I find myself attracted to the Windows Phone, even though I have no
reason to buy one. I am a digital creative, after all. But saying that
makes me think of the recent Samsung Galaxy S II commercial parodying Apple
loyalists camped out, Occupation style, in front of an Apple store
waiting for the next iPhone. One bearded hipster disdains the sleek
Samsung phone a passerby is handling and says, “I can never get a
Samsung. I’m creative,” to which his buddy next to him retorts, “Dude,
you’re a barista!”
The point is that the iPhone have been around for less
than five years and already we feel locked in. So it’s kind of
refreshing that Microsoft and Nokia
have teamed up to make something new. The emergence of another viable
platform also points to the maturing of the market which will lead to
more innovation, better phones and lower prices.
Yesterday at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Jo Harlow, the head of smart devices at Nokia, showed off two new models of the Lumia line that she announced just a year ago. Harlow told The New York Times,
“I remember standing on that stage and saying that I would deliver one
device by the end of the year, [and thought to herself] now I really
have to do it.” That Microsoft and Nokia collaborated so well and so
quickly is a great sign for both companies, as I commented on the first
Lumia release four months ago—just
eight months after the initial announcement. Here now are four reasons
that, as tech watchers, we should root for the success of the Windows
Phone:
1. Everybody Loves an Underdog
Now that the web browser (and even the mobile app) has displaced the
Windows desktop as the dominant computer interface, Microsoft no longer
feels like a monopolistic bully. Both Microsoft and Nokia have fallen
from the top of their sectors to the second tier. But their humility
seems to be engendering better products. Look at the speedy Windows OnLive Desktop Plus for the iPad to see how they are playing quite nicely with others. Who would have ever thought of Microsoft as sociable, as endearing?
2. Think Different
But the point is that Apple no longer holds the alternative ground,
previous ad campaigns not withstanding. And the Windows Phone OS is
genuinely different: it’s larger touch targets make it much more
fat-finger proof than iOS or Android and the navigational elements pull
live content feeds instead of just being static icons. It really feels
like something that was conceived within the last year or two using the
current best practices for mobile design. It shares a kind of sculptural
sensibility with the recent best-selling iOS to-do list app Clear that I wrote about last week.
3. Make Room for Another
As the smartphone category matures the tendency of flow systems would
suggest that one or at the most two more dominant platforms could
emerge before the field would become too fragmented to be efficient. A
resurgent Blackberry, perhaps? Not that likely. More plausible would be
an entry from Asia, given the size of the Chinese market. Look for moves
from China with Alibaba’s Aliyun OS or from Korea with Samsung’s Bada OS (which last month merged with Intel’s Tizen open source project).
4. The Rule of Four
In fact, when you look at all the world’s river basins you
find somewhere between 3 and 5 main tributaries—mostly four. So it’s not
much of a leap (from one “lively” inanimate system to another) to
suppose that the same dynamics may apply in the changing flow of
technological innovation. For more on the patterns of design in systems
of all kinds, see Design in Nature by Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane, and the first part of my forthcoming interview with Professor Bejan, The Constructal Sessions, Part I: Introduction.
I asked Bejan to corroborate my hunch on this and he said, “Yes, a
mature technology will sweep the territory better, more completely and
farther with more than one design leading the spreading flow.” So that’s
what we have here with the emergence of the Windows Phone—the diversity
of successful designs that leads to greater and greater market
penetration for the category as a whole. I can’t wait to see who’s next.
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