S60 Open to new features

The problem may be that other than a captive audience (people on phone contracts), operators don't really offer anything that isn't provided by handset makers and third party software makers. If you have a wifi-capable smartphone, you don't even need an operator for phone calls at home any more, there are third party software applications for VOIP. As people use their SIM card less and less, the operators become more and more irrelevant.

Operators have to change into new kinds of companies if they want to carry on making huge profits from mobile devices, they can't just provide network access with very little else. The profits on calls and internet access will drop and drop over the next decade or two, and this will eventually outstrip any growth from emerging markets.

Otherwise agreed, but I think this statement is a bit inaccurate:

> people use their SIM card less and less

Actually, people are using mobile networks more and more, but if they are like me, their experience is going more and more outside operator control/influence/brand.

People will notice if the mobile network is bad, or if the charging is outrageous, but otherwise the mindshare/experience/whatever-you-call-it seems to be going increasingly to the device and 3rd parties.

Well in some parts of the world the operator is still king. Firstly they have a kind of monopoly over the distribution channel and secondly the billing mechanism is close to impossible to get right without the operator.

In markets like the UK it is easier with reverse premium sms billing; so I can sell content and bill users myself but in a market like India there is no other easy billing method other than operator controlled methods.

So to summarise; in markets like India operator is still king, they dictate terms, they can make you or break you.

We are working hard towards an off the air distribution network for content and things are looking good.

Boom

I find it quite disturbing that I'm defending operators... but they do quite a lot actually. They rent sites for masts and base-stations, plan and maintain the radio network, subsidise handsets (in many markets), manage billing (and open this up to third parties via premium SMS0, do customer support, maintain specific services over the networks (WAP, MMS, SMS, etc.)...

Wi-fi is all very well if you happen to be in a hotspot, but it has minimal coverage compared to GSM, particularly outside urban areas. The fact that you can pump audio over 802.11 doesn't mean you're about to compete with the operators.

Tom, they sure do a lot. Important things too. But the point was it somehow seems to contribute less and less to the actual user experience. However, this does not mean that they would be irrelevant, or that they couldn't make money. As one of my colleagues put it:
"it seems that the one certain way to make money in an this IP goldrush is to sell the shovels"

Tom: and that's exactly what I want the operators to be: managers of the cellular infrastructure/billing and *nothing else*. Plumbers. Really, to me there's no other value they can add, and I see them doing actual damage to the mobile market - by selling subsidized crippled handsets, preventing seamless voip/gsm voice call changeovers from happening, insisting on locking down s60 platform and so on. They have too much power and I want that reduced.