Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Product Design: Stagnation in the Smartphone Domain

Smartphones on display at a cellphone provider outlet in a mall
Take a good look at the above photo. What do you see?

While working on development and testing of the Ubuntu Touch OS [1] on my Nexus 5 testbed [2], I had a moment to consider developments in consumer devices in general and the smartphone space in particular. Retrieving and examining some of my old smartphone units in storage, I began to think about design and capability trends in the domain over the last 12+ years - where it came from, where the space is at now and where things are going.

Consider the following photo of a selection of my of collection smartphone units that are now retired from service:
A sample of my smartphones, spanning 14+ years from 2005 to the current day
My sample units in the above photo span the following years and models:
  • Nokia 6682: 2005, Symbian OS 8.0, S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 2
  • Nokia 6290 - 2006, Symbian OS 9.2, S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1
  • Nokia N95 8GB - 2007, Symbian OS v9.2, S60 3rd Edition
  • Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - 2008, Symbian OS 9.4 (FW V60.0.003)
  • Nokia N900 32GB - 2009, Maemo 5 Linux OS
  • Nokia N9 64 GB - 2011, MeeGo Linux OS 1.2 "Harmattan"
  • Google Nexus 4 - 2012, Android 5.1.1 "Lollipop"
  • Google Nexus 5 - 2013, originally running Android 6.0.1 "Marshmallow", now running Ubuntu Touch OTA-9
As you can guess, I was quite the Nokia user, as my preferred and familiar OEM smartphone supplier for many years. I liked their product and was familiar with their Symbian OS and user interface. I had used their 3310 during my university years, migrated to the 3100 as my first colour phone, tried a Sony Ericksson unit while in graduate school, disliked it and then moved back to Nokia and stayed with them as long as I could.

At the time, Nokia was a global giant and the undisputed king of the smartphone market. No one questioned their claim to absolute domination and the slice of the pie. The number and variety of their phone models were staggering and iconic at the same time - who could forget the indestructible 3310, the 8110 used in The Matrix, the stylish 8800, the N-series with cameras? They were functional, resilient and fashion statements in themselves. Every quarter seemed to bring about new advances and beautiful but functional designs that were incredibly appealing. Nokia conquered the consumer market; Blackberry, staid and somber in design, dominated as the device of choice in the business and professional space.

Then came Apple's first iPhone in 2007, and those of us who were witnesses to the prior decade of the rise of the mobile phone all know what happened after that. For an excellent overview of the disruption that took down both Nokia, Blackberry and other established players in the years that followed, the BBC documentary "The Rise and Fall of Nokia" [13] provides thorough storytelling of the parable in its scope and chronicling the price of complacency.

As I looked through my eight devices that stand as evidence of the scale of the change and disruption, an interesting pattern emerges in terms of product design trends. Nokia's devices were (and still are) unique, colourful and aesthetic in their design philosophy. They embodied innovation and creativity in design thinking while being rugged and reliable in build quality, bringing delight to the users such as myself that grew up with and enjoyed them. My own devices still function perfectly, many still holding their battery charge for almost a week, the old Nokia USP of phenomenal performance and value for money.

However, a change can be observed both in design and functionality as the years progress. Of the 8 devices shown in my collection, 6 are Nokias. Of the 6 Nokias, 4 are running Nokia's Symbian OS, upto around 2008 or so. Apple introduced a paradigm shift in the industry with the iPhone 2G in 2007, with its slim, rectangular design, associated app ecosystem and the idea of using the most natural object for interface interaction - the human finger on glass with capacitive sensing built in. Nokia and others realized they had to adapt and change, or die. 

They attempted to copy Apple's design philosophy. Nokia tried opening up the Symbian OS to app developers, but it was too limited in functionality and performance and difficult to modify. They decided to go with embedded Linux as the platform of choice, and the N900 is an excellent example with its Maemo 5 OS. Like other OEMs Their product design philosophy also shifted, attempting to find variations to Apple's combination of glass display, capacitive touch and most noticeably, the black rectangular design. This is evident in the chronological snapshot of my collection from left to right. My rare and highly collectable N9 was the next stage in their ambition and effort to take things further - the MeeGo Linux-based OS, with better performance, nicer UI/UX, massive storage capacity, camera optics and so on. However, for all their effort to staunch the bleeding, recover market domination and reputation, their device still ended up looking like Apple's without essentially differentiating itself with the Nokia USP and design language that made their products so unique and memorable.

The other devices shown as samples are Google's Nexus 4 with an older version of its Android operating system, and my Nexus 5 testbed that used to run Android but now runs the latest version of Ubuntu Touch. I will not elaborate on these, as they essentially demonstrate the point.

Thus, we fast forward more than a decade since the launch of the first iPhone, and what do we see? A photo taken during my recent visit to a cellphone shop sums up the zeitgeist of the smartphone space perfectly. Everyone's product has the same, static design philosophy (with differentiation only of the hardware specification and gimmicks), irrespective of the OEM - Apple, Samsung, Huawei, HTC, LG, Motorola, OnePlus, and the former giant themselves, Nokia. After a disastrous sale and cannibalization by Microsoft that reduced the once proud giant to a has-been, they too had to resign themselves to the ingominy of a has-been, running Android.

Discussing the situation with an entrepreneur and former lab mate from grad school recently, I observed that we seem to have reached a plateau and stagnation in terms of product design in the smartphone space. The only selling points for OEMs to differentiate themselves and fight over the customer's dollars (and hence market share) seem to be faster processors, more memory, bigger and better screens, higher resolution optics, better apps and little OS features. The whole aspect of "fun", creativity and uniqueness that permeated the space during the prior decade has all but disappeared. 

Value for money is not a sense that a consumer would feel in the current environment. Although hardware has taken massive strides, software capability does not exploit it to its full potential. Battery life is absymal compared to the capabilities of just 10 years ago. As prices crept higher, the barrier was broken with Apple's demand of $1,000 USD for it's iPhone X (which people were more than happy to camp overnight and empty out their pockets for). We have now reached the point where Samsung has pitched its Galaxy Fold with the USP that it can fold out to reveal a bigger screen. The price of this innovation? $1,980 USD. But for all the fireworks, the fundamental package is still the same.

This effectively means that the paradigm and design philosophy has been milked for all its worth over the last decade. The low-hanging fruit on the tree has been plucked to exhaustion. We need a new innovation and approach. It's time for disruption to happen again. I will continue this train of thought in the next post with a possible proposal to move things forward.

See you in the next post,
The Sage (湯馬士 凱文)
Multidisciplinary, award-winning and intrepid Systems Engineer with business & sales acumen. Skilled systems thinker and problem solver. Achieves win-win solutions and value for all stakeholders. 
Interested in applying my skill set to deliver value at the intersection of technology and business.

REFERENCES:
==========
[1] Mobile OS Product Conversion and Initial Assessment: Android to Ubuntu Touch
[2] Ubuntu Touch
[3] UBports Foundation
[4] Fairphone
 
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