The mobile clone wars: fighting for a better phone experience

Rodney Gedda

Rodney Gedda is the former deputy editor of CIO and former editor of Techworld.

Imagine a mobile phone market where you could pick and choose which operating system to run on a device and the applications to go with it. Welcome to new world of mobile clones where, like PCs two decades ago, are open to customisation and Google's Android is leading the change. A few years ago I wrote a column in Computerworld about how Windows Mobile was set to take over the mobile computing experience and for good reason. At the time Microsoft had a clear vision for improving the user experience from a plain old mobile phone to what it's most familiar with - the PC.

That's all well and good - if you are Microsoft. Every phone running Windows Mobile just as every PC runs a Windows desktop? Perfect. This may have been possible if mobiles themselves remained closed, proprietary devices. But today's mobile industry is similar to the early PC industry - a few big players dominate the industry with a number of proprietary operating systems.

But early closed PCs didn't last long in the aftermath of the PC clone wars. Cheap Intel and AMD-based PCs running pirated copies of Windows and Linux opened up the PC for the benefit of all.

In the phone market that's all changing at mobile industry speed. The commoditisation of mobile devices combined with free and open source operating systems like Android is set to ignite competition in this innovation-less industry.

Sure the iPhone scored first points in the battle against Windows Mobile (and caught Symbian vendors napping), but like Apple PCs, the iPhone will have it's work cut out competing with a barrage of devices from multiple vendors that provide most of its functionality at a lower cost.

Even the Sydney Morning Herald recently reported about a local tech company planning to import Android-based smartphones running on a generic touch-screen mobile device.

So what does more open "clone" mobiles mean for business? Well if deploying and developing mobile applications will help streamline business processes then why not treat the mobile device like a modern computer with a "developer friendly" operating system. And in the case of Android the platform is open so you shouldn't need to jump through restrictive mobile contracts and other hoops to make it happen. The device is like any other client on an IP network.

The clone mobile phone is no longer a dumb and difficult device.

What was the title of the Computerworld column? Dial 1 for competition - we can thank the clones wars for that.