PDAs May Cost More Than You Think

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/18164.html">http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/18164.html</a><br /><br />Whenever an enterprise thinks about deploying PDAs or wireless devices, the decision often hinges directly on what it costs to use and support the devices. All related costs have to be included, such as wireless fees and support staff time, if an informed decision is to be made.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/newsfactor.gif" /><br /><br />Here's an interesting article on the WirelessNewFactor site that outlines what the true TCO (total cost of ownership) of a PDA is. The estimates may surprise you.<br /><br />What do you think? Could you justify these TCO figures at your place of business?

[crispeto]

WOW! Think about it. If you give a hundred employees a wireless pocket pc, you're looking at close to a half a million per year. That's a dent.

[wiredguy]

IMO, you could do this kind of analysis into everything we buy:

Buying Groceries:
- Wear and tear on your vehicle
- Gasoline prices
- Tax at the checkout line
- Electricity for refrigerator
- The cost for having the pantry built into your house
- The lost hours of work (could be earning $$$s)

Shopping Clothing
- Wear and tear on your vehicle
- Gasoline prices
- Tax at the checkout line
- Washer &amp; Dryer costs
- The lost hours of work (could be earning $$$s)

...there is typically a maintenance cost in the form of time or money for everything.

[Robert Levy]

From the article: Gartner (NYSE: IT) analysts have estimated...

...and all of us who went to Pocket PC Summit know how informed the Gartner analysts are when it comes to the PDA market

[heliod]

It is a well known fact in the IT industry that everything you buy (software and hardware) has hidden costs behind it. For example, when they buy a corporate software, the cost of the software technician (that already exists in their team) that will have to install the software to all users (instead of doing something else) is many times higher than the cost of the software itself.

IT Managers do all these calculations when they decide to buy or not a product, and believe me they are not afraid of these numbers. TCO goes agains ROI (Return on Investment), and if they have enough to earn by using the product, and the ROI will be fast, they will swallow the hidden costs with no problem.

Sure, in the consumer market, where people like us are not aware of all this, those are very frightening numbers.

[Will T Smith]

PC's are a disaster in terms of cost of ownership. They break easily and are difficult to set up, operate, and train user's for.


The entire point of the PDA is to get away from all of that. It's truly a personal device that a user can take with them (as opposed to a laptop).

Enter Compaq and their ever popular iPaq. iPaq far and away accounts for most of the bugs, glitches, software patches, dust storms, recalls, etc.. among the PocketPC vendors. Add expansion jackets and their individualized cases (for screen protection) and you've produced a deployment and maintenance nightmare.

This is not a new topic for me. I've been railing about this ever since the merger. I cannot conceive of an IT department that would choose iPaq over the slim, svelt, low-maintenance Jornada.

HP is touting 70% of total market share between the iPaq and Jornada lines. If they continue with the Compaq part alone (the iPaq) they will loose most that to emerging competitors like Toshiba, Asus, and most notably Symbol (for vertical markets and industrial applications).

The iPaq as it currently is packaged is not a business appliance. It's a high-maintenance gadget that owe's it's commanding market share to it's early market prescense and high-profile styling. Ultimately, the styling is now outdated and impractical.

Should HP wish to stay a player in the business sphere, they will release the Jornada 570 under the iPaq brand name. Businesses simply will not bite on the high-maintenance, low-quailty iPaq track record with stellar alternatives from the afore-mentioned vendors.

[Mark (NL)]

Enter Compaq and their ever popular iPaq. iPaq far and away accounts for most of the bugs, glitches, software patches, dust storms, recalls, etc.. among the PocketPC vendors. Add expansion jackets and their individualized cases (for screen protection) and you've produced a deployment and maintenance nightmare.

...

HP is touting 70% of total market share between the iPaq and Jornada lines. If they continue with the Compaq part alone (the iPaq) they will loose most that to emerging competitors like Toshiba, Asus, and most notably Symbol (for vertical markets and industrial applications).

...

The iPaq as it currently is packaged is not a business appliance. It's a high-maintenance gadget that owe's it's commanding market share to it's early market prescense and high-profile styling. Ultimately, the styling is now outdated and impractical.

...

Should HP wish to stay a player in the business sphere, they will release the Jornada 570 under the iPaq brand name. Businesses simply will not bite on the high-maintenance, low-quailty iPaq track record with stellar alternatives from the afore-mentioned vendors.

You should at least put in a "I thinks" or "In my opinion" You are telling this as fact, yet I know from the sales I do, that a lot of Companies are going for the iPAQ because of the sleeve concept... I'm not saying it is my favorite design or that I think it is the best decission HP could have made, but I've seen that their customers seem to like it...

[Timothy Rapson]

I sure hope my wife doesn't read this. :(

She thinks that because the PDA was bought for me I am not taking money out of the family budget. :twisted:

SSSSSHHHHHHH!!!!!

