Hi awk,
I don't disagree with you on technological elegance. But I think there's a reason why the incumbents along the mobile phone and payment supply chain created the camel that they did. It's to do with control of the income flow: or more specifically, control of the applications that drive the information which defines the flow of income through the supply chain, and that specify everything from who gets onto the mobile network to whether credit is available for a merchant transaction done in a shop.
I much prefer the internet/trust innovation model in which anyone can participate so long as they adhere to common protocols and the interoperability imperative.
But from the point of view of the consumer mobile service market, this idea is not incumbent. The mobile networks have always been proprietary domains. Whereas a standards-based trust network opens the market to competition.
So the supply side needs turning. Which means I think there's a critical mass issue here. And to get over this hump, the opportunity will proceed from the broad "enterprise" space, rather than from individual users. Cartels are too powerful to submit to such a thing as demand if they perceive demand as against their interest. So I think to achieve change requires something more than the power of simplicity or the wants of the market.
Somehow, you have to force the supply side to bend.
The good news is that the power of folks on the security side of the equation is also not inconsiderable. And indeed, if the US government is willing to wield its authority, it has a trump power within its sovereign area, and probably beyond it. So I think the area to watch is the same place as we ended up watching on the PC side - it is standards from folks like NIST and mandates from folks like the DoD and orders from large companies which gradually turn the phone market around. And perhaps to begin with they will say - all DoD tabs and phones must have the hardware in them.
And doesn't Wave's deal with Samsung suggest that process is beginning? And indeed, isn't the work done within GlobalPlatform a substantial foundation upon which to build?
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