Despite being overcast, it was unusually bright last Friday at 5:45 a.m. I should say that my outlook was also bright. Third in line outside the Sprint store, I peered through the glass, anxiously waiting for Xanadu to open its doors. The HTC EVO 4G was just within reach.
Excited customers passed the time by punching the buttons on our familiar relics. However, the ephemeron of the moment was not lost on me, as whispers of the iPhone 4 were already circulating (and would officially be announced by Steve Jobs at WWDC three days later).
On the surface, it’s the same old story: NEW, SEXY PHONE RELEASED – BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO GET IT! But there’s more going on here because this phone has the potential to change the smartphone market. The HTC EVO 4G is the first 4G phone that’s commercially available, although Sprint is currently rolling this network out to major cities throughout 2010. While Boston will still have to wait a month or two for the phone, a 400 percent increase in download speeds awaits. Until then, you’re paying a $10 premium per month to access a network that isn’t available yet.
The real story, however, is the emergence of Android, which will continue to gain popularity with the arrival of the EVO. It’s already been announced that more smartphones ran Android than the iPhone OS during Q1 2010.
So what’s the big deal with Android? If you’re unashamedly nestled in the throes of geekdom, or even just a “wannabe-geek” like me, a lot more freedom over your device awaits. If Android develops a faster version of their OS, you can install it on the phone yourself, instead of waiting impatiently for the carrier to provide an update.
It’s this kind of flexibility that piques my curiosity in a similar way that Web 2.0 brought a greater degree of personalization and user-centered design. This ability to freely personalize your phone’s operating system might well represent the “Smartphone 2.0” era entering the mainstream. Android’s rise, combined with the super-slick design of the EVO, was just the alluring combination that prompted me to toss my old phone into the technological dust pile.
I’m not a developer. There are giant communities of “Fandroids” much more devout than myself and with a greater wealth of technical knowledge. Including my fellow Verbatim bloggers, these Fandroids could all write much more eloquently about the technical advantages of Android over the iPhone OS and Symbian, the world’s most popular smartphone operating system.
So while this gadget-head will continue to be placated by the fancy, new-fangled whizz-bang apps and widgets on my EVO, there inevitably will be a time where I’ll want to shift from the pure aesthetics of the phone and into a new, functional direction. And while I don’t know where that journey will lead, I have the confidence to transition when the time is right and take the path less traveled. And that, according to the wise Robert Frost, made all the difference.
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I read this and immediately thought, “Runners on second still try to steal the catcher’s signals.” That’s not 100% analogous, but it’s a good start. And sports and games serve as a useful analogy in and of themselves: More often than not, the person who acts last often has an advantage, as they get to plan their own strategy based on the actions of their opponent. That’s ignoring any assumptions about the time involved, of course – in football, you wouldn’t elect to kick the ball if you won the coin flip in overtime.
There is tremendous value in understanding what your opponent is doing. Unlike the sports and games analogy, though, in a business context, you’re not limited to a single opponent, and spending time to evaluate how to best proceed can be costly.
Consider risk/reward propositions. The risk part is the cost associated with being wrong; the reward part is comprised of the gain associated with being right. The more I understand the hows and whys of what my competitor is doing, the better I can devise an approach that effectively counters it. While I can’t quantify it, I’m guessing these gains more than outweigh the losses of plodding ahead without knowledge of what my competitors do. I’m taking the insider info virtually all the time.
Of course, all this is assuming that knowledge is absolutely legitimate. If there’s even a small chance of deception, then the choice is much more interesting – but that’s a topic for another blog post.
Bill, could not agree with you more. There is a mystique to not knowing that pushes you to wanting to stay ahead. While I’m sure it would be nice to have insight into their plans, I’d much rather have a wild imagination and plan for the worse.
Also, the pragmatist in me wonders if I were to stumble across this information, is it real or a set up? I say know who you are, what your values are, and build your strategy with that in mind instead of chasing your tail.