iPhone: From one Walled Garden to another?

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... :-)

This may be heresy, but I believe that if Dickens were alive today, he would not have written about the French Revolution, he would have written about the mobile operators. The end of the thousand-year rule of kings in the mobile sector and the passing of power down to us, the common touch tone dialers.

But it does not seem like Steve Jobs gets to play the part of Napoleon Bonaparte any time soon. Steve Jobs claims that iPhone will “reinvent” the telecommunications sector. Eh? It is a closed device running on a closed network sold through exclusive (closed) distributorship. Doesn't sound like progress to me.

The iPhone is on its way to Europe. Why would European consumers want this type of "reinvention"? This is a fairly typical situation today:

• There is no network limitation on what kind of services I may choose.
• My phone is an open device, I can install anything I want. No limitations.
• I have full number portability and I can change to any operator anytime. (OK, it takes 4 days.)

Do customers want to pay a premium for the iPhone if it means being locked into Apples Walled Garden, however beautiful it is?

Apples actions are undeniably to increase lock-in and protect the proprietary (i.e. closed) aspects of their business model. (Joel West)

From a consumer perspective, the ideal situation is when the operator delivers "dumb networks" and the phone manufacturers delivers "open platforms".

The iPhone is the anti-thesis of this thinking. The device is exclusive to particular operators, it is a closed device. It has more restrictions on what kind of content you can access that any other device in its class. The device caters primarily to Apple content. A lot of the content that is traditionally sold "on deck" or "off deck" like ringtones and games can not run on the iPhone. On the other hand content from Apple like music and video is very well integrated through iTunes.

I may be biased, but the fact is that the trend is towards openness, not away from it. On the Enterprise side, the trend is open or industry-standard platforms where third-party applications can run as first class passengers and access networks without hindrance. Does Ovi and iTunes mean that the trend is towards closed environments on the Consumer side?