Smart Phones 2008

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Road warriors

Analysts have long predicted that converged devices like smartphones will replace PDAs, cell phones, and laptops. That prediction was repeated last week by yet another study describing a hockey-stick-like growth curve for smartphones.

2008: Apple's iPhone and Nokia's N95 have been great smart phone successes during 2007. Apple has been doing quite well in USA. However, we still have to see if the company can manage to sell 10 million phones before the end of this year.

2004: As attractive as smartphones and other converged devices are, they are unlikely to become the sole device carried by many mobile workers. That's because there inevitably are sacrifices when you shrink the size of devices and increase the number of things they can do. It isn't to be writing a long e-mail message on a small communicator or pda.

2008: Four years later, the problem with the size of the small screen is still there. iPhone made a change. The move towards bigger displays and Internet convergence continues.

2004: As a result, many, if not most, road warriors will still need a laptop, even as converged devices replace cell phones and PDAs. That's why it might be more accurate to think of smartphones and the like as the devices that PDAs and cell phones should have been all along, instead of replacements for all other mobile devices. As such, they deserve to sell like hotcakes, particularly when prices come down and new capabilities, such as Wi-Fi and wireline access, are added.

2008: For me the laptop is basically more important than the phone. It's my work-horse. The arrival of the post-PC era is still post-poned by myself. I need a big keyboard and large display even when I travel.

2004: More important, these new-generation devices push us closer to the dream of ubiquitous access to information. That dream may never be fully realized, but the closer we get, the more efficient and productive we become. That is the true value of converged devices, and it's why enterprises should take an increasingly close look at them.

2008: We see a move towards "ubiquitous access to information" with e.g. the Finnish highspeed 3G broadband connections. The combination of Internet and Mobile would be a perfect solution unless the cost or roaming wouldn't be so damned expensive when traveling outside your own country.