Curved phones or build your own?

LG has followed market-leader Samsung by launching its own curved smartphone.  As shown in the accompanying  graphic, the LG phone is slightly curved along the length of the phone rather than its width, as is the case with Samsung's curved phone.  Also, as reported by the Chosun Ilbo, the new LG phone includes not only a flexible display, but also a flexible battery which represents a significant technological advance.
Coincidentally, today's English edition of the Chosun Ilbo also contained a story about the announcement on Monday by Google-owned Motorola of Project Ara.   The official Motorola Blog describes the project as follows: "Led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones. To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it."  To achieve these goals, Project Ara has teamed up with Phonebloks, an effort described in the following video.

Digital developments in 2015: the next revolution in mobile?

An article in the Korea Joongang Daily today prompts this post, which seems appropriate as an opening one for this blog in 2015.  Entitled, "In 2015 phone makers banking on innovation," the article comments on three new smartphones that are soon to enter the global market.  They include Samsung's new Tizen phone, Google's modular phone called Project Ara, and a Russian phone called the YotaPhone.
The Samsung Tizen phone, to be released in India, appears to reflect that company's belief that it must introduce a new operating system (OS) in order to compete successfully in the global marketplace.   Underscoring this, The Korea Joongang Daily article quotes a Samsung Electronics spokesman as saying that “Tizen is not only for smartphones but is a platform prepared for the Internet of Things era. It is essential to secure a platform to survive in an era when smartphones, wearable devices and home electronics are interconnected.”  I would argue, to the contrary, that Samsung and the other major Korean electronics companies, should place their emphasis on the development of software applications and content for the existing Android and Apple operating systems.  This, after all, is where the largest portion of money in the ICT sector will be spent.
Also, as noted in a post last spring, I believe that Google's project Ara in all likelihood represents the next big disruption in the mobile ecosystem, with repercussions around the world that might be even larger than the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.   If, after reading this far, you doubt this, I urge you to view the following video describing the new Project Ara phone.  Enjoy and think about what this means for the future!

Design your own phone: the next big development in smart devices?

Back in January I posted (read it here) on the challenge facing Samsung Electronics and Korea's other smartphone manufacturers because of technology changes and China's manufacturing prowess.  Now that Google's Project Ara is up and running, I personally think that modular, "design your own" smartphones possibly represent the next big change in smart devices.
The new phones are certainly going to be price competitive.  As reported by The Chosun Ilbo, the basic kit developed under Project Ara will cost only about U.S. $50.  The basic idea behind Project Ara is that users will first select an endoskeleton frame, provided by Google, and can then choose their own modules for screen, memory, camera and the other components of the phone. (click on the accompanying graphic to see a full size version)  With the rapid spread of 3-d printers, it is not at all far fetched to assume that consumers will soon be printing some of the components themselves from downloaded software instructions for the printer.

Samsung sells more smartphone components in China

As reported by The Korea Times,industry analysts note that "Samsung Electronics is expanding its supply of smartphone components such as camera image sensors and display panels to Chinese phone makers to take advantage of their soaring market dominance in the highly competitive smartphone market there..."  As this blog has noted in numerous prior posts, (see for example these) smartphones are essentially modular computing and communications devices.  Although Google's Project Ara failed, the physical reality is that all smart phones are created by putting together modules.  This helps to explain why the recent Japanese restrictions on the export to Korea of materials necessary for the manufacture of semiconductors and displays are so potentially damaging to Korea's economy.  In China, companies like Huawei and Xiaomi have come to dominate the smartphone market, in the process taking market share away from Samsung.   This development provides an opportunity for Samsung to improve its overall business position by selling more components to the Chinese manufacturers.