Off topic: When did early adopters change from being technologists to being idiots?

Well, I have yet to see the iPhone apps that help forming the kind of closed communities between iPhone users he describes. But what I've seen is the often mentioned ease of use the iPhone brought to a mass audience. An old Mac slogan was "the computer for the rest of us", the iPhone became kind of the "smartphone for the rest of us."
I agree with gerbick that the iPhone "owns" most of the Mindshare right now. But that doesn't have to stay that way and the mobile landscape is still very heterogeneous and it doesn't really look like there is the one mobile killer app on the horizon that will push one device to the top. That's what makes this field so interesting to me

It's funny to me every time I see anyone declare a solution to be the "end all, be all" for any given opportunity. Just as it becomes status quo, something just as novel comes along and overturns the Apple cart.

And that's what makes most of these "Gardner magic quadrant" thingies moot, right ? On the other hand, I think one of the bigger difficulties for Maemo going forward to attract a larger audience is how to communicate its specific advantages apart from eye candy and cool hardware. Neal Stephenson's essay In the beginning was the command line mentions the acceptance problems the Linux community had or still has as many might say.

Probably the thing that created the most dissonance with me regarding his views was this statement:

"And third, I believe Gartner is underestimating consumer "choice paralysis" that will result from confusion in the Android marketplace.
Yes, Android is appealing, powerful and will gain a great many users. But the mass market will be relatively confused by the incredible number of form factors and options in the Android marketplace. Confusion breeds paralysis, and this will harm acceptance of Android phones. "

While I realize that this is not the forum to talk about Android, this comment just strikes me as way off base. So, consumers don't like to have a choice in styles, and we aren't adept enough to choose the best options for ourselves?!!

IMHO consumers will move to where their needs and wants are fulfilled unless additional boundaries (ie. wireless carriers) create increased cost considerations. People love choices...we like to have the cool new thing. If we all carried an iphone it wouldn't be cool anymore.

Something to think about for Maemo...one day the lack of choice in mobile handsets may spell the same situation as the iphone. The key factor in my mind is whether Maemo will be able to assimilate itself into the greater Linux juggernaut and tap into all the open source supporters. I hope to be apart of making that happen.

It has been proven in psychology and in marketing the greater choices a user has the more problematic it is for decision making. Until something negative comes along and forces them to choose (e.g. a kid that is in front of the candy rack that has many choices will be immobilized because they can't choose one out of all their favorites. Yet tell them you will leave in 5 minutes and if they haven't chosen by then they'll choose one). But that doesn't mean that they don't like choice.

And yes, I fear Maemo has the same fate as the iPhone in the long run. That it will be in its own little marketshare world while an OS like Android that can run on nearly everything dominates the market (like Windows does now).

The trouble for any fashion item is that the more popular it becomes the less the fashion concious will want it

Mike C

Two comments.

Network Effect - As has been pointed out, any reasonably smartphone can access Facebook or Twitter or whatever. You don't need an iPhone or an N900 to do that. But the social aspect of the network effect is not connecting through other apps but connecting directly. An example would be seeing how many of your friends are within a kilometer of your current location and linking them all together in an ad hoc network to discuss where to meet for drinks. That's not to say all the apps exist now. But the value of the apps are linked to the number of users and thus if the iPhone and the N900 both released a similar networking app in two months, the iPhone app would be significantly more valuable than the N900 app because of the potential user base.

Choice Paralysis and Confusion - This should not be underestimated. The mass market will gravitate towards easily understandable and easily used solutions that are good enough and away from more complicated solutions that are better. A confused market segment will lose customers to a less confused market segment. Unfortunately, Android may have made the wrong decision in allowing carrier customization. It leads consumers to feel that there are multiple Androids and that confusion will drive some consumers away. Similarly, the confusion between the mobile Linux based OSs - Android, Maemo, Moblin, and probably et cetera, will drive some consumers away. The mass market likes safe products and they like products that other people own because it validates their buying decision.

Were I Nokia's marketing department and I wanted to sell to more than maemo.org, I would not mention Maemo anywhere and I would mention Linux even less. It's enough to claim the N900 runs the world's most advanced operating system allowing you to control your phone rather than your phone controlling you.

Very true. But, who knows, maybe Mer will take off.

But seriously, I hope step 5 includes a more open approach to Maemo, I mean all the way.

i think many third party app suppliers will hedge their bets, and supply apps on different platforms.

especially if one can start using the same tools to develop for multiple platforms (see Qt and similar).

the iphone is a very closed ecosystem in that regard, objective-c, dev tools that only run on mac, and possibly more.

as for grabbing the attention of bloggers and journalists? i suspect at least the latter have always had a hotline to apple, simply by apple being a near "must have" in any kind of media office. the former, not so sure, but blogging still seems to be a very US phenomena.

yep, there i said it, i cant shake the suspicion that this is yet another case of "USA beer-goggles".

while i cant show that this is a trend overall, one norwegian mobile news page still showed symbian being the lead mobile os used to visit their pages, even tho they have been hammering the iphone news hard, and one can get iphone on multiple carriers.

btw, have people checked out http://gs.statcounter.com/?

kinda fun watching the graphs, as while there was a point back around the start of the year where iphone had more surfing activity worldwide then opera, now opera is on top again, and nokia is heading to overtake iphone.

whats even more interesting is that only north america and europe shows iphone on top, while the rest shows opera or nokia, with oceania being the oddball with blackberry...

all in all, i think one may have to assume the long view here. the iphone may have gotten some fresh blod into the phone market, and is currently the bell of the ball, but i do wonder about the long run as right now its a issue of "any color as long as its black"...