Comments on: Google Q2 2012: “mobile is where search was in 1999″ http://www.slashgear.com/google-q2-2012-mobile-is-where-search-was-in-1999-19239452/ Feeding Your Gadget and Tech Obsessions Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: iwantthatphone http://www.slashgear.com/google-q2-2012-mobile-is-where-search-was-in-1999-19239452/#comment-224840 iwantthatphone Fri, 20 Jul 2012 01:27:00 +0000 http://www.slashgear.com/?p=239452#comment-224840 In my opinion, the statement appears to be an overly optimistic view. Other than hardware advances, the mobile market is already seeing very little progress. Most of what has been touted “innovation” and “amazing” in recent times has been (objectively speaking) nothing more than bells and whistles, enhancements, bug fixes, and aesthetic changes (reskinning). That is, especially the smartphone market, has gone past or is going past the “cash cow” or “innovation” phase. Starting with Palm and Blackberry, mobile market/smartphone have been out for a very long time. As smartphones are essentially entertainment devices “attached” to a phone, (other than the hardware advances) not sure how much progress/advance can be made to justify major new purchases from consumers perspective. Basic phone, navigation, texting, internet access, and entertainment capabilities (music, video, game) have already been implemented and are very mature in the smartphone market. Unless, a physical keyboard, mouse, and larger screens can be somehow incorporated, the capabilities of the smartphones have already hit the limit. Brute forcing other capabilities would be too gimmicky (e.g., voice control) and/or highly unproductive/limited (e.g., creating a Word or Excel document).

In the 80′s Walkman was a really big hit, probably bigger than the smartphone now. It lasted about a decade and went though a number of innovative iterations that produced truly useful new features (e.g., incorporated radio, auto reverse, auto skip, fast forward, etc), not just gimmicks or bells and whistles often seen in the smartphone market. Towards the end, virtually every electronic manufacturer jumped into the bandwagon (flooding the market with…) and it marked the beginning of the end for the Walkmans. Despite the numbers and cheaper price, there was no new feature (left) significant enough to justify new purchases and the CD’s were hitting the market to replace tapes. It appears the same phenomena is already happening in the “smarthphone” market, with hardly any new innovations (other than hardware advances, objectively speaking) coming out to justify new purchases… Aggressive marketing and every-two-year contracts will force people to buy more and keep the momentum going for a some time more but not sure how long it can keep up the pace by just adding more vendors/products and bells and whistles and cute gimmicks…

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