So early morning today surfing through the tech updates, I came across two interesting things:

• The share of the Windows phone in the market has grown by 52% with the introduction of Windows Phone 8.
• There seems to be a growing consensus amongst people who matter and influence the industry that Nokia should consider introducing Android phones.

For the former, I would say that this success is not for Windows phone themselves, but can also be attributed to Nokia, as being privileged partners of Microsoft they have built and designed phones which are beautiful really in every detail. Other manufacturers, mainly HTC and Samsung haven’t made much progress, Samsung in particular. Samsung is in fact trying to stall Windows 8, for its own sale largely depends on the success of Android. Consider the factors, two years ago nobody even knew about Android, and Samsung’s own BADA OS had foreseeably crashed which coincided with its launch. Most people at that point considered Samsung phones in the same line today as to what the masses count the Chinese Alternative. But with Android, Samsung emerged victorious, for the first time their sloppy engineering team could concentrate only on the UI and some minor kernel tweaking, instead of building a flawed OS ground up.

Secondly, and more importantly, what is even more fascinating is the Samsung’s product cycle which also functions as a marketing strategy.

• Build a product.
• Package it with either the latest, or one generation older Android OS and make it upgradeable to the latest. (Can’t actually blame them for the latter as by the time these phones hit the market they sometimes lag behind because Google got ahead of them)
• Now to stop code fragmentation as mandated and regulated by Google, mind you this exercise is not voluntary; Samsung has to deliver upgrades for 18 months. Often these updates are slow in coming, and by the time these updates come in; the update is in itself obsolete. And Google is still getting further and further in the race.
• Announce a new product with almost the same specification, and the cycle repeats.

The inherent flaw in this cycle, is that by announcing new designs by the end of every month from pocket standard issues to the giant slates which are supposed to be portable phones but I really wonder how will they will ever fit into my pockets, the market is flooded by so many phones, that a user feels he has the power of choice. But what an average user fails to realise is that there is no standardisation of hardware designs and with it the cost margins. Talking to a friend recently who was searching for a phone, the most difficult task was narrowing down the choices, because they all looked the same. The reviews are no help either. For the uninitiated, they can be the worst nightmare. As the experience of the Android OS is different with every manufacturer and depends on the kind of hardware it is packed with. This in turn has flooded the market with locally manufactured units, which in majority are substandard and lacking even in the minimum hardware, and there aren’t any hard specifications for the hardware. The cheap phones are laggy and sometimes buggy to the point where the camera doesn’t work, the screen is unresponsive etc. And when it comes to Samsung, the occasional trickle of updates stop because by the time the support team got together to deliver the updates for every handset, the 18 months were up.

Consider the case of Windows Phone. Microsoft laid down hard specifications with regards to minimum hardware. This not only ensures that the Windows experience stays constant irrespective of the manufacturer and that updates are compatible throughout but in turn also solves the problem of code fragmentation. Problem solved. A seemingly huge problem which should never have existed in the first place has been solved just like that.

I have rambled on and on. My point being, that instead of building more phones and distributing resources to small teams, maybe manufacturers should start concentrating their resources and make phones for a price band- High end exciting, high end partially exciting, high-mid end, mid end, and low end. This strategy seems to be working in the case of Nokia Lumia (920, 820, 720, 620, 520), now if you re-read the previous sentence again, and it makes more sense. The result of this strategy would be that existing phones would be supported for a longer time, vastly reduce the cost of designing and producing new phones & setting up exclusive support teams for discrete models. However following this strategy is very hard for Android manufacturers as it will lead to admission of liability, when clearly their market relies on the hype of a model refresh every 6 months.

For those who crave stability there’s always Apple and Microsoft to the rescue.

This is now I come to the second point, if Nokia were to ever consider Android. Against the general opinion, I believe it will fail.

 

Disclaimer: I have bashed Samsung long enough, and I admit no liability. If you feel offended, or your business has been affected by this post, I feel honoured and complimented. This post is not open to debate. Any legal action is subject to my personal jurisdiction only, and in that case you lose the motion, and hence the trial.