Modular phones (and computers) is a powerful concept that worked really well with hobbyists (and gamers) so far. It seems to be a healthy duopoly with all-in-one computing devices we're seeing lately.
I know three guys at my work, all software developers, who play SC2 daily on their mac minis.
Project Ara on the other hand is trying to do something else entirely. They have the formfactor defined already, that of a modern smartphone. What makes it so interesting is the fact that they're trying to take that formfactor and add the inherent flexibility that comes with a larger system, but without changing the formfactor. This is akin to getting ATX full tower expansion in the same space as the mac mini or even mac pro. It's a daunting task to say the least, one with a constantly changing frame of reference, as the smartphone evolves into a thinner sleeker and lighter device. This makes the Ara developers jobs doubly hard, as they have to develop for 2 generations ahead of where we are for size and weight constrains, while still keeping the bulky, power hungry, and prone to failure interconnnect that is required to assemble disparate parts into a whole unit, as well as all the modules within this target.
It's a race that they may never win due to how rapidly those targets shift, but we can hope that it's a moonshot project that one day renders tangible benefits for the everyday phone.
To be honest, i'm less and less excited about these physical devices with the set of constraints that being physical devices imparts to them. I really wish that within the next 10 years we hit a Virtualization-level jump in how we interact with information, allowing us to abstract away trivial things like screen size and compute power. The only way this is going to happen is through augmented reality, a clear moonshot project i wish a few more companies invested in rather than the halfhearted attempt that is google glass.
Whee I went off on a tangent there.
Today most servers are built with the ATX form factor in mind since dipping into the sweet cheap ATX form factor components can bring big savings.
At the corporate level. Makes a ton of sense. Consumer level? Hell, we are at the point that the battery isn't even really modular anymore.
Exactly. If Ara succeeds, there is a great deal of potential for the ecosystem to drive down prices while driving up quality of individual components. It won't be the Galaxy S4 vs LG G3, it will be individual cpu units, camera units, individual screens competing against each other. This introduces more granularity into the way the manufacturers compete, and may very likely open up spaces for smaller players to grow.