Re: focus! (was Re: Focusing on innovation re: mono, python et al)

[Andrew Cowie <andrew operationaldynamics com>]

On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 10:46 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>     GNOME Maemo:
>         I don't know their "concept" or target audience, but I can
>         imagine something like - 
>         Create a "newspaper replacement" device for coffee shops,
>         the kitchen table, riding the train to work.

So the funny thing is that although that's who they are targeting their
marketing towards at the moment, I rather suspect that they have their
sights on a much different - and bigger - market: disconnected
enterprise mobile computing.

There is a burgeoning industry for mobile computing devices (gizmo for
sales person to carry around, warehouse applications, medical devices,
you name it) yet the usual problem with embedded devices is needing to
develop such custom code for obscure processors, etc. What Nokia has
done is different - it's a general purpose computing platform with a
(more or less) commodity and powerful stack on top of it.

I rather expect that what they're hoping is that people will flock to it
as an easier place to write their apps [for] rather than having to muck
about in the low level drudgery that usually accompanies having to do
embedded work.

AfC
Toronto

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie
Managing Director
Operational Dynamics Consulting

http://www.operationaldynamics.com/
Management consultants specializing in strategy,
organizational architecture, procedures to survive
change, and performance hardening for the people
and systems behind the mission critical enterprise.

Available worldwide:

Sydney    +61 2 9977 6866
New York  +1 646 472 5054
Toronto   +1 416 848 6072
London    +44 207 1019201