The Brooding Savage

I'm disappointed with Information Week’s recent analysis of the Gphone feature set.  The Author picks apart the Open Handset Alliance, taking the best mobile products of each member,  in an attempt to piece together a decription of the upcoming phone.

But Alex Wolfe's article actually does the opposite.  Of the 34 OHA members, Wolfe selects 8: Console-quality graphics from Nvidia; content discovery via PacketVideo; voice recognition courtesy of Nuance Communications, etc.  If a Gphone launched with all of these features, it would certainly be a technical marvel.  It would also be a miracle.

What does it say that Google’s “killer” phone requires all of these technically and geographically diverse companies to come together to implement a single device?  

Anyone who’s ever worked in a mid-sized company knows the challenge of getting different departments to effectively integrate disparate technolgies components into a single product.  On its best day, it’s like the proverbial herding of cats.

Now imagine the integration difficulties with totally separate companies – each with it’s own product agenda, technical strategy, concepts of innovation, and product vision.  Now multiply that by the 34 members of the alliance.  

The likelihood of a single, coherent, feature-rich product hitting the market seems a fantasy.

There are 4 handset manufacturers and 7 operators in the alliance. My bet is that each will be running hard trying to catch the iPhone for Christmas 2008.  That means each new device will be a cherry picked amalgam of a few marketable and implementable features.   And the disparate features will likely be shoehorned into a haphazard UI with poor consideration for the overall user experience.  It’s the legacy of the Alliance members, and the inevitable outcome of “design by committee.”

In contrast, Apple exercizes an almost pathological control over every minut aspect of it’s products.  (Recall the Japanese engineers’ derogatory comments over the number of screws in the macBook Air.)  I anticipate a slate of new iPhone products that will continue Apple’s tradition of seemless and simple integration.  Even if Apple is lacking some features, the overall experience is still going to beat the Gphone pack.

In the final analysis, it will still be the manufacturers and operators that determine the overall look and feel of the product – and their previous products haven’t given me any reason to hope for real innovation.