What Happened? Politically incorrect type from the land of hype.
Well so much for the US consumer PDA, err sorry Palmtop, or should that be Communicator or perhaps the Organizer - explosion. Well explosion in the context of something that erupts and destroys itself is possibly about right. Where is all the glory and enthusiasm of 1995? “Err, think of something quick about mitigating factors”, say the analysts (is analie the plural?). But its all OK! Microsoft are here to show us how it's all done. Well.... perhaps not show us how it's all done, but definitely to show us what you can do with a cannibalized OS and a veritable national debt sized marketing budget.
But sneer ye not disbelievers! Gargantuan marketing dollars combined with (just) functioning products are perhaps what it takes to finally undo some of the damage that the illustrious Newton did to US consumer confidence. However consider the size of Microsoft against the size of Apple. If Apple’s Newton budget allowed them to have the effect they did on consumer confidence, just think of the sort of havoc that Microsoft could wreak if they don’t at least get the basic proposition right. The phrase “A GPF in your pocket” immediately springs to mind. Still I’m sure they’d never release an OS that crashes on a daily basis..... err, oh dear!
Now I mentioned the US consumer market back there because, for some reason, the US seems to lag behind Europe in those small electronic objects of desire which have the magical propinquity (look it up, I had to) factor. Before you throw your hands up in horror at this gross lack of patriotism, spend some time in any major European city and you’ll see that even the homeless are equipped with a GSM phone and a Psion palmtop. You spend most of the time walking into people staring at the ground seemingly engrossed in telephone conversations about the weather and the price of goats cheese or sending SMS messages to each other about what time they’re planning to have tea.
Now I'm sure it's not all Newton’s fault, and we can't really blame General Magic as they were scuppered in the harbor, so to speak. Perhaps the problem really lies with the mobile phone companies (it's about time we had someone else to blame!). Well roll back your sleeves and take another sip from your latte, I will attempt to explain all.
Why are Pagers so ubiquitous? Lets face it, they're inexpensive to buy and run, small enough to clip to your belt without fear of groin injury every time you sit down and easy (kind of) to use. Well not that easy compared to a phone - and you will know this from the first time you ever had a page and tried to delete it using the two unmarked buttons on the top. Well that’s a lie, one of them has a triangle on it, which we must assume is to do something with “gay” messages. Oh, and did I mention they’re inexpensive. But basically a simple proposition for simple folk.
But think about it further, Pagers are crap really. If you don’t spend most of the day beside a phone you get “pager trauma”, a phenomenon brought about by the inability to respond to a page because you’re sat in a five mile tailback on highway 101 trying to get to or from Venture Capital Valley. I believe there is actually a conspiracy by the pager companies to move the space time continuum, so that pages only arrive when your on highway 101 during rush hour, but that’s another story.
What everyone really wants is a mobile phone, but unfortunately, due to extortionate service charges, hopeless battery life and “groin risk” form factors, no-one can afford them without first selling their sole to the “dark one”. In other words, Microsoft employees. Sorry but I must pause for a rant. Something about “Him” scares me. The whole concept of the “virtual date” (no this is not a form of electronic fruit), for yuppies that can’t spend an evening together because they’re presumably “power commuting” around the globe, asset stripping established family businesses or “power interfacing” with each other (this actually means plugging in an appliance). They go out and do the same thing in their relative locations, like go to a Pizza restaurant or Movie. When they get back to their yuppie transit burrows (Hiltons), they phone each other to discuss the quality of their respective pepperoni or Tom Cruise. Still this is not getting us anywhere - back to the phone theory.
