The future trends of smartphones: social and cloud computing

Absrtact: If, for the past 2 years, Bernold Bert Nordberg about the story of a giant company "dying", then perhaps from this moment on, he will create a new voyage of "The flow of insight and movement". The theme of the old story is "Smartphone and Android platform".

Sony Ericsson Group president and CEO Bernold October 2009, Sony Ericsson mobile phone business market share continued to decline, long-term loss. His task is self-evident: to save Sony Ericsson. And he did not live up to the expectations of Sony Ericsson to win a turnaround, the past five quarters of the company has achieved continuous profit.

Bernold said: "The reason for winning a turnaround is two, one is to focus on smartphones, and the second is to choose Android." "In fact, the global handset market is divided into two distinct, completely different markets. One is the functional mobile phone market, the other is the smart phone market. The smartphone market is growing fast; "He's lucky" he won the change, the pole.

On the new Voyage of the Future, "social and Cloud Computing" is printed on the main sail.

Bernold that the mobile phone has a natural integration with the Internet and social networks, in the time and place of the two coordinates can maintain, enhance, enhance the user's sharing and social experience. So socializing is an inevitable trend. Sony Ericsson and Facebook in the United States and the joint launch of new products is also a preliminary confirmation of this judgment.

And the future, the end of the era of cloud computing, he felt that perhaps many of the things that are now deemed necessary will become less important. "such as the operating system. This impact will break many industrial rules, but will highlight the core value of mobile phone terminals. "he said.

Can clouds sail the sea? Can Bernold lead the traditional giant to keep up with the pace of industry change? From insight to application, it is still a long and difficult journey to sail.

Why Gamble on Android

The value core of the smartphone era began to turn to software and applications. Close cooperation with Google, focus on the fastest-growing Androping platform, is not whose personal will, but the market reality and the trend made by natural selection

21st Century: What is the decision-making process behind Sony Ericsson's strategic transformation, which captures the opportunities of smartphones and Android systems?

Bernold: When I assumed the role of CEO, Sony Ericsson's products were clearly split into two distinct camps, with innovative design, high profit-making smartphones, and mobile phones that were completely price-competitive and hard to profit. At that time, I casually walked into a German mobile phone store, can use 15 euros, that is, 150 yuan to buy a functional mobile phone.

In this case, the right choice we can make is clear: it is necessary to shift the focus of business development to the smartphone, even if it could damage the share of shipments.

21st Century: Is there a twist in the process? What efforts have you made to drive the transition?

Bernold: Our product line has several completely different operating systems, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, and so on. The full adoption of an Android platform is an important decision we make. First of all, a unified platform is clearly more conducive to research and design focus on energy and resources. Moreover, Android is a completely open source platform, and we don't have to pay for it, and there are a lot of developers writing apps for it.

As we all know, the value core of the smartphone age begins to turn to software and applications, and Google has a good reputation and strong appeal in this respect. Close cooperation with Google, focus on the fastest-growing Androping platform, this is not whose personal will, but the reality and trend of the market let us make the natural choice. Of course, I very much agree with and absolutely support this choice.

"21st Century": Nielsen's latest figures show that Android's market is growing faster than Apple's in the latest quarter, how do you see this trend?

Bernold: So far, Android is still the most expensive operating system on smartphones. The Android operating system has been making progress, both qualitatively and functionally, and the progress is very rapid. I believe that the Android system has a considerable momentum of continued growth over a long period of time until cloud computing becomes a reality.

Why the Giants failed

The sudden fall in the functional mobile phone market is not surprising, it is not the judgment of some, but the strategic challenge of the business-how not to let the great successes of the past obscure the eyes of insight and demand, and become an obstacle to innovation and change?

"21st century": When you first took office, the company was in trouble, and the past five quarters have made continuous profits, what measures have been taken to reverse the decline?

Bernold: As I said before, thankfully we have chosen to focus on the smartphone, while the operating system has chosen the Android system, which is the one that has the biggest growth potential.

Over the past few months, we have launched a series of new smartphone products based on Android, which are widely recognized and accepted by current consumer feedback. In many consumers ' minds, the Sony Ericsson brand has the same name as entertainment. When I went to the store, I also found that consumers are young people, they are very agree with our products, very much like the entertainment experience brought about by products.

"21st century": in the smartphone era, many traditional companies have failed to transform, such as Nokia, why do many giants have no insight into the trend of change?

Bernold: Frankly, none of us has a crystal ball to predict the future, let alone a rapidly changing market. The sudden fall in the functional mobile phone market has surprised many, and it may not be fair to simply blame a one or two-person for the blame.

