The mobile phone industry intrigues me a great deal, at least in America. In most countries around the world you can choose any phone you want from any phone manufacturer you want. Go ahead, purchase several Nokia phones in a row. Or never get stuck with a Kyocera ever again.
In America, we are stuck with limited choice. Wait, limited choice in America? The home of the free? American cellular carriers are a stubborn bunch that are holding this country back in the mobile market.
Imagine this: You need a new cell phone. Your old phone is really scratched up, glitching constantly and has a cracked screen. You walk into a shop that sells mobile phones and looks for one that fits your needs. You head on home and pop in your SIM card(the identity chip that houses your cell phone number and even contacts in the mobile world) and start using your new phone immediately. No upgrading, no jumping through contract loop holes, nothing.
Well, we can’t do that here. You can, but you have to know where to look to buy an unlocked GSM phone. GSM is just the type of phone, essentially it means it takes SIM cards and there’s a lot about frequencies and such things, but oh well. Two of the Big Four cellular carriers in America use SIM cards: T-Mobile and AT&T. Go import a phone from Europe and pop in your SIM card and presto a working cell phone that’s probably going to be better than the stuff they give you.
The other two, Sprint and Verizon, use an older technology that doesn’t involve SIM cards. Why? I don’t know. Probably to hamstring you into coming to them to upgrade and whatnot.
I’m hoping that somehow… someway… maybe Google’s ‘Android’ and the Open Handset Alliance (Google is creating a new platform for mobile phones with a bunch of the big mobile phone companies to do stuff you can do on your computer) can change things.
We need to move and follow Europe. I want choice when I buy a new mobile phone. I don’t want to pick between a couple phones that aren’t that great. If I want the new Samsung Juke and I’m an AT&T or T-Mobile customer then damnit I want the Samsung Juke, not some alternative.
We need to open up. I know it makes them more money to limit our choices and sometimes forces people to switch carriers (hello iPhone, how ya doin’?), but we need it. I saw this example in the newspaper a couple days ago, but imagine if you bought a computer and found out you could only use Comcast as your Internet Service Provider. Or you bought a laptop and you can only use NetZero. How many people would be overwhelmed with anger? What if you bought a brand new spankin’ HDTV and found you can only have Dish Network programming and nothing else? No Comcast, no DirecTV, just Dish?
But of course none of this will change soon. The companies have started to do something about it (Open Handset Alliance), but so do the consumers. We want choice. Not limited choice. Freedom would be the keyword here, mobile freedom.
And just for kicks, I’ll rank the mobile phone manufacturers.
1. Samsung – They continually pack a lot of features into their slim phones and their built quality isn’t too bad either, only thing is their phones carry hefty price tags a lot of the time.
2. Nokia – The world’s leader in mobile phones is that because of their consistency. They rarely strike out big with a phone and always have good balance between affordable phones and higher end beasts that would benefit most people. Too bad about the N-Gage though.
3. LG – Life’s always Good with LG, they crank out some great phones but they normally go unnoticed and don’t make as much noise as some of the other companies. Although it’s probably a good thing their phones do all the talking (LG Chocolate comes to mind, easily one of the more popular phones in America now). Hopefully they can ride the momentum of the LG and keep it going with future mobiles.
4. Sony Ericsson – They seem to love their tiny brick phones that either draw on two of Sony’s key products: Walkman and Cybershot. They have some of the better camera phones and music phones out there. Their interfaces aren’t the best though and their phone-PC connectivity software can sometimes be confusing however.
5. Motorola – All I have to say is the over-hyped Razr has carried them so far. Their interfaces aren’t the best and they’ve replicated that thing to many times in other forms (Rizr, Slzr, whatevzr else that ends in zr) and they just aren’t that great.
