on the 40-60% of mobile phone owners at the time?

jdminhbg 11y ago
> Android and iOS phones? They might as well be any generic cheap Nokia, flavour du jour. Obviously not, or people wouldn't be spending hundreds of extra dollars to abandon their generic cheap Nokias in favor of Android and iOS.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Few consumers spend their discretionary income on Android and iOS phones for reasons related to intrinsic advantages of the platform themselves. They buy Android and iOS phones because those are the two platforms that propagated for what they actually seek: mobile devices. It could just as well have been Symbian and QNX, if competitive forces played out differently. But the whole point is that these goods are completely substitutable. People only rationalize them post facto.
  - jdminhbg 11y ago
    What are these "competitive forces" that aren't consumers choosing some platforms over others? iOS in particular wasn't jammed down consumers' throats; early adopters frequently had to jump carriers to get one, which forced carriers that didn't have the iPhone to accede to Apple's demands of them. That Android and iOS won via some kind of accident of history is a fairly extraordinary claim, and requires some kind of actual evidence.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      That platforms win by consumer preference is a truism that need not be underlined. Android benefited from homogenization by the OHA consortium, and its licensing permitting extensive reproduction by off-the-shelf producers of varying production quality. iOS benefited from Apple's branding and cult following. What's relevant is that most consumers do not evaluate software platforms from technical and system properties. They seek mobile devices for their end use, and will inevitably steer towards what already has large units stocked, what is advertised and what is recommended via word-of-mouth which will usually create reinforcing loops from consumer impressions caused by the former two. That is to say, the mobile OSes are substitutable goods. Which mobile OS prevails is of little relevance to most consumers, who seek means to ends and the nature of software is that the precise workings of these means are often obscure to them or otherwise not important provided ends (telephony, messaging, browsing, productivity apps, entertainment, or communication and consumption in general, etc.) are met. For there were other platforms besides Android and iOS, and those would have evolved just the same and we would be speaking of some other location exerting cultural dominance. If it weren't Google, it could have been Altavista or something else. If it weren't Facebook, it could have been MySpace, Friendster or something else. Especially social networks are by definition something that critically depend on Metcalfe's law. Mobile platforms as well, to an extent (largely because apps that people want will converge to them). People do not care that they use Facebook or iOS, they want access to networks of contacts and to communicate with them through a consistent mechanism. As such, you cannot argue that SV culture has dominated just by the fact of some product being influential alone, since it's a circular argument that ignores most such technologies are not pursued for the actual technological properties.
      - jdminhbg 11y ago
        You're just redefining "technical and system properties" to be things you find important, rather than things the majority of consumers find important. > Which mobile OS prevails is of little relevance to most consumers, who seek means to ends and the nature of software is that the precise workings of these means are often obscure to them or otherwise not important provided ends (telephony, messaging, browsing, productivity apps, entertainment, or communication and consumption in general, etc.) are met. But iOS and Android won by providing superior messaging/browsing/productivity/entertainment, that's the entire point. Nobody is arguing that the kernel in iOS or Android is superior to QNX or Symbian (I have no idea myself, having never looked at the system level of any of those platforms), but rather that iOS and Android provided superior experiences, and that's why they won. And in a lot of ways, it's the SV culture and its focus on consumer preferences (often mocked as childish and unserious -- "yet another cat photo sharing app") that made it possible for those two platforms to destroy the competition. It turns out consumers really do care if Instagram or Angry Birds is possible or available. > For there were other platforms besides Android and iOS, and those would have evolved just the same and we would be speaking of some other location exerting cultural dominance. I have no idea where you get so much confidence that alternative OS platforms would have evolved "just the same" -- mobile platforms were a stagnant morass before iOS and (very shortly after) Android came around. > As such, you cannot argue that SV culture has dominated just by the fact of some product being influential alone, since it's a circular argument that ignores most such technologies are not pursued for the actual technological properties. "Actual technological properties" here meaning apparently whatever you think is important, and not what actual consumers think is important. User experience is technology. Apple and Google are better at it than Nokia or RIM.
- djhn 11y ago
  Yes, Android and iOS were the winning ecosystems, there is no argument there. I was making the point that their influence on culture and society is limited, and using Nokia as an analogy. Nokia was Finnish, yet this didn't have any perceptible impact on its hundreds millions of users. None of them started going to sauna, spontaneously developed cross-country skiing skills or realized that having a summer cottage on a lake is holy grail of life. And yes, smartphones do have ways in which they can influence behaviour to a larger extent than feature phones, but those too shaped the nature of mobile phone interactions for whole generations. And most (global) end users are non the wiser that there is a place called Silicon Valley where these devices are designed, just like many people thought Nokia might be Japanese - but didn't know for certain.

