Differentiation in the age of commodity smartphones? P1

I'm a fan of Android as a mobile operating system from both user and developer perspectives. I'm less enamoured of Google's handling of the Android Market but that's another issue.

Ever since I heard about Android and even more so having worked with companies in the Android ecosystem I've been wondering, "How will manufacturers differentiate in the age of commodity smartphones?".

Software licensing costs used to make up a hefty proportion of the cost a mobile phone. These days I could fly out to Taiwan or China and specify a set of mobile components and have the hardware ready in short order. Getting the software on to the device (depending on hardware) could also be done pretty quickly. If I can do that what about the numerous OEM manufacturers with access to more resources than myself?

What happens when anybody can release smartphones as capable as the iPhone (from a hardware perspective) in short order and as capable as the (then) current Android or Symbian release?

Exciting times and there's already blood in the water.

The deluge of Android devices predicted for the first half of 2009 has failed to materialise but the second half of the years looks like we could see between 3 and 7 devices from multiple manufacturers. With the software barrier down manufacturers like Kogan, Yuhua and Huawei are looking are to enter the market with their own brand's rather than just manufacturing devices for the big boys. More established brands like Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson also have devices in the pipeline for this year along with the previously ,mentioned new entrants and others, who are new to the phone industry like Archos and Acer.

Faced with this kind of choice, why do I buy a Samsung, Motorola or SonyEricsson, the name?



Seeing Samsung's first Android device (the i7500, admittedly with incomplete software) I assumed that Samsung was spending all this time modifying Android, adding its (reasonably) well regarded custom TouchWiz UI and modifying the media player (at the very least) to fit in with existing design language and branding.

Motorola has hired in excess of 300 Android engineers, I wonder if Sony Ericsson, Samsung and the rest are really committing or just dipping their toes in. Its arguable that Motorola needs this more than anybody, apart from maybe SonyEricsson.

I'd be interested to know what other people think about this. I've heard that Android is not a particularly easy OS for the phone manufacturers to work with. Google's inexperience in the market apparently shows in the difficulty involved in creating a range of superficially different looking phones quickly and easily. The UI framework does not support easy skinning or other modifications without making quite involved mods. I wonder if Google have focused their attention on application developers and failed to provide a smooth enough path for the handset manufacturers.

Symbian will take until well into next year to be fully Open Source, has Google blown its head start? Unlikely, though there look to be some interesting gaps in the tooling for operators that a smart startup could exploit if they can move quickly its worth keeping in mind that, apart from handling an open source operating system, the Nokia/Symbian juggernaut has done this many times before.