“The Open Phone”….

For as long as I can remember in India, the market for assembled PCs has been thriving. To me there were two primary reasons for this - The 1st being of course “Cost” as it was always cheaper to assemble a PC from scratch rather than buying a rig from one of the PC manufactures like Acer, HP, Dell, Lenovo etc which would cost you a fortune and the 2nd being “Choice” as I could build the fastest machine ever with my choice of operating system running on it.

During my school and college days I still remember the trepidation of having to wake up one day and find out that a buddy of mine built even a faster machine than I had at the time. As a “Power User” I could do the whole format...install…re-format..re-install.. between Linux and Windows on my rig  without the fear of warranty issues. To come to think of it the modular design of the PC’s made it extremely easy to swap in/out parts and change OS’es as I wanted which made the whole deal of assembled PCs even more lucrative. Then came the VM’s which was almost a dream come true for any Windows user who wanted to SSH to a Linux box but couldn’t as he/she run windows.

This market has remained lucrative and affluent since it has been offering the flexibility to its customers to install and run their choice of operating systems on the hardware they wanted.

Now my epiphany moment...!! Let’s say if we partially extend the above same concept to allow a mobile phone user the freedom of choice to run any OS i.e. an iOS or Android on his/her choice of handset.!! What then??? In my mind the concept of a “An Open Phone” will open up a deluge of opportunities waiting to be seized.

So, what’s the current problem?

Some users like the iOS but not the iPhone where as some people like the One+ handset but not the Oxygen OS that comes along.

My Solution?

The handsets from the manufactures are shipped without a binding OS. A basic OS is loaded that allows the user to connect to an app store, download their choice of OS i.e. iOS, Android or any other one and presto!!

The Opportunity.

I see this as a win-win for all. Say if a One+ handset user installs and runs iOS on his phone, #Apple adds him as a customer for all its service offerings where as One+ still services the device from a hardware perspective. This way companies retain the customer.  The same logic goes for an iPhone handset user who doesn’t like the restrictions of the iOS, can install any flavor of Android that he/she likes. That way Apple still makes money selling the hardware and the Android supplier cashes in on the services it can offer.

Conclusion.

The “Open Phone” opportunity will allow mobile hardware and operating system manufacturing companies to increase their market share and bring in new customer segments. The interoperability will open up new opportunities for the developer community and we can see a whole range of start-ups building operating systems for phones. Who knows maybe a completely new open source OS format might also just spring up…!!

Time to think exponential...