[handheldplanet]

I have to agree completely with csc on this one. I could step into this forum and say, "see, this is why you need to buy one of our cases - you really need to protect that expensive asset." But, I was at Pocket PC Summit, and it really was hilarious how little the Gartner "expert" knew about the PDA market. It appeared to me that most of his fact finding actually came from "opinion gathering" which is to say that he just asked a bunch of people what they thought about the market - those who told him the loudest or in the most persuasive way influenced him the most. I also am a BIG believer in the saying, "93% of all statistics are made up on the spot," - of course in saying that I admit that I just made up that statistic on the spot. I also ascribe to the concept taught in Scott Adam's The Dilbert Principle wherein most of us make up our minds first and then look for supporting data (which we always either find or make up) to back up our opionion; moreover we either ignore or justify anything to the contrary. I would guess that this Gartner Group guy was tasked with finding, "just how expensive it can cost to own a PDA," rather than, "establish the true cost of ownership - including efficiency improvement BENEFITS of owning a PDA." In short I would recommend taking "expert opinions" with a grain of salt.

[Brad Adrian]

I have to agree completely with csc on this one.

So, are you saying that the TCO for these devices is much less than the estimates in the report? There is some definite wiggle room in the estimates, such as how much is spent for a wireless provider each month, but do you feel that the support costs are too high?

[RobertCF]

I would argue that, as I expected, the article said not one word about how this compares to the desktop, server, or notebook segment. It stands to reason that, by definition of what PDAs in the Enterprise are used for, the TCO and ROI would be pretty close to that of other computing devices. The wireless component they threw in there would be no more or less costly than it would for the notebooks or even the desktops (for those businesses who've opted for not laying new wire in old buildings). I think just about the only area that TCO would be more for PDAs than for the other segments might be security implementation. Because the PDA tends to be more accessible, more affordable than, say, notebooks (which also more frequently utilize wireless for connectivity) that keeping reigns on users going down to Wal-mart and buying a PDA with a wireless card and showing up on the company net.
Basically, it's my opinion that if a company figures the TCO along the same lines they do other computing devices (assuming they actually do) then they probably won't be noticeably off the mark.

[handheldplanet]

Brad,

Thanks for asking for clarification on my statements. Primarily I was just going off on his expert opinion. It's absolutely obvious that these cost breakdowns are just guesses - the author's opinion based on what? If he were to have investigated implementations of PDAs across various sectors, industries, and companies and quoted from a summary of the data he discovered, we'd be looking at cost of ownership numbers like "58.7% of this and 42.3% of that out of the 10,000 companies surveyed - which qualified for the survey by implementing x number of PDAs, etc." It's terrible that those of us who are less informed should fall prey to such useless "expert" opinions. I wonder if this guy even owns a PDA.

Additionally, yes, I am saying that costs are less than $3K/year. Take for example the implementation of a Palm VII (which is my best guess at what some companies are still implementing when it comes to wireless solutions - and it's something I've had experience implementing). You can pick them up for $250 including the wireless activation. And then you add $50/month for the service (if that). Total = $850. Then add any support costs over a year - with email configuration, troubleshooting, etc. you're looking at maybe and additional $1000 MAX (I personally believe that it would be much less since I've owned a Palm VII for a year and it never cost me anything in support). However the ROI on a wireless email device like that is tremendous. Now, take that a step further by making it a Pocket PC with wireless. Equipment costs are a bit higher - maybe $500 - $600 more. Wireless access is the same ($50/month). Support may be a little more since you've now got some configuration to get your entire corporate database or whatever accessable wirelessly. If you're doing all of this for a single device you may get up to $3000 the first year in costs. But with a larger scale implementation you only have to develop/adapt your network side/software side one time so your total costs go down. Implement 200 or 2000 wireless devices with only one primary configuration to allow them all access - you're looking mostly at hardware and wireless costs. Additionally, after the primary rollout development costs drop substantially.

The author doesn't provide ANY ROI estimates. Had he studied a group of companies with wireless PDA implementations he could have at least reported on their range of ROIs. My guess is that he found it too difficult to estimate an ROI (since he didn't have any real data) so he didn't even attempt it. What a joke!

I'm not a big fan of an "expert" touting his guesses as fact - especially when he has no data to back it up. Interestingly enough, what I wrote in my pre-previous paragraph is just based on my past experience so I may be doing the exact same thing as the expert - except I know I at least have the experience AND I don't have an audience of a half a billion people OR an officially made up title as "expert."

So, what do you think of that? :-)

[possmann]

Many people with power - read in check writing authority - review these studies and take them as gospel. I personally have seen more "news" and reports (opinions) from Gartner lately that are questionable when reviewed by much of a user base - goes in this industry/marketplace (PDA) as well as other places I also see their reports.
Personally I am dissapointed with their Dilbert Principle method of providing reports and analysis. We can all point to certain areas, but I would certainly appreciate otrher viewpoints from other research companies regarding this same study.
I'm not a believer that these devices cost this much money. Having said thta I would be cusrious to know how much Garnter believes Laptops cost... One could "assume" that based on this study they would be much higher - if they come in under, then I would really question the validity of this report.