The other day I read an article on Gizmodo entitled, “Why the iPad can’t lose.” The thesis was simple enough. Apple was Gillette, the iPad was the razor handle and the apps and the advertising were the razor blades. Gillette sold the handles at a loss and made money on the proprietary blades. Apple can afford to sell the iPad at a loss and make money on the apps (30%) and iAds (40%) instead.

 

The article was compellingly written and questioned how much longer manufacturers of the various Android tablets could afford to race towards razor thin margins while Google made all the money from its Android Market. It also spoke of Amazon’s Kindle Fire as the only real threat to the iPad for its similar business model.

 

But, after reading it, I could not help but feel that the analogy was flawed. Razors have not evolved much since the dawn of time, from the cutthroat razor to the safety razor in 1875 and then King Camp Gillette's disposable blade money-making paradigm shift in 1901. On the other hand, Mobile phone OSes have evolved enormously and continue to do so.

 

Remember the day when there was a choice of three camps for your mobile smart device, Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile?

 

It is not like Microsoft didn’t have the money to invest in Windows Mobile, but when HTC tried to skin Windows Mobile with Sense, remember the headlines? Well, maybe not. But essentially all that we journalists had to write about was how Microsoft’s watertight contracts meant that the Windows logo had to be on the top left of the home screen, no matter how HTC wanted to innovate and spice up the user experience, and boy did the UI need spicing up.

 

Symbian was not exclusive to Nokia. Sony Ericsson used it too and to great effect in the heyday of the P800 and P900 and as recent as the Vivaz Pro of mid-2010. Samsung used it in quite a few of its phones too. They treated it as a razor handle, one that could be used and re-used, but it flopped. Despite a €500 million loan guarantee to the Symbian foundation from Nokia, Symbian failed to evolve. The death of the platform is threatening to take even the once mighty Nokia down with it.

 

The €500 million price is half of what HP paid for Palm (€939 million) and what did that accomplish? Zilch.