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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Mobius 2005: The Report
I wrote this off and on during the sessions at the recent Mobius 2005 conference. It's a bit stream-of-consciousness, so you'll have to forgive me if it tends to ramble a bit, or switches tense. I had hoped to have this published sooner, but after my flight home was delayed by 5 hours which got me into bed by 3:30 AM, the next few days were a bit of groggy write-off as I tried to dig myself out of a mound of email and tasks. I didn't write about every session - I took bits of pieces of what I found interesting and relevant.
I'm down here in lovely downtown Seattle for Mobius, a conference that Microsoft puts on every 12-16 months for a mix of mobile device community leaders, journalists, and analysts. Full disclosure: it's an all-expenses paid trip (hotel + airfare) for most of us, though some people paid their own way, and we always end up getting some goodies to take home and play with. The real focus of Mobius is to bring together the leaders of the top mobile devices communities and Web sites, to show them what Microsoft is up to, and to have discussions with them about the mobile space.
Windows Mobile 5 & Applications
The first presenter was Ford Davidson. He spoke on a variety of topics, but I'll focus on the ones I felt most interesting. First up, we have an official unveiling of Office Mobile. Some of the details were sketchy - in fact, most of the details were sketchy. No firm date for launch. No word on pricing - maybe it will be free? They were a bit tongue-in-cheek when they were discussing it. I brought up the confusion of having an Office Mobile suite that was essentially a series of viewing tools, but having Word Mobile on the Pocket PC which had editing capabilities. They're in a bit of a branding nightmare here, and it will only get worse if they decide to remove the Word and Excel Mobile applications from the Pocket PC and somehow try and replace it with Office Mobile. They didn't mention they were planning on doing that, but they need to unite all these pieces somehow.
Figure 1: A table-top view of Mobius 2005
Ford also showed off Communicator Mobile, which interfaces with Live Communications Server (LCS). He talked about being able to do VOIP calls, but it required him to be on the Redmond LAN. LCS sounds interesting, but I'm sensing another massive disconnect between LCS and MSN Messenger, even worse than the whole Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger confusion. I know some Microsoft people that are using LCS and apparently they can't add MSN Messenger users to their contact lists - I have no idea if this is correct, or a permanent situation, but the single worst thing you can do in a situation like this is break people into two groups and not allow them to communicate with each other.
And I finally saw the Treo 700w. Ford did a bit of a demo, showing us the things that Palm added to the 700w to make it have the "Palm experience". The small, square screen looked pretty cramped, especially the today screen. I know they did 240 x 240 for performance and battery life reasons, but the Windows Mobile user interface is just too big for a 240 x 240 interface. When you press the talk button, you get a pop-up menu that shows the recently dialled numbers. There's also photo speed dial, allowing you to click on a photo to dial the number of that person - nice touch! There's a search toolbar on the today screen - you can type a term into the field and it will search Google (and presumably open the results in IE Mobile). Video caller ID has also been added - rather that being able to only select a photo, you can select a video that will play when a call from that person comes in. Seems a bit useless to me personally, but it's neat.
Next the Samsung i300 was shown - this Smartphone has a 3 GB hard drive built-in. Being able to use the keypad to automatically filter through hundreds of songs is very cool - you start typing the name of the artist, or the song, and it will filter through the content and show you what you want. Very cool! Of course Windows Media Player 10 mobile hasn't been improved much with Windows Mobile 5 - it still won't auto-discover new content without you telling it to, and it still picks up ring tones and other sound files instead of just music. I can't blame WMP10 Mobile too much though, because its desktop counterpart is equally dysfunctional in this regard.
Figure 2: The HTC Prophet. Full sized image.
Next he demoed the HTC Prophet. It's the same size as the I-Mate Jam, and has a good solid feel to it. I'm not sure what the casing is made of, but it looks great and doesn't show fingerprints like most black shells, so that's an improvement in my books.
Sling Media
Jeremy from Sling Media showed us the Slingbox, a place shifting device. Similar to timeshifting, place shifting allows you to access the content you want, where you want it. The device was launched earlier in 2005, and in Best Buy they sold out across the chain in the first weekend. Their goal is to turn any display device into a TV set � they work on, or have plans to work on, Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Java-based devices, and others. He was careful not to commit to exactly when they'd deliver on those platforms. He wanted to show us the out of box experience, so he factory reset the unit he brought along to demonstrate. The setup was surprisingly simple, although he did have a bit of trouble getting the IR blaster working. The Slingbox uses Universal Plug and Play, so when the user starts the install procedure it automatically discovers the device on the network.
Figure 3: The Slingbox from Sling Media. Apparently I'm going to get sent one - cool! Although I have to admit that timeshifting is more important to me than place shifting, because I don't travel all that often. But I'm sure it will be fun to check out.
They're currently beta testing a PAL version, so in Q1 of next year they plan on having the product available in Europe and other PAL markets. He then showed us a demo of their pre-beta client running on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC. He was connected over WiFi, and while the display was a little choppy, it looked fairly good (the room seemed to be a bandwidth vortex). It has a full screen landscape mode, which looked great, and on the Sprint 6700 Pocket PC Phone Edition he was using for the demo, the keyboard is mapped to the functions of the applications. You can pull up the remote control and change channels and other functions, and generally control most aspects of controlling your remote TV. The Pocket PC client will be a public beta, and cover Windows Mobile 5 and Pocket PC 2003 devices - I got the feeling it was "coming soon".
