Mobile Device Enthusiasts and OEMs: Not Always a Rosy Relationship

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.ppcw.net/?itemid=2121' target='_blank'>http://www.ppcw.net/?itemid=2121</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I think I get this thought at least once a month but as thoughts come - they also go but this time I want to write about it (maybe because the weather is so lousy today that I don't want to do anything else). This week, I had a couple of phone calls, SMS messages and instant messages with my fellow MVP Joe of mobilejoe.de. If you are not German-speaking but a Smartphone enthusiast you know - I'm sure - Paul's MoDaCo. Joe's mobilejoe.de is the same but in German; it's the Smartphone forum here and if you have visited it lately you might have seen the following message there: "Traffic Limit Reached" and now you even get a DNS error!"</i><br /><br />Arne Hess has posted an interesting article on his site, and it's one that I can emphasize with. Give it a read - it might be an eye opener for some of you. It's amazing that a company like T-Mobile would refer customs to an enthusiast's site without bothering to contact that enthusiast and say "Hey, we're sending our customers you way, perhaps we can support the work you do?".<br /><br />As much as I love writing about mobile devices day in and day out, it's amazing how difficult it is to get the cooperation of these companies to help support the work I do. Some companies are great at providing hardware so I don't have to pay out of pocket to review devices (Dell), while other companies tend to ignore people like me (Toshiba). Trying to get financial support from them through advertising and sponsorship is almost impossible - their advertising people don't even look twice at independent Web sites, but they'll happily drop $10K on a full-page magazine ad, even if that ad reaches less of an audience than a Web site does. Enough ranting from me :lol:, but this article reminded me of how frustrating this business can be. :?

[rzanology]

told you to be a school teacher!!! :)

[karen]

I see the same thing for the area in which I specialize. I have a much smaller community than PPC Thoughts, but it is very focused.

I had one vendor laugh when I invited them to post whitepapers and customer presentations, at no cost, to our site. He said "that's very cute - people actually go online to talk to each other?"

I have one vendor that does support the community, but the biggest vendors just laugh at the thought of participating in a 10K member community.

I don't ask for freebee or comps. I speak at their conferences. I write ho-tos on how to make their products meet their customer needs. I pay for servers and software. I'm their channel partner.

But I think these 32-year-old schmoozing sales guys, who have no clue how their products work, who uses them, what they do, who needs their products, etc. don't see a 3 martini, 40 pound steak dinner out of the deal, so they don't want to play in the small leagues.

K

[Mitch D]

It disturbs me that large companies feel that they can get away with this type off stuff, I would be interested in know which magazine that was so I can avoid buying it and supporting someone whom can't do thier own work.

:soapbox:

[rene_canlas]

I wonder how many gadget sites out there feel compelled to give devices "donated" by these vendors good reviews? I suppose there have been cases when a vendor pulled support just because they got bad reviews?

I don't want this thread to turn into a flame war between fans of gadget sites... I'm just wondering aloud.

[Jason Dunn]

I wonder how many gadget sites out there feel compelled to give devices "donated" by these vendors good reviews?

It's a fair question. I don't feel that it's influence my reviews, but hey, I'm probably biased. ;-) Most of the site owners I know are very ethical people, but I know of one who seems to have reviews that are WAY too rosy.

[Don Stratton]

As the product manager for a Pocket PC product I think I have a decent insight into The Way Things Are today. One of the most ironic and appaulling trends I have noticed when working with OEM/ODMs is their desire to provide the cheapest possible components to their customers, typically under the rationale that spending 50 cents more on a Pocket PC will mean the company loses $250,000 over half-a-million units for something that no one will notice, or at least not noticed by the vast majority of less-informed users (my mother/wife/co-workers/etc).

I find this ironic in light of shrinking Pocket PC markets, and an all but certain shift away from handheld computers to intelligent cell phones. It is quite possible that the heyday for Pocket PC sales are behind us, and the number of handheld users will stabilize to a fairly low number of people who want or need handheld functionality. These people will always exist, but they will not be as large a market force as they are now or were a year ago.

