At CTIA on Wednesday, executives from T-Mobile, Motorola, Google and Adobe agreed that there are so many different software platforms currently available on mobile that it is stifling creativity. They also warned against the dangers of going too far in the other direction, and having too much consolidation.
I saw this panel report over on Infoworld. Christy Wyatt, vice president of software platforms and ecosystems for Motorola, along with Ian McKerlich, director of mobile Web and content for T-Mobile, Sumit Agarwal, head of mobile product management for Google in North America and Danny Winokur, a senior director at Adobe all agreed on this point during a panel discussion at CTIA in Vegas
The thrust of the discussion was that there is currently an unmanageable number of software platforms that developers need to cater for. They agreed that it is currently so cumbersome and complicated to create products for the mobile Internet that it is seriously hampering creativity. Christy Wyatt said “it would be relatively simple for us to just get along”, but the executives admitted that a fear of losing out is preventing operators from co-operating. They also warned against the dangers of over-standardisation, which could lead to the near-monopoly situation in the personal computer market.
What we think?
The problem with panel discussions is that while individual execs from a company might preach reasonable consolidation and co-operation, the companies themselves rarely behave that way. A major thread was that harsh economic times are making companies afraid to co-operate. At the same time, we’ve seen so many stories of operators being forced to work together to save money and provide better services. Jonathan McDonald from OgilvyOne once said “don’t worry about consolidation. Fragmentation tends to go away by itself.” I’m inclined to agree with him. Time, money and consumer demand are forcing more open solutions to become standard. Just wait until people like Symbian and the OMTP really get going!
