[FoRK] More iPhone analysis

[Luis Villa]

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 4:16 PM, Ian Andrew Bell <hello at ianbell.com> wrote:
>
>  On 8-Mar-08, at 4:44 AM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>  > On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:17 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
>  >
>  >> Also, no VoIP apps or anything else which threatens their own product
>  >> line.  Apple has to approve of your business purpose, just like the
>  >> phone companies.
>  >
>  > Small correction, VoIP over wi-fi is apparently fine;  just no VoIP
>  > over the WAN.
>
>  .. which is about as useful as, oh, public WiFi.  But of course if you
>  have to keep the VoIP app in the foreground in order to receive any
>  incoming calls, the whole rest of your handset is utterly useless.
>
>  I think this does not bode well for things like Android, even.  The
>  mid-term analysis is that the Mobile OS is NOT going to open up
>  anytime soon.  I feel sorry for anyone hoping to monetize exclusively
>  in the mobile space for the next 2-3 years.  If you can't have
>  background apps then you can't have keep alives and push-style
>  signalling... effectively mobile phones are about as capable as a web
>  browser, which is to say not very.

But this isn't an inherent shortcoming of mobile OSes; just a
design/UI choice that Apple has chosen to enforce. (gmail runs in the
background on my blackberry, for example.)

>  Ultimately this is supposed to be self-correcting, but for the
>  collusion which has existed in the telecom industry for many decades
>  -- now extending to the vertical handset and application providers who
>  are trying to advance the ball.  It is a model that can only change
>  with the introduction of new spectrum owned by an outsider whose prime
>  interest is disrupting the marketplace.

Don't hold your breath on that one.

Luis