Nokia's release of specs for 3D printing of the Lumia phone-shell comes with a promise of more. The phone maker envisages a time when phones will be considerably more customizable -- throwing down a challenge to Apple and Samsung to move beyond the current design and production paradigm.
The move was announced yesterday on the company's developer blog. Apart from the boon to 3D printing it brings mobile telephony to an interesting fork in the road. After all, what the phone maker is really saying is -- we don't want to make and distribute the phones, we want someone local to do that. So it is a marker for future local production as well and a pivot point for business ecosystems. To date most ecosystems have been software based but clearly there is an appetite t create hardware ecosystems too. |