Telemática dentro de las "cajitas"

Gadgets

Dec 4th 2008. Thinking inside the box. From The Economist print edition. There is more to portable electronic gadgets than just fancy hardware

Illustration by Claudio Muñoz

ELECTRONIC gadgets have changed a great deal in the past few years. Most obviously, they have become smaller, sleeker, smarter and more versatile. Billions of people now carry around tiny devices that are more powerful than the desktop computers of a few years ago. But these gadgets have also changed in a less obvious way. Once they were lumps of hardware, brought to life by a layer of software; today, they might be more accurately described as services in a box. It was ever thus with mobile phones, of course: the handset is useless without a network operator, and mobile phones are, in effect, the containers in which operators sell their services. But the handset and the network service have hitherto come from different companies. Operators do not manufacture their own phones, and handset-makers are not operators. But now device-makers are increasingly providing the services that power their devices—or, to look at things the other way around, building devices that encapsulate services they wish to offer. One of the first to do so was Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device. As well as making BlackBerrys, RIM also handles the delivery, using its own behind-the-scenes infrastructure, of e-mails to millions of its devices around the world. Similarly, Apple's iPod started off as a piece of hardware in 2001, but it really took off in 2003 when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, a service that makes it easy for iPod owners to download music, video and games to their devices, and which is now the leading online music retailer. Makers of satellite-navigation devices such as TomTom and Garmin are also moving from a focus solely on hardware to a greater emphasis on supplementary services—real-time traffic updates, information about the positions of speed cameras, revised versions of maps and so on. Now the biggest gadget-maker of all, in volume terms at least, is extending its push into services, and is trying to do all these things at once. Nokia, the world's biggest handset-maker, sells nearly half a billion mobile phones a year, roughly two in every five. This week it added revamped mobile e-mail and navigation services to the music downloads it already offers on some of its handsets (see article). So convinced is Nokia of the importance of services that it reorganised itself last year into two divisions: one to build handsets, and the other to provide its growing suite of services, called Ovi. At your service There are several motivations for the gadget-makers' shift into services. First, margins on hardware are generally lower than margins on services. Second, saturated markets in many parts of the world mean that hardware sales are slowing in some categories. Soon, everyone in western Europe who wants a satnav will have bought one; what will the manufacturers do then? Make money from subscriptions and updates, of course. At least, that's the plan. Finally, services provide a way to hold on to customers. If you have signed up for a service tied to a particular gadget-maker, the thinking goes, you are less likely to switch to a different manufacturer's device in future. The world's most successful gadget-makers are those that have been quickest to recognise the importance of offering accompanying services. Makers of stand-alone music-players, such as Rio, have been unable to compete with Apple; and Motorola, once the top dog in mobile phones, let RIM, once an obscure Canadian start-up, grab the mobile e-mail market. With elaborate branding and advertising campaigns, gadget-makers have long promoted the idea that they were selling something more than just a bundle of electronics in a snazzy case. Now, funnily enough, some of them really are.

Open article at "The Economist" Web Site

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