Turnkey? Reference designs? Who said we want those?

I've been squirming as I watch Intel talk of how they think the mobile gadget future is going to look. They talk about reference designs, and turnkey solutions. These are all fine in certain markets, but they are all edifices of the PC world that hark back to the beginning of computing and the formation of the Microsoft/Intel duopoly. They made standardising the nascent computing market - which, lets face it, needed to be standardised in order for the world to start learning how to take advantage of it - simple, and allowed microsofts OS software become the encumbent very quickly indeed. After all, since every computer would look the same, it was easy to make software work on it.

I guess if we were in a world where there wasn't yet the concept of a portable computer (and I'm talking of the smartphone form factor), then we'd need someone to come along and enforce this. But there is already a huge market of portable device platform manufacturers out there, and each of them are happy to be free to be different to everyone else. It gives the entire portable device eco-system the chance to breathe, and innovate.

Companies like Nokia aren't interested in doing business exclusively with companies like Intel. This was made very clear in their joint announcement. Why would Nokia ever want to go to a single source supplier, at a price-point they cannot control or negotiate on, when they are perfectly happy playing off ST Microelectronics and Texas Instruments against each other on pricing, in exchange for winning the order? Competition is healthy, and it allows Nokia - and countless other companies - the freedom to choose where they get their silicon from. It keeps costs down, and encourages silicon suppliers to keep pushing the bleeding edge of system integration.