July 3, 2006
A New Platform for Social Computing: Cell Phones
Cellular carriers are allowing their customers to share software, services, and content from independent companies. Finally. Technology Review reports.
... "The paucity of third-party software and services for cell phones to date stems from the unique structure of the wireless industry in the United States. Unlike their European counterparts, U.S. carriers have long dictated which phones customers can use and what software can run on them.
As a result, most of the software and content available to U.S. cellular subscribers has come directly from the carriers, who have determined not only what's visible to users on their phones' main menus, or "decks," but also how consumer will pay for the content they choose, such as TV clips. This "walled garden" concept harkens back to the closed dial-up computer networks of yesteryear, such as AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy.
Over the last year, though, Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, and other carriers have begun to make their decks -- and, perhaps even more important, their billing systems -- accessible to outside companies. The result: just as the explosion in online services began with the emergence of the nonproprietary World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, a new generation of startups is giving cellular subscribers more ways to use their phones' computing capabilities." Read on
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2006/07/012828.htm