Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

You hear this fairly often these days from people who track mobile phone usage: "mobile phone consumers don't know or care what operating system their phone runs." It comes up in conversations where someone is fretting about the fact that Handset Company X has dropped System Y or started selling phones with System Z. It also comes up in conversations where people (often developers) are struggling with the fact that most people who buy smartphones never bother to install any 3rd party software on them.

Simon Judge at Mobile Phone Development points to a new survey by Compete Inc. concludes that people are a lot more concerned about the operating system when shopping for a phone than I would have thought. People apparently rate the OS as more important than the camera, email capabilities, bluetooth, or the music player.



I agree with Simon that the term "operating system" here should probably be interpreted as referring more to the UI than the actual OS, i.e. "Nokia S60" or "UIQ" is probably what people mean, not "Symbian" which doesn't have it's own UI. This doesn't necessarily mean that the masses are starting to "get" the fact that many of the phones they buy are mobile computers or that large numbers of them plan to start using them as such (note that email capability isn't high on the list yet). But Compete seems to think that ease of installing and using software is part of it:

As consumers spend more time navigating menus and installing content and programs on their mobile phones, they have become more aware of the role the OS plays in their handset experience....

Over 40% of those who ranked the OS as important said that providing OS choice would significantly increase their usage of data services. Additionally, 20% of this group said they would be willing to switch carriers for the Treo 700, currently only available from Verizon with Windows Mobile OS.

However you want to interpret this, the fact that consumers say they will spend more money for a phone with a particular OS is a step toward's Palm's motto: the future of computing is mobile computing.