by djhn 11y ago

Android and iOS phones? They might as well be any generic cheap Nokia, flavour du jour. Did Finnish culture have profound effects on the 40-60% of mobile phone owners at the time?

jdminhbg 11y ago

> Android and iOS phones? They might as well be any generic cheap Nokia, flavour du jour. Obviously not, or people wouldn't be spending hundreds of extra dollars to abandon their generic cheap Nokias in favor of Android and iOS.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Few consumers spend their discretionary income on Android and iOS phones for reasons related to intrinsic advantages of the platform themselves. They buy Android and iOS phones because those are the two platforms that propagated for what they actually seek: mobile devices. It could just as well have been Symbian and QNX, if competitive forces played out differently. But the whole point is that these goods are completely substitutable. People only rationalize them post facto.
- jdminhbg 11y ago
  What are these "competitive forces" that aren't consumers choosing some platforms over others? iOS in particular wasn't jammed down consumers' throats; early adopters frequently had to jump carriers to get one, which forced carriers that didn't have the iPhone to accede to Apple's demands of them. That Android and iOS won via some kind of accident of history is a fairly extraordinary claim, and requires some kind of actual evidence.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    That platforms win by consumer preference is a truism that need not be underlined. Android benefited from homogenization by the OHA consortium, and its licensing permitting extensive reproduction by off-the-shelf producers of varying production quality. iOS benefited from Apple's branding and cult following. What's relevant is that most consumers do not evaluate software platforms from technical and system properties. They seek mobile devices for their end use, and will inevitably steer towards what already has large units stocked, what is advertised and what is recommended via word-of-mouth which will usually create reinforcing loops from consumer impressions caused by the former two. That is to say, the mobile OSes are substitutable goods. Which mobile OS prevails is of little relevance to most consumers, who seek means to ends and the nature of software is that the precise workings of these means are often obscure to them or otherwise not important provided ends (telephony, messaging, browsing, productivity apps, entertainment, or communication and consumption in general, etc.) are met. For there were other platforms besides Android and iOS, and those would have evolved just the same and we would be speaking of some other location exerting cultural dominance. If it weren't Google, it could have been Altavista or something else. If it weren't Facebook, it could have been MySpace, Friendster or something else. Especially social networks are by definition something that critically depend on Metcalfe's law. Mobile platforms as well, to an extent (largely because apps that people want will converge to them). People do not care that they use Facebook or iOS, they want access to networks of contacts and to communicate with them through a consistent mechanism. As such, you cannot argue that SV culture has dominated just by the fact of some product being influential alone, since it's a circular argument that ignores most such technologies are not pursued for the actual technological properties.
    - jdminhbg 11y ago
      You're just redefining "technical and system properties" to be things you find important, rather than things the majority of consumers find important. > Which mobile OS prevails is of little relevance to most consumers, who seek means to ends and the nature of software is that the precise workings of these means are often obscure to them or otherwise not important provided ends (telephony, messaging, browsing, productivity apps, entertainment, or communication and consumption in general, etc.) are met. But iOS and Android won by providing superior messaging/browsing/productivity/entertainment, that's the entire point. Nobody is arguing that the kernel in iOS or Android is superior to QNX or Symbian (I have no idea myself, having never looked at the system level of any of those platforms), but rather that iOS and Android provided superior experiences, and that's why they won. And in a lot of ways, it's the SV culture and its focus on consumer preferences (often mocked as childish and unserious -- "yet another cat photo sharing app") that made it possible for those two platforms to destroy the competition. It turns out consumers really do care if Instagram or Angry Birds is possible or available. > For there were other platforms besides Android and iOS, and those would have evolved just the same and we would be speaking of some other location exerting cultural dominance. I have no idea where you get so much confidence that alternative OS platforms would have evolved "just the same" -- mobile platforms were a stagnant morass before iOS and (very shortly after) Android came around. > As such, you cannot argue that SV culture has dominated just by the fact of some product being influential alone, since it's a circular argument that ignores most such technologies are not pursued for the actual technological properties. "Actual technological properties" here meaning apparently whatever you think is important, and not what actual consumers think is important. User experience is technology. Apple and Google are better at it than Nokia or RIM.
djhn 11y ago
Yes, Android and iOS were the winning ecosystems, there is no argument there. I was making the point that their influence on culture and society is limited, and using Nokia as an analogy. Nokia was Finnish, yet this didn't have any perceptible impact on its hundreds millions of users. None of them started going to sauna, spontaneously developed cross-country skiing skills or realized that having a summer cottage on a lake is holy grail of life. And yes, smartphones do have ways in which they can influence behaviour to a larger extent than feature phones, but those too shaped the nature of mobile phone interactions for whole generations. And most (global) end users are non the wiser that there is a place called Silicon Valley where these devices are designed, just like many people thought Nokia might be Japanese - but didn't know for certain.