So we want inexpensive usable digital mobile phones like the rest of the world has, but due to, dare I say it, FREE ENTERPRISE (shock!), we’re left with a bunch of phone companies diverging over a standard to use and up until recently trying to ignore the issues in the hope that it’ll go away. However, a standard digital network nationwide, would increase consumer confidence and participation. This can be achieved because the vastly increased network capacity allows many more consumers to partake cheaply in this new technology more inexpensively, because service providers don’t have to worry about saturating the available bandwidth. In short digital phones have a much longer life, present less “groin risk”, have stacks of extra widgets and can be vastly cheaper to maintain if the network providers don’t get greedy. Compare this with the analog proposition, which is basically, “It’s a phone that you can carry around and use, but not too much because if the batteries don’t get you, the monthly service charges will”.
But hold on there a second! Is that our GSM knight in shining armor on the horizon? Nope - several companies have taken it upon themselves to adopt proprietary and largely unproven digital standards in the shape of CDMA and CDPD (TDMA based like GSM), because God forbid we should try and adopt a worldwide standard in the US. Before you start weeping into your smoothie, the battles not over yet and the GSM based PCS1900 networks are in with a fighting chance, especially considering that some of the more sensible phone companies have thought further into the future than just wanting to re-use their existing base stations.
So why all this rambling about phone standards? Welllll, believe it or not there is a point to all this and its all about consumers acceptance of electronics in their pockets. A bit of research in Europe turns up a (not very) surprising statistic. People who use Mobile phones also use PDA’s. Gosh! The premise is perhaps a simple one. Acceptance of pocket sized electronic devices needs to be brought about first through a familiar object of a similar size (pagers are smaller), such as a phone from there the consumer feels they have made the technology leap and are more accepting of new pocket doodads. So how do we get more mobile phones out there? Simple, make them work and make them affordable.
A further part of the proposition is that the PDA and the phone can “mate” and fondle each others functionality. However if they mate too much they produce offspring. The first resultant chimera from this union is the Nokia 9000 communicator, but this unfortunately does not fulfill the magic three factors required by consumers in this segment - price, performance and form factor. It wildly misses the first, makes a half hearted attempt at the second and doesn’t quite make it on the third. One strike and you’re out, sorry. But it is a nicely put together product, doomed it seems like most recent offerings, to be shoveled into the corporate segment, to remotely chip away at the consumer market.
With digital networks really going live over the next year we hope to see the emergence of accessible digital mobile phones. Couple this with Microsoft’s advertising budget and perhaps we’re in with a fighting chance rather than having to change the nature of our business to suit the failings of the product offerings.
Amongst all of this however there is a quiet and modest success story in the shape of Psion, who seem to be constantly overlooked out here in the land of the free. Those wacky Brits have been at it again! For the last 12 years in fact, during which time they have managed to sell over 2 million units, 1 million of which are part of their Series 3 range. Now there at least is a user base to work with. Earlier in the year they announced the licensing of their OS and a new 32 bit variant. If the 32 bit OS is up to the same high standard as their existing 16 bit offering, we have a challenge to the dark lords empire. The others to watch are those crafty Pilot fellows. They’ve been out there making a bit of a name for themselves and doing well through the retail channels. The only question with Pilot is, like Microsoft, where do they go next? Pilot’s are not exactly overwhelmed with functionality and Windows CE sounds like a stripped version of Windows, that only just fits into 4MB (choke!) and doesn’t even support printing or faxing (what we in the trade call “comedy basics”). The others have not had any form of success in consumer markets and are all floundering a bit, so probably are not worth thinking too deeply about until they have some success. Oops! I forgot about Sharp. Now, the nice people at Sharp will tell you they have around a million users of the Zaurus, but bear in mind that approximately 90% of these are the radically different Japanese version, which is fine if you’re developing in Japanese for the Japanese market. Be tricked not by the smoke and mirrors!
So what does this all amount to. Well, there is some success out there already, though its not screaming mass market stuff yet. Microsoft brings a big marketing stick to the table, but we have to watch that it’s not really a double edged sword and if the digital mobile phone industry can get its act together over the next year, the prospects could be looking a lot healthier for the likes of the humble PDA developer.
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