Mobile Web: So Close Yet So Far
ON the surface, the mobile Web is a happening place. There's the iPhone in all its glory. More than 30 companies have signed up for the Open Handset Alliance from Google, which aims to bring the wide-open development environment of the Internet to mobile devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece closes a three-week arc: Computerworld reported in early November that Google was preparing a mobile platform aimed squarely at the iPhone, the Wall Street Journal then covered the launch of the cellphone alliance itself, and the Times now takes stock of where the mobile Web actually stands — impressive surface momentum, unfinished substance.
The stakes are framed by an adjacent debate the same week on competition as the right to exit: whether phones remain carrier-controlled appliances or open devices users can leave and load freely. The confirmed claim that more than 30 companies have signed onto the Open Handset Alliance is the strongest evidence yet that the appliance model has organized opposition.
First-order effects
- Carriers that have controlled what runs on their handsets now face a coalition of 30-plus manufacturers and operators backing Google's open-development push, directly challenging their appliancization of cell phones.
- Developers gain a credible alternative path to mobile users alongside Apple's tightly controlled iPhone platform, with Google's own search dominance — 58.5 percent U.S. share per October ComScore data — funding the campaign.
Second-order effects
- Handset makers inside and outside the alliance must decide whether openness becomes table stakes, since a device locked to carrier software competes against one running the open Internet environment Google says it wants to bring to mobile.
- Google extends its openness strategy beyond mobile into social platforms with OpenSocial, forcing rivals to respond across both fronts rather than treating them as separate markets.
Third-order effects
- If the alliance holds, the basis of competition shifts from controlling the device to controlling services and interoperability on top of it — the moat moves from hardware lock-in to who hosts the user's data and identity.
- A genuine open mobile stack would make exit easy for users, testing the right-to-exit theory of competition that commentators raised the same week: markets where switching costs vanish reward whoever owns the ongoing relationship, not the pipe.
The trend: Mobile computing is moving from carrier-controlled appliances toward Internet-style open platforms, with the Open Handset Alliance as the first broad counterweight to both carrier gatekeeping and Apple's integrated model.