My PPC product is for consumer infrared control of home stereo gear (and whatever else you have that is IR controlled). I rely heavily on the capability of the PPC, most notably the IrDA port which we use for both learning and optionally for IR transmission. As some of you may know IrDA is not exactly optimal for emulating a remote control, and some vendors have IrDA ports that work better than others.

Tie-in factoid: SPB just released the results of their semi-massive PPC usage poll. Of the approximately 18,000 respondants (IIRC) there were 21% that said they use their PPC for remote control. That is 3750 people who want to use a Pocket PC for remote control. Considering the various factors involved with such a poll it is very reasonable to assume there are a lot more people who would like to use their PPC for remote control and either don't know it can be done (like my mother/wife/co-workers/etc) because they don't troll the discussion forums looking for information on the subject or people who have tried it or heard about it and decided it isn't usable for them due to limitations of the transmitter options (mostly weak IrDA compared to a "real" remote).

Now, let's assume a company makes a Pocket PC that is explicitly capable of IR remote control. We have to minimize the potential for Nevo on the iPaq in this scenario because it is a costly option for HP to integrate; it requires HP to add hardware support for a ASIC (a custom IC) from UEI (makers of Nevo) which adds considerably to cost and complexity of the design, and they pay shockingly high licensing fees to UEI for both the hardware and software. That is why they do not offer it on all models; it would needlessly drive up the cost of a PPC for, say, a business user who will never need IR remote control.

&lt; By the way, this is "learned speculation". I do not have any form of business or personal relationship with HP or UEI, but I do know a great deal about how their deal would work. I can't tell you why. ;) >

So, a company makes a remote control-capable PPC by adding about 50 cents to their bill of materials. Just for the sake of arguement, let's say this company uses one of SEVERAL different vendor's IrDA module that also incorporates a real consumer remote infrared transmitter, one that will work EVERY BIT AS WELL AS ANY REMOTE. This means there is almost NO extra work done on the hardware design of the PPC, since SOME IrDA module was going to be there anyway. It MIGHT take _one PCB trace_ extra, which adds NOTHING to the cost, but it might also be pin-compatible with standard IrDA transceivers this PPC company might already use.

OK, Don, bring it on home....

SO...

3750 people from SPB's poll might pick this vendor's PPC because they know for certain it will be great for remote control. If they each buy a $200 unit, they have spent over $750,000! THREE-QUARTERS-OF-A-MILLION DOLLARS! Chances are good the number would be higher than that due to purchases of accessories like cradles, cables, etc. as well as niceties like built-in WiFi and/or Bluetooth which raise the list price from a baseline model. I think it is real safe to say that if there was a color PDA with great IR capabilities for $200 there would be a lot of people who would buy it either as a serious feature that sways them towards this vendor versus another vendor without this feature, or even for those who want a color Pronto-style remote control and would buy the PPC solely for that function.

Yet another side note: Cables and other accessories are the single most lucrative areas for PPC vendors. Sure, they make money off the computers, but they make much better margins (cost of making versus cost of selling) on the trivial gear like cradles.

Mo' side notez: Anyone who intends to dedicate, or even regularly use, a PPC for remote control will need at least one more charging station, maybe a cradle and ideally an extra battery that sits in the cradle charging all the time. This translates to mo' money, mo' money, mo' money for the vendor.

In a time of shrinking margins and shrinking user base, perhaps some vendor could be convinced of the wisdom in spending an extra 50 cents if it would give them a competitive advantage that would translate into an increased number of niche sales... and I have only touched on ONE PART of the PPC, CIR. There are many more subtle and reasonably inexpensive options that would add substantial value to other niches. Once vendors get their head around the fact that this isn't mainstream computing and the entire market is a niche perhaps we will see some more cool tweaks and options.

Just my (dramatically more than) $0.02. :)