Thinking Inside The Box

摘要

Electronic gadgets have changed a great deal in the past few years. Most obviously, they have become smaller, sleeker, smarter and more versatile. Billions of people now car-ry around tiny devices that are more powerful than the desktoprncomputers of a few years ago. But these gadgets have also changed in a less obvious way. Once they were lumps of hardware, brought to life by a layer of software; today, they might be more accurately described as services in a box.rnIt was ever thus with mobile phones, of course: the handset is useless without a network operator, and mobile phones are, in effect, the containers in which operators sell their services. But the handset and the network service have hitherto come from different companies. Operators do not manufacture their own phones, and handset-makers are not operators.