Dear Robert Scoble, No. Sorry.

by Ben Smith on 10th July 2009

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Hot news from the ‘Travelling Geeks‘ tour that hit the UK this week - Robert Scoble’s just blogged that ‘Europe no longer matters to lead position in mobile‘. He makes a number of observations:

  1. Robert Scoble (Image by Thomas Hawk - used under Creative Commons license)

    Robert Scoble (Image by Thomas Hawk - used under Creative Commons license)

    That European consumers are ’stuck in a texting rut’, but people in San Francisco/ New York understand the importance of the mobile web.

  2. That Europeans are stuck buying sub-standard phones from Nokia versus superior phones from Google, Apple and Palm.

Nokia certainly is behind the curve - they have the volume, but have lost the innovation initiative - but that’s where Robert stops being right…

  1. Comparing Robert’s ‘digital elite’ peer group from San Francisco with all of Europe is ridiculous. Like for like, Europeans have access to cheaper, faster networks and consume 10% more mobile web than their US counterparts.
  2. European’s are no more ’stuck’ with Nokia devices than Americas are ’stuck’ with the iPhone… the G1, iPhone and Pre are all available in Europe now (or within months for the Pre) and we’re buying plenty of them. Smartphone sales are predicted to grow by 16% in Western Europe versus 3% worldwide.
  3. Nokia may not be innovating in Europe, but others are… witness INQ and their 2009 GSMA ‘best handset’ award-winning INQ1 which pioneered many of the social network features the Palm Pre includes.
  4. Counting Google as a US handset supplier is a bit clueless… most Android handsets are manufactured by HTC (from Taiwan) so far and Google house much of their mobile operations in London. More recent handsets like the HTC Magic, Hero and Samsung’s i7500 have all launched or announced to European markets first.

The kick-start the iPhone gave the US mobile industry has certainly returned them to an important position - and Europe’s lost some bragging-rights (although y’all still love the phone holsters, no?) - but Europe irrelevant? Not yet… As Robert goes on to note, far more innovation is going on in the provision of mobile apps and services for smartphones and regardless who created the platform, Europe’s contributing some of the most exciting apps out there…

For a more thoughtful consideration of the differences between the US / Europe see these posts based on actual facts(!)

Tagged as: europe, google android, iphone, palm pre, robert scoble, smartphone, us

  • NEILMILLIKEN
    I was at the talk Robert gave in Cambridge and spoke to him afterwards whilst I do not agree with some of the stuff he was saying it was true that the audience was full of iPhone users. However, the audience is hardly representative of people in Europe as a whole or phone users for that matter.

    We do want to find out what people really use their phones for and have created a survey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=JW74DefYZ...

    I have been involved in creating apps for Windows Mobile ( www.capturatalk.com ) which still has a considerable chunk of the smartphone market share and gives users a lot more freedom than the iPhone which needs to be jail broken to do anything useful. Yes the WM user interface is clunky but manufacturers such as HTC have created their own skins for the interface which make it really quite workable.

    Europe has to watch out but so does America has the dominant handset manufacturers are in the far east! True mobile innovation is happening in Japan, China and Korea yet no one seems to mention that..
  • though he is essentially right - hes more wrong.
  • topgold
    Robert Scoble gets exposed here. Ben Smith gets a free round for an excellent post. Dan Lane gets a gold star for the best comment. Tanks a million for the really mobile perspective.
  • All aboard the tenuous link bus...

    Android is based on the Linux kernel which was started by a man in Finland and maintained by a man with a beard in Wales. It's also heavily based around Java which was invented by a Canadian. All Android hardware available so far has, as Ben mentioned, been designed and built by HTC in Taiwan.

    The iPhone is famously designed by Apple in Cupertino and built in China (presumably by underpaid workers). The principal designer of the iPhone is Jonathan Ive who comes from Chingford which is on the border of London and Essex, about 5 miles away from Chigwell which was the location for the 1980's BBC Sitcom "Birds of a Feather" which was about two wives of robbers currently serving a sentence in prison and has absolutely nothing to do with mobile phones but it served as the acme of british humour of the period, much the same way Dad's Army did in the decades preceeding it... what did America have? M*A*S*H? Pfft remind me what the outcome of Vietnam was again?... speaking of war, it wasn't so long ago that the American's fought for their independence from the British and there are many people who believe that this independence should be revoked poste-haste... especially if American's are going to continue to prattle on about how much better the US of A is when they feel they have even the slightest advantage... there is such a thing as a sore winner you know!

    (This post is, of course, meant in jest. I love our colonial cousins and the contributions they have made to my waistline... cheeseburgers and V8 engines FTW... oh wait, the V8 is a French invention)
  • Kelv
    Let's not forget the origin of the ARM1176JZF CPU powering the iPhone.
  • martyndavies
    Of course M*A*S*H was set in Korea
  • Yes, I was trying to point out that Americans don't know the difference... too subtle?
  • You scare me with subtle... please go back to being 'angry Dan' who shouts death threats at Spanish ladies walking through our shot.
  • martyndavies
    Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies ♫
  • I'm sure that's what he meant to say... but it came out a bit angrier...
  • She honestly looked like she was about to walk through the shot.

    Or are you talking about the spanish beggar who shook her cup at you while we were filming? ISTR she got a stern shouting at as well.
  • jimwild
    Christ, as a company trying to launch our mobile platforms in the US, I would say in terms of mobile billing & infrastructure etc they are where we were 4 years ago.

