Perhaps more than ever before, the celphone makers have an opportunity to invade markets formerly inhabited by PDAs, cameras and mp3 players – by way of example, BW Online has a short piece today (press release here; photos here) on a new generation of Nokia devices that has these other devices squarely in its sights.
My sense is that the increasing power of these devices and their makers will finally put them at odds with the North American network providers’ control over the devices that will function on their networks; restrictions that are increasingly serving to protect their other businesses (music downloading, for example). And I suspect that the market for unlocked GSM will inevitably give Rogers a strong lead in Canadian markets, at least among the device digiterati.