Jupiter Research
Michael Gartenberg from Jupiter research gave us a presentation that covered the mobile device landscape. He had some interesting statistics based on surveys they had done � 33% of consumers want to carry one device, but surprisingly the bulk of the other 2/3rds were willing to carry two or three devices. It dropped off drastically at four devices, but the results made me raise an eyebrow. So what do people carry? 76% of people are willing to carry mobile phones with them regularly. Second on the list was digital cameras at 34%, matched by laptops at 34%. PDAs with connectivity come in at 19%, followed strangely by portable CD players at 17%. Non-connected PDAs came in at 10%, and portable music players at 7%. What do people use these devices for? 74% of people want telephony � that's a core feature. 28% want email. These change over time as well � in 2004. 74% of people wanted telephony, but it dropped to 64% in 2005. Email jumped from 28% in 2004 to 37% in 2005. That shows a definite shift in how people communicate - phone is still important, but email is becoming increasingly important.
When it comes to music, it's interesting to note how much music most people have � the sweet spot is still 1000 songs. The bulk of users don't have that number mind you, but having enough space for 1000 songs is enough storage for most of users. According to his statistics, I�m in the 2% bracket of having more than 5000 songs. Music has always been binary � you either hear it on the radio (free) or a CD (paid). Gartenberg believes that subscription services can become popular, but they need to be framed properly to the consumer. When it comes to mobile video, 38% of people surveyed were interested in watching full-length movies on a portable media player. That flies in the face of what the mainstream press is saying, but it makes sense to me. This is the same mainstream press that was saying that no one wanted any sort of mobile video � until the iPod Video came out, then it suddenly made sense to them.
The major challenge for mobile devices today is battery power � he brought up the example of the Sony NZ90 which had a surprisingly good camera, but the flash took up so much power that after seven or eight photos with flash, the battery was practically dead. That's also the big challenge with converged devices - if you use up battery life on one task, it compromises the other things you want to do. I have some personal epiphanies about this very subject that I'll cover later.
So what do consumers want? According to Gartenberg, they want small handsets with large colour screens that also play music. Notice the conflict there - small devices with big screens. That's why I think roll-up screens might be the magical solution, but it's many years down the road. The #1 trait is small size, followed by PIM functionality, SMS, email, and large colour screens. Downloading ring tones was important to 21% of people, while taking pictures was important to 19%. Balancing the features is a tricky proposition because there's no perfect device � everything still has compromises.
Windows Mobile Next Generation: Photon
As has been mentioned elsewhere, Photon is the code-name for the next generation of Windows Mobile that is still years away. We were given a demo, and all I can say is "wow". And that's really all I'm allowed to say about it. We're not under an NDA for Mobius, but it was asked that we keep it "off the record" so I'm respecting the trust they put in us regarding Photon. And no, I won't answer questions about Photon so don't ask. ;-)
Motorola
Later, Paul from Motorola gave us an overview of the organizational structure of their company, and the design goals they have for their products. On the Razr for instance, they wanted to create an icon and one that had no compromises. They've definitely succeeded in making the Razr a cultural icon (in North America at least), but not having used one I can't comment on the "no compromise" element. Being a Windows Mobile guy, anything lacking that operating system is inherently a compromise for me. He talked about the importance of a signature execution � the glow that a Razr emits when it's opened is an example of this. The PEBL was designed to be simple first and foremost � I imagine its signature execution on the PEBL is the shape.
I held one in my hands briefly, and the shape and feel of the outer shell evokes an impression that it was naturally designed. It has a feeling of quality that is sadly lacking in almost every Windows Mobile device on the market today. Seeing the PEBL reinforced my belief that Motorola has the design skills to bring a fantastic Windows Mobile phone to the market, and that something really bizarre happened with the MPx220 because it was so far below the bar in terms of fit and finish. The design quality of Windows Mobile devices is still far below the bar of mainstream feature phones.
The Motorola Q will be coming out in CDMA format first, which frustrates me to no end because that means I'll never be able to use one until my local CDMA carrier (Telus) releases it. I can't even review one � the last time I went to Telus to ask them to activate a Samsung i700 for review purposes they refused. I got a bit of hands-on time with the Q and while the thinness and overall design is superb, I didn't like the keyboard very much � the keys required too much pressure to hit, and are shaped in such a way that it hindered my use. I'm hoping the final shipping version (they're still saying Q1 2006) will be different.
Some of the other presentations included Xbox 360, Windows Automotive, and industry trends. We also had some interesting group work and brainstorming, which I'll be posting about later on.
Closing Thoughts
Mobius 2005 was, as always, a fun event. I really enjoy networking and learning from people like myself who run technology Web sites. It's always interesting to hear what Microsoft is up to, and especially interesting to hear the opinions of other people in the mobile device industry who are much more in touch with how other phones work. I'm so focused on Windows Mobile that I don't think about the competition much.
For the record, the main items I received from the conference: an iMate SP5m (score!), a jacket with the craziest lining you've ever seen, a Motorola Razrwire (sunglasses with a Bluetooth headset), and a 128 MB miniSD card.
Other Mobius 2005 coverage: The Gadgeteer, pocketnow.com, Clinton Fitch.com.
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Alberta, Canada.
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