3 ms·

The fragmentation is good. The phone market is much healthier than the PC market. A handful of profitable platforms means heavy competition and innovation: a bi

The fragmentation is good. The phone market is much healthier than the PC market. A handful of profitable platforms means heavy competition and innovation: a big win for consumers (and developers). I hope HP does well in the phone market, as I wish the peddlers of Android phones and Apple success as well. Plenty of money to spread around in that market.

zmmmmm 16y ago
Too much fragmentation sucks. It means none of them will gain critical mass and at least half of them will spend several painful years slowly failing. I don't see how any of these guys (Symbian, WebOS, etc.) hope to overcome Android & WinPhone, at least in the smart phone market. All they can do is harm them by distracting and confusing the market for a few years, equating to consolidation for Apple. I know I am certainly not going to write apps for 5 platforms. I will pick 2 and go with that.
- DrSprout 16y ago
  The majority of them are Linux-based, and all of them make heavy use of the same web technologies for the primary part of the user experience. The exception is WinMo, but I can't believe that they're going to last long at all with IE7 as their browser of choice. They're going to need to either light a fire under the IE9 team and somehow get feature parity with mobile Webkit, or just throw in the towel and allow one of the other browsers on WinMo. And as for the suggestion that Apple is going to take over... RIM still has the largest market share in the US. Apple is a niche player, and they always will be because of the premium they charge on their hardware (now further compounded by the restrictions imposed on their hardware.)
  - omaranto 16y ago
    I've never had a phone with Windows Mobile, but I use to have a PDA woth that OS and I could run both Minimo (Gecko based) and Opera on it.
    - DrSprout 16y ago
      With WinMo 7 all apps must be coded in Silverlight, and there is no native development. This might be okay if they weren't using IE7 as the basis for the WinMo 7 browser.
- lallysingh 16y ago
  Different focuses. The iPhone's a mediocre PDA when looking at its calendaring and contact management facilities; my old Palm Pilot did a much better job. I haven't tried Android, but I don't imagine it being much better. While we may see smartphones take over completely, with multimedia, web browsing, email, etc. I suspect we'll see different design choices made for different types of users. That'll provide space for several competitors.

zmmmmm 16y ago

Too much fragmentation sucks. It means none of them will gain critical mass and at least half of them will spend several painful years slowly failing. I don't see how any of these guys (Symbian, WebOS, etc.) hope to overcome Android & WinPhone, at least in the smart phone market. All they can do is harm them by distracting and confusing the market for a few years, equating to consolidation for Apple. I know I am certainly not going to write apps for 5 platforms. I will pick 2 and go with that.

DrSprout 16y ago
The majority of them are Linux-based, and all of them make heavy use of the same web technologies for the primary part of the user experience. The exception is WinMo, but I can't believe that they're going to last long at all with IE7 as their browser of choice. They're going to need to either light a fire under the IE9 team and somehow get feature parity with mobile Webkit, or just throw in the towel and allow one of the other browsers on WinMo. And as for the suggestion that Apple is going to take over... RIM still has the largest market share in the US. Apple is a niche player, and they always will be because of the premium they charge on their hardware (now further compounded by the restrictions imposed on their hardware.)
- omaranto 16y ago
  I've never had a phone with Windows Mobile, but I use to have a PDA woth that OS and I could run both Minimo (Gecko based) and Opera on it.
  - DrSprout 16y ago
    With WinMo 7 all apps must be coded in Silverlight, and there is no native development. This might be okay if they weren't using IE7 as the basis for the WinMo 7 browser.
lallysingh 16y ago
Different focuses. The iPhone's a mediocre PDA when looking at its calendaring and contact management facilities; my old Palm Pilot did a much better job. I haven't tried Android, but I don't imagine it being much better. While we may see smartphones take over completely, with multimedia, web browsing, email, etc. I suspect we'll see different design choices made for different types of users. That'll provide space for several competitors.