Open vs. Managed
Yesterday, in the General Session of Sprint’s Application Developers’ Conference, company leaders made a number of comments meaningful to the open discussion.
John Garcia, Sr. VP of Product Management and Development, observed that the walled garden is challenged and carriers need to find a new differentiation path. He acknowledged that “open” has many different definitions, but that clearly openness is happening, whatever it means! He specifically called out the need for discovery and personalization.
Kevin Packingham, VP of Wireless Products, chose to contrast “managed” with “open.” He noted that Sprint hasn’t been “closed” and wasn’t thrilled with the “walled garden” metaphor either. He said that carriers have been focused on managing the experience for customers. Kevin pointed out that, unlike the Internet, when things break in the mobile experience, customers call the carrier.
Clearly Kevin is focused on opening up the carrier experience for developers and end users. He described dramatic changes in the nature of the “deck” and encouraged developers to make their applications and content easy to find in Sprint’s soon-to-come discovery and personalization interface. But Kevin also described the need to ensure that the protection that the “managed” environment provided is maintained as we move to an increasingly “open” environment.
The coming weeks and months should be fun to watch!
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