by 江郎蔡

...to me but probably nobody else;

There's an article over at SF Gate about how Steve Jobs has "out-Japanned Japan". It talks about how Steve Jobs has always been fascinated with Sony in his youth and devoted most of his time trying to emulate the same greatness he saw in the company as he grew up. In short, the vast majority of things at CES which is by far one of the largest (if not the largest) technology show on this planet had something to do with Apple and its mobile devices - either someone taking an iPhone out of their pocket or software boasting its iOS compatibility. I love the stuff but I don't bang on about it here all day for reasons I've already mentioned - I just think Apple stuff is less shit than anyone else's at the moment.

The article goes on to say that Sony lost out because it lost its "sense of ma" -- its "understanding of what it shouldn't do, even if it could". An elusive term, but because Apple are very focused and they choose not to do a lot of things, there are a lot of companies that try too hard to be Apple. It might be flattering but it's wrong and painful for them. Apple doesn't just sell a brand, it sells a platform and lately they've only been calling themselves a 'mobile device company'. Steve Jobs may well retire now if he wants - they won, although it'll always sound like a perpetual struggle.

Nokia finally got that and we all had a laugh when they became the underdog because they weren't Apple. Maybe they wanted to be for a while but at last there's some vague sense of purpose: The Ovi store and the fact that they're thinking of adopting Android or Windows 7! Which sort of means WebOS is out of the question and HP won't let them. Nokia finally grasped the fact that if you don't have a platform to sell, you might not fare well in 2011. What they've also (hopefully) grasped is that they should stick to phones for now as they recover - because any tablets past the Apple, Blackberry and Galaxy ones don't solve any particular problem.

Just like most story plot theories say: in order to have a narrative, you need to have a problem. No problem, no moneyz out of making something that people won't use (Sony's ma problem). The rest of the world has plenty of problems! And to these problems the solution comes as a phone that is standardized, network neutral and works with whatever service there is available - most people don't go into a shop and choose a phone based on what contract will get them an iPhone the cheapest. That's why the Nokia Xpress Music and C3 phones are so popular: they're 90% of your iPhone or Android but for only 10-20% of their price. And in pink! This idea of contracts also assumes a certain willingness to pay for data plans and I find it hard to believe that everyone on this planet (or even in this country) will want to add some extra £300 a year on their bills so they can get on twitter from the train. People are cheap. Or poor. Or both sometimes.Or don't see the point in it anyway, I think at some point even I'll reach saturation and be willing to pay someone to stay away from the internet.

Hopefully people will come back to their senses this year - competition's great, please bring it on, don't just disappear off the map like that.