My thoughts on the gPhone
So rumors running over the gPhone are flying fast and furious. The latest is this USA Today piece discussing how the gPhone might be a low cost phone the integrates well with the SMS functions that Google acquired when they bought Jaiku. That will give them easy access to all the goodies Google provides directions, numbers, movie times, etc…
I mean, I see the functionality, but why would they create their own handset for, basically, texting? Presumably, they’ll write an app that makes the interface nicers, formatting the input and output, but why would that require a whole phone? They could write an app that runs on the zillions of existing phones and have the carriers bundle it - it doesn’t seem to be difficult to get their stamp on these phones - everyone’s doing it.
The article also wierdly says that this new low cost gPhone will trump the iPhone. But, um, why would they even be competing? If this is a low cost phone, it will be in a different market than Apples. It’d be like saying that Hyundai’s new low cost car will trump BMW’s. There’s nothing in the report to suggest that the gPhone will have any other high end/smartphone like features that would compete with the iPhone. The iPhone doesn’t seem to need a special SMS google app since it, you know, can simply get to Google via the web or the maps app…
I’ve been reading the various rumors about the gPhone and I just don’t know. It simply doesn’t add up for me. Nothing about it seems to make sense. Google wants to get it’s data into everyone’s hands, that’s a software issue. Google could simply create all sorts of apps and SDK’s for other’s to make apps on the wide variety of existing cell phones and work wit the carriers to get that bundled in and have a huge potential audience. Why would they try and go the hardware route, and either have to make heavy deals with the carriers and then deal with support issues and the ongoing development and even worse marketing of this phone when they can simply write apps?
I could see them creating a new OS, but even that doesn’t make as much sense as just writing java apps or apps for symbian and winmob and all the rest. I simply don’t think they are the company to make consumer products, they make tools, not sexy must have devices which is what they’d need to have to create a hit product. I mean, the world simply doesn’t care, a couple journalists and bloggers are excited, but compare that with they hype around the iPhone and you can see how nobody in the real world remotely cares about the gPhone.
Unless there’s some kind of special hardware sauce to this device that gives it that super flavour that people love, I just don’t get the gPhone. Or if Google does some kind of special magic where they pay for your contracts with some ad money that they are going to extract from your phone usage. I dunno, I gotta go with Tom Hanks on this one. I don’t get it. What’s good about it? What am I missing?
October 18th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Call me when it can make a cup of coffee, if you can figure out how to make a call without opening your garage door or something.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
We’ll have to see what it is when (if) it rolls out, but I have to disagree with you that “nobody in the real world remotely cares”.
Divide the mobile consumer market up into 2 crowds, one that has or might one day want/have an iPhone and the second comprised of everyone else that carries some type of mobile device, but doesn’t give 2 craps for Apple’s latest piece of brilliance.
There’s tons of folks in the 2nd group to appeal to. Let’s face it, I love Macs and own 2 of them, but the price-point keeps most people away, no matter how good they are. The same goes for the iPhone.
The gPhone doesn’t have to be better/sexier than the iPhone it just has to be better than everything else out there. I don’t think that’s too hard to do and that’s still a fairly large market.
Sure the average Joe/Jane doesn’t know jack about the gPhone, but that doesn’t mean they won’t buy one if it offers them features they want.
October 18th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Michael, you’re right, it’s true that it could be successful because of it’s low cost appeal. But in order for it to be the success that google wants, everyone will have to stop using their many, many existing handsets and move to this new one. If it isn’t sexy, as, for example the RAZR was, people won’t switch to it. It’s giving people functionality that they aren’t used to having (given their non-smartphone needs) and may not even know they want. Uptake, as a result, will be slow which is not what G wants. It would seem like a much more efficient and expedient way to provide the software on all the handsets that people are already buying than trying to make a whole new platform.
I guess, where I’m disagreeing with you is that it doesn’t have to be sexy. I think it does. The market out there for low cost phones is big, but there’s a lot of low cost phones. G will need a significant portion of that market to reach scale necessary to push something through, like that wacky sms payment module some people have speculated on and something that isn’t sexy, just won’t grow quickly enough.
Unless they’ve got some super secret hook, that will make this all add up. :)
November 5th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
[...] as I thought, there’s no gPhone. It never made sense, y’know? Instead they’ve announced the [...]