We live in the best of times and in the worst of times. Thanks to Apple and Google and a host of other great companies we live in the best of times, and I for one relish these times. Apple does have everyone worried about what’s next with the iPhone and while there is little that leaks from the famously secretive company, there is much speculation around the GPhone. One strand of speculation has handset manufacturers worried with their device-centric thinking whether Google actually will design and manufacture a phone? Another strand of speculation comes from telecom operators with their network-centric thinking which has them wonder whether they will be able to control their networks and keep hoping that they can make money off mobile phone advertising? And of course there is the third strand of speculation that suggests that Google is up to creating a linux-based open software that will disrupt the Windows operating system for mobile devices from Microsoft.
These are the best of times because Google has got everyone worried. By some innovation theorists, this is all about disrupting innovations, by another it is about challenging the orthodoxy and still to others it is about beating competitors and making incumbents irrelevant.
In my opinion, it could be all of the above, and it really does not matter what it is. I say we miss the key point altogether. This is why we are also in the worst of times. By now, we should know that it is neither about handsets nor about the operating systems nor about mobile advertising on the small screen. It is about the consumer.
This has me worried because I just finished reading an article in the New York Times that describes the competitive dynamics around the GPhone. I counted the number of times the consumer was mentioned. The answer is just twice, as in: if the GPhone takes off…. suggesting that every incumbent will be in trouble and everyone has to loose. There was just one mention of the word: customer, in reference to: … the relationships with telecom network and cable operators. What customer relationship I might ask?
The analysis of Google’s ambition with the GPhone is very simple if one looks at it from the outside-in perspective and demand perspective. In my book: Hidden in Plain Sight, I suggest that these incumbents can not see the biggest opportunities in plain sight because they look at everything with the biases of their own products, handsets, software and network investments.
If you look at it from the demand perspective and what the GPhone will do for consumers, we all should rejoice. If only Google succeeds, it will link the very insular world of telecom to our rich PC-centric and internet-centric world. It will help consumers do what we already do on our PCs also on mobile devices and more. Consumers win. Incumbents will loose one thing: control. But if they think and act from the outside-in, they will ultimate benefit. They will benefit from a better customer value proposition, not just from control of access to the network. They will benefit from an acceptable model of advertising, not the variety the telecoms are thinking of right now. That model has not worked until today and so it will not work in the future. What is most powerful, Google with its hefty market valuation at a stock price of now over $600 can even lead and entire transformative experience of how we communicate much like the Apple did with the iPod and transformed the way we manage our music, our videos, our photos and potentially our digital life in the future.
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