Orlando, FL ? A Nokia executive at CTIA Wireless 2011 said that the word "open" is overused, especially when talking about mobile platforms.

Panelists during the "Herding the OS Cats: Increasing Consumer Choice and Decreasing Fragmentation" panel discussed how disparate platforms can be harnessed to provide consumers with a familiar and enjoyable experience. The panel focused on which platforms drive the pace of convergence in the coming years.

?I think open is a dangerous word,? said Eric Klein, vice president of technology planning at Nokia, San Francisco. ?At the end of the day, what we?re trying to build is a good customer experience.

?Open is overused and I think sometimes abused as a term,? he said. ?We need to look at how we drive customer innovation.

?You can apply open to a lot of different things, but at the end of the day customers don?t associate a lot of value with an operating system platform.?

The panel was moderated by Avi Greengart, research director of devices at Current Analytics, New York.

Open discussion
Rosemary McNally, executive director of technology at Verizon Wireless, New York, agrees with Mr. Klein.

?I think there?s more at play than the Android being an open platform and others like the iPhone being closed,? Ms. McNally said. ?Fundamentally we have to assume that we have the same definition of open.

?There are a lot of definitions of open that simply mean open source,? she said. ?Everyone has a different flavor with openness.

?Both Android?s platform and Apple?s iOS have strengths and weaknesses associated with them.?

Dan Hoffman, chief mobile security evangelist at Juniper Networks, Chicago, believes being open is very advantageous.

?That?s why the Android operating system has been so successful,? Mr. Hoffman said.

Fragmented channel
The challenge that many face with an open source platform is managing fragmentation, per Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation, London.

?It?s because you do lose control of the platform in a way,? Mr. Gillis said. ?There?s that challenge of managing fragmentation.

In addition to the open source argument, Nokia?s Mr. Klein believes that there are two distinct application platforms ? native and Web.

?At the end of the day, what we want is to build the right tools for developers,? Mr. Klein said.

Accordinng to LiMo?s Mr. Gillis, the operating systems should focus on a user?s perspective.

?Three years ago, the OS from the user?s perspective was really the user interface,? Mr. Gillis said. ?That was the extent of the experience and today through the proper arrival of the mobile Internet and convergence, it?s different and it?s delivering an entire user experience and a set of core services.

Feature phones
During the session, the panelists also discussed whether there was going to be a decline of feature phones this year.

Verizon?s Ms. McNally said that although feature phones may get more sophisticated, there will never be a decline since the majority of users have more feature phones than smartphones.

?The smartphone space has been coming aggressively and a significant part of our portfolio is being driven by the smartphone space, but that doesn?t take our eye off the broad amount of users that use feature phones.

?The will be continuous marketing for feature phones and we will keep focusing on it.?