MWC – Mobiles, where they action is!

Today a representative of Nokia commented how dangerous is to bet on a single terminal …. obviously he was talking of Apple. However, is that true?

If you want a prove that in a medium-high complex environment a collaborative model for innovation works better than an integrated one, just go for a walk at MWC and take a look at the new Windows Mobile or Android terminals, a myriad of them!!! You’ll see really nice ideas materialize and the fruits of specialization: camera phones that are better than real cameras, etc …

You will also see that everybody has an app store … and finally Nokia’s Ovi is out!

After reading that you may be inclined to think that we are in the beginning of the end, that the sector is commoditizing and in a few months or years all mobile phones will be the same.  Sorry, I don’t agree. I am rather inclined to think that we are at the starting point, things like RF-ID, the next generation of Bluetooth, indoor gps, real ambient intelligence, translation services on requests, … are the ones who are going to make a difference now.

However, for many of these things to happen, we face the same kind of problems that with the electric car: infrastructure. The problem with infrastructure is that collaborative innovation cannot solve it, infrastructure is local, you cannot leverage in globalization. So, what’s next?

Yes, compared to the conservative world of computers … here is where the action is!