Terrence Barr’s thoughtful session, “Flooring the Accelerator - How Open Source is Reshaping an Industry,” explored how the wireless industry is being reshaped by open source, which an IDC Group Report claimed in August 2006 is “the most significant all-encompassing and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s.” Barr is Senior Technologist at Sun Microsystems and Ambassador of the Java Mobile & Embedded Community.
It’s nearly impossible to diagnose what’s going on in an industry at the same time it’s happening; it’s hard enough for historians to do it years later – but Barr gives it a serious try. So his session was as he admitted, of necessity, somewhat speculative and tentative.
While I cannot begin to do justice to his many nuances, here’s the take-home message: Open source and open standards are here to stay – customers won't accept anything less. The wireless industry is being hit by a perfect storm of rapidly commoditizing services, massive infrastructure investments, and rapidly shifting expectations driven by open source and open standards – but the open source model does not apply as well as it applies to the desktop so it will take time to figure out how to make it work.
Currently the wireless industry is mostly closed and proprietary with:
--Islands of similar but incompatible technologies.
--Voice aside, interoperability is a pipe dream. Voice service is a race to the bottom.
--There’s massive friction in the ecosystem.
--It’s a totally fragmented technology space, even within a single operator or manufacturer.
--Content creators must deal with each island separately, making service creation and deployment very inefficient.
--Limits opportunities for everyone involved.
Existing revenue models are not suited for new services:
--Monthly subscription fee is not granular enough
--Customers are wary of random ads but also of data mining
Bottom line: The industry desperately needs new services and new revenue models because the industry is depriving itself of innovation.
It was not clear to me from Barr’s comments to what degree the industry agrees with his diagnosis and is ready to shift gears.
Barr closed with this comment:
“I’m really excited that we’re witnessing the rebirth of an industry. I’m not sure how mobile is going to play out and how it’s going to integrate with the rest of the IT spectrum, but it’s clear that the model of previous years is falling apart and that everybody’s scrambling and trying to figure out where the next place is that they want to be involved in this industry.”
I hope he gives a session five years from now on the same topic and we can see then how it all unfolded. As they say in the trade: stay tuned.
See Also
Terrence Barr’s Blog
2008 JavaOne
TS-5606
Session Title: Flooring the Accelerator: How Open Source Is Reshaping an Industry
Janice J. Heiss
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