In other words, not only in the mobile phone market, almost every industry has had a similar thing happened, that is, the original extremely successful, near the mythical enterprise, in the new changes to temporarily failed to adjust the response, and eventually become a textbook failure case.

This is not a matter of judgment for some, but a strategic challenge for a company to develop at a certain stage--and it's a difficult task to not let the great successes of the past obscure the eyes of insight and demand, and become an obstacle to innovation and change. Because it is often difficult to break down the successes that they have built up, and to take the initiative into new areas with more uncertainty.

"21st Century": Does shareholder technical support also help you gain an edge in the smartphone age?

Bernold: We were a joint venture between Sony and Ericsson in 2001, when the handset business was stripped away.

For Ericsson, it is a leading provider of communications network equipment that requires direct contact with consumers; for Sony, it is a consumer electronics manufacturer, and now all consumer electronics are moving to the Internet, and Sony needs to know more about the mobile market, Our products and technologies are of great significance in this respect.

From the technical support point of view, Ericsson has the most patents in the industry, up to more than 27,000, we can fully access their patents. Sony's entertainment is a strength, the Sony Ericsson mobile phone uses a lot of this technology, such as BRAVIA Engine, camera technology, noise reduction, and Sony developed with the user interface and so on. In addition, we can get better prices when purchasing parts. So I like all two parent companies.

Two parent companies to our management is a quarterly meeting, the directors of both sides sit together to see whether our planning, strategy, performance is not able to meet the strategic requirements we have made.

"21st century": There are rumors that Sony will take back Ericsson, what do you think of this rumor?

Bernold: I really don't know, because I am just a CEO, not the boss of the company, so I said also not count (laugh).

Social and cloud age

Mobile phone has a natural integration with the Internet and social network properties, in time and place of these two coordinates can maintain, enhance, enhance the user's sharing and social experience. When the cloud is really coming, it may make many of the things that we see as necessary become no longer important.

"21st century": Will you be doing apps like App Store in the future?

Bernold: At present, the Android Market is developing very quickly. Due to its openness, the number of applications in just one or two years broke through 300,000. As an open source unified platform, open and give consumers maximum autonomy, is the most important features of the Android platform. So not every major Android terminal maker has to build its own app store, which is very different from Apple's thinking and model.

From the current pattern, many big platforms, including Google, Amazon and mainstream operators, have built the App Store for Android. We are more than willing to work closely with these partners in the application, rather than repeat the investment and compete with them.

"21st century": What do you think of social networking companies or media, the changes in the mobile internet industry's ecology? What are your actions in this field?

Bernold: Now there is a very fashionable industry term to describe the trend of future development, the term is called Solomo, that is, social + position + move. I personally agree with this trend.

In the era of functional mobile phone dominance, mobile phones are basically purely individual information communication and entertainment tools. The rise of smartphones in the past two years has fundamentally changed the communication experience of mobile phones, which has created seamless convergence and integration with the Internet and social networks, and produced new value.

Compared with other terminal devices, the mobile phone has a natural integration with the Internet and social network properties, in the time and place of these two coordinates can maintain, enhance, enhance the user's sharing and social experience. Therefore, the socialization of smartphones is a very important trend.

Sony Ericsson has a unique insight into this, and has pioneered this insight into the Android phone market as a practical feature of the product. This May we released a brand new Facebook Iside feature, which is listed as an important future configuration for the Xperia series of smartphones. This function is the result of our research and development team working closely with Facebook, which integrates Facebook's basic functionality into the mobile operating system and makes it easy to share a single key to Facebook in communications, mail, SMS, pictures, music, video, and so on.

"21st century": How do you look at the cloud computing era, mobile phone manufacturers change trends and coping strategies? Can you share your picture of the cloud computing era industry?

Bernold: The ultimate Cloud computing era is really coming, and it's probably going to make a lot of things that we see as necessary now become less important, like the operating system.

For mobile terminals, cloud computing is certainly impacting many existing standards. Today's mobile phones will have at least 8G of storage hardware requirements, but in a sophisticated cloud computing environment, native storage will appear insignificant. On the other hand, cloud computing does not change the essential core value of the handset terminal, however, consumers still have to have a design fashion, excellent workmanship, powerful terminals to receive, playback information and content. At that time to see who terminal can better in the convenience, human nature control, entertainment experience to realize the value of differentiation.

For example, today's music downloads and on-demand cloud services are a very popular area, but this does not replace a good smart music phone for consumers to bring high-quality music playback enjoyment. From this point of view, our advantages will continue even in the era of cloud computing.

(Responsible editor: admin)