Jeff Random

OpenMoko is a GNU / Linux based open software development platform. Developers have full access to OpenMoko source and they can tailor their implementations to underlying hardware platforms. -openmoko

Back in an old post about Mobile music & DRM I suggested that an open platform handset was a paradigm busting market opportunity.

OpenMoco seems to have gone there especially in their philosophy:

For the core team pushing this project, an open phone is not really even a product. It’s the very embodiment of their vision of technology. They absolutely, passionately, believe that something as fundamental to our lives as the mobile phone must be opened.

It seems like carrier-hopping, mesh-networking, flipt to SIP, P2P mobile apps that allow users persistent data access through dissemination networking are only a hop skip and a jump away. Especially the way the rate of change (delta) is increasing visions of ubiquitous computing loom large.

In the near term anything that helps with blurring the lines between carrier, ISP, peer, wifi access point, voice, VOIP, IM, and all of the other roles/participants in a networked conversation is welcome.

Of course all of this open opportunity means that it’s more important than every to focus on the metatheory. Whether you call them corporate constitutions or philosophy, more and more the purpose/goals of a company/platform/meme are as important if not more important than their current technological capabilities.

corporate constitutions based on theories of stakeholder justice {…} do what few strategic heuristics and frameworks are capable of in a world of growing hypercompetition, hyperimitation, and discontinuity: they unerringly guide decision makers towards defensible sources of value from which to craft revolutionary strategies. But more importantly, they define and shape purpose – which is, and always has been, the only mechanism for going beyond market advantage. – Umair Haque

It’s great to see what looks like a very serious player entering the market with a commitment FOSS type philosphies.

Viva La Revolucion!

Surj Patel is leading an open Linux mobile development effort. This could be the start of the Open Platform Handset that I have been hoping will develop.

via i-mode Business Strategy: Yahoo to launch it’s own billing solution for mobile content in Japan. It means they can now provide full access, content and billing to end users independently from carriers

Would you like porn with that?

Mobile phone retailers in China are offering free adult video clips as a value add for handset purchasers. – Link

Originally from Smart Mobs at August 19, 2005, 03:55

For a few years now, my social circle has used the expression:

“If you don’t have a phone you aren’t a person”

Without the flexibility that near instant communication brings you need to block out specific times & ensuring nothing changes en route for every meeting. This raises the ‘cost’ of making plans to an unacceptable level.

“Why DRM Will Kill Mobile Music – Now, how this all affects mobile is that there will be a huge tide of MP3 players from a number of different vendors coming into the market, in the form of music-enabled phones. So what’s going to happen when you’ve got all these different phones being billed by carriers as iPod killers or replacements and people come to find out their music won’t play on them, or they can only listen to music that’s been bought from one specific store or service? They’re going to get pissed off, that’s what’s going to happen. They won’t buy music that’s tied to a specific device or has onerous limitations on what they can do with it — which will probably rule out any carrier’s download store from being a success. Regardless of how the record labels see things, people want to own their music, and owning music means being able to do with it what you like, and play it on whatever device you want. This means that vendors that focus on syncing, rather than playing along with carriers’ dowload shop dreams, will be the winners. Few operators understand this, though, and their stranglehold on the retail channel means it’s going to be hard for manufacturers to succeed.”

Sounds like another market opportunity for a paradigm buster – The open platform handset.

Ship it with the preloaded with emulators for the basic/free phone for all of the major carriers & they become unable to stop it.

Personalized content like ringtones, wallpaper etc become free/easy just like sounds/wallpapers for your PC today. Music unencumbered by DRM is just an upload away.

Users who want music, videos, games & data on their mobile will go where they get the best value. Super users become leading edge volunteer developers. Third party applications & innovations enable leading edge distributed R&D at little cost.

See where I’m going with this?