    I love the iPhone but its not a guaranteed way to monetise the mobile web. End of!
  • Great stuff Ben. I was going to write a post saying pretty much the same
    thing but you've summed it up perfectly here. Europe is not Nokia. Also, Scoble seems to switch between talking about Europe's mobile industry and Europe's
    mobile users throughout his post. It came across as quite a confused post to me...
  • Benny
    Scoble just got chumpamatized.
  • *adds to his CV*
  • The vast majority of the population in the US does not own a smart phone. Most people buy phones because they look cute or their keypad lights up in pretty colors. Up until a couple of years ago, there was limited choice in what you could get from the network providers, as most phones here are locked to their networks.

    Yes, the iPhone has introduced many people to a robust mobile experience. But it has also introduced them to terms like "jailbreak" as they hate the restrictive and expensive plans forced on the by AT&T;, not to mention the restrictions of where they can get their apps from.

    But that's all most have known in the US - what they were told. From my own personal experience, even the most novice, non-technical mobile phone owner uses SMS, MMS and wonders why Americans have to throw out a phone when they switch providers.

    Interesting how there has been no mention about Motorola, whose last innovative device was the StarTac.

    mp/m
  • I believe it's about 20% of phone sales in the US are smartphones. I can't find a no for Europe to hand.
  • http://forum2.mobile-review.com/showthread.php?...
  • Thanks Mark - had seen those, but was just looking for pure stats on %age of smartphones bought by US consumers v European consumers etc etc
  • With the exception of the iPhone kicking Nokia's arse, those comments are just plain wrong IMO. But it is one person's opinion against another. I think in the main though, most people would not agree with Robert Scoble on this issue.

    The tech elite and the plain geeks are a very small proportion of the population. Their use of mobile's does not extend to the general public who make up the vast majority of the market share.

    From my visits to the America and Europe, and from the podcasts I hear, I conclude that the average American is in the mobile stone-age compared to the average UK or European mobile user.
  • it's a novelty thing, it will wear off in a couple of years and then it will be just another device that annoys you when it rings in the shower ;)
  • don't feed the trolls

    its just a deliberate 'look at me' polemic piece to a blog

    ignore

    fertilizer
  • weirdshanghai
    Europe is still the home of mobile tech birthing process. But nokia is the 900 pound retarded gorilla. s60 ? what a hunk of ****. Hope the new symbian os gets some traction some year soon, before android, igroan, and palm (ha), walks over them. Have u seen what they carry in the
    states, razor? USA generally speaking is where mobile tech goes to die. I have Chinese farmers carrying better mobile phones then your average north american. But I do agree with one thing, most Normal Mobile Users talk/text and not a hell of a lot more. Iphone/android/(pre) are changing that by being easy, useful, and dead sexy devices to use/deploy/and program for.

    I'm off to introduce my yankey friend the my favorite chinese farmer. rice anyone?
  • Typical megalomaniac attitude from our US brethren, they are Eons behind Europe and especially Asia in nearly all aspects of mobile technology.
    http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/27/magazines/fortu...
    A huge percentage of yanks are still utilising two baked bean tins connected by a bit of wet string, Analogue networks in the US were only phased out last year, they stopped selling analogue phones here in 1997!
    The US leads the world in hype and bullshit and that's about it :)
  • Scobleizer
    Funny, I just gave a speech to a bunch of entrepreneurs and computer scientists at Cambridge University and 30% had iPhones and no one argued with me that the iPhone is kicking Nokia's behind. Nokia didn't argue, either, when we visited their research lab today.
  • So you use iphone ownership as a barometer of US superiority and dominance in the global mobile market, It's not Nokia you should be concerning yourself with, more like Samsung and LG IMO :)
    Americans are hugely patriotic when it comes to buying anything, i think Apple market share is something in the order of 2% amongst the more discerning Brits :)
  • Scobleizer
    markwebster: I've been coming to Europe for 15 years and Europe always shoved their cool phones in my face. No longer. Now all the cool kids have iPhones or Android phones. That is a HUGE change. Plus, worse of all, the coolest developers (and I was hanging out with lots of them this week) are building for iPhone and/or Android and not a single one is building for Nokia. That's a huge problem for Nokia, which used to have the mindshare and leadership positions in the mobile world. And my point was that Europe doesn't matter anymore. You're helping me make that point when you bring up Samsung and other Asian phones.
  • martyndavies
    Any of the cool kids have a Motorola phone?
  • "Now all the cool kids have iPhones"... and "the coolest developers"... wtf?

    Ten years ago you were lucky to get a 3rd-gen behind wap-phone in New York. Granted, the iPhone as dragged the US kicking-and-screaming into the 21st century, and is a brilliant device, but still...

    Kind of like... you get your license and turn up at work with your brand-new sports car, and give it "I rule! I can drive anywhere!". At which point your friends, who have been driving for ten years, shake their heads and say "whatever... nice car though" ;)
  • I think your point is that *one* European phone manufacturer has slipped a bit in some respects. Not sure that equates to all of Europe being irrelevant.

    ...and Android is far from a US-only endeavour.
  • Well, Europe matters less (Nokia) that's for sure, but the US still has some way to go in order to obliterate the HW dominance that still exists in the Asian manufacturers units.
    There is a seed change going on as regards the importance of apps in respect of the purchasing public, but you cannot take the market situation in the US and use it as a template to measure market conditions in other continents because they vary to a great degree.
  • It's not Nokia v Apple where I disagree with you... It's that Nokia represents Europe's best and only hope of leading the mobile industry. You're picking on the fat, slow kid in the class :-)

    Thanks for reading and commenting.
  • Roger Kondrat
    Typical of 'them' really. I am with you guys on this issue.
  • Let's all rush to Boston and chuck some burgers in the river...!

    No wait... this was supposed to be a calmer look at the facts.

    Damn it... :-)
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