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  #1  
Old 04-10-2002, 12:28 AM
Ed Hansberry
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Default Smart phone market projected to grow slowly

http://allnetdevices.com/wireless/news/2002/04/09/smart_phones.html

"So-called smart phones that combine handheld and wireless telephony will be a small part of the overall market for wireless devices for the next few years, but they will be an important one, according to a market study released Tuesday by In-Stat/MDR." The article goes on to mention that price, interoperability issues and convincing the consumer of the benefits are the big hurdles.

Price is a big issue. 8MB greyscale Treo's are at least $399 with a contract. Add color, 32MB of RAM, a 32bit processor and a small case (the Treo is not small by phone standards) and you could easily hit $600 for the phone with a two year agreement.

Interoperability in the US? HA! What interoperability? The mix of CDMA, TDMA and GSM make enough of a mess as it is, but you cannot even roam a Verizon CDMA network with your Sprint PCS CDMA phone without dropping into analog mode, a no-no for data services.

Finally, convincing the consumer of the benefits. On the face of it, smart phones offer HUGE benefits. But until the infrastructure is in place, and I mean the IT infrastructure, it is going to be difficult to sell the story. Those of you in big companies supporting PDA's may well have wireless access where you can VPN into your corporate network, sync against a server with products like Mobile Information Server or XTNDConnect Server allowing the sending and receiving of emails and data. But users in small companies and SOHO users do not have this ability. The question is, will carriers see this and offer "cloud" services to these smaller clients? Will these customers trust their carrier to house their precious data and not lose it or peek at their email address database?

Personally, I think smart phone devices offer tremendous potential. Those companies like Microsoft and Nokia going full head of steam with genuine well thought out smart phone products will be rewarded versus those that just glue an ear piece and antenna to their PDA and call it a smart phone. PDA functionality will be in the hands of people that would never consider buying even a $100 PDA. I think the smart phone market will dwarf the PDA market in a few years. The question is, will they be properly marketed and supported, enabling them to catch up to the dumb phone market share?
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 01:42 AM
Duncan
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you cannot even roam a Verizon CDMA network with your Sprint PCS CDMA phone without dropping into analog mode
ANALOG? You still have analog?! Dear Lord - the mobile situation in the States really IS in a mess! The sooner GSM/GPRS are adopted all over the better for you... you really have my utmost sympathy - somebody really screwed up with mobile network rollouts in the US!
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 01:44 AM
Scott R
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I keep reading these sorts of claims about how the MS smartphone will blow away the Palm "slapped-on" :roll: offerings but something that gets consistently left out is the issue of price. It looks like the Sendo (MS smartphone) will cost upwards of $400 (maybe even quite a bit upwards). At that price point, it won't be taking off in the mass consumer market that currently buy Palm m105's and gets their cell phones for free. The Kyocera can be found in this range. The Treo is overpriced, IMO. I think that the Palm phones have a lot more leeway in terms of coming down in price. The MS-based phones require more horsepower (and, hence, $$$) to support the advanced audio and graphics stuff.

I won't argue with you about the fine points of whether or not the MS Smartphone is a better smartphone since I like a lot of what I've seen (though I haven't seen a live device, so I'm still skeptical). The Palm OS and UI was designed around a PDA, not a phone. Kyocera did the best job, IMO, of leveraging and modifying where necessary, but it still has significant usability issues in both the phone and PDA departments.

Bottom line, if the Sendo turns out to work as well as it looks like it might, it would make a killer consumer smartphone at <$200. Above that, and it's market will be largely us geeks. And, personally, at the price point that it looks like the Sendo will be coming in at, I think I'd prefer the Nokia (whatever that model is - the one with the clamshell design and 640-pixel-wide screen) since it would offer higher geek-potential.

Scott
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 02:18 AM
Kilmerr
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Smartphone, smartphone....

RIM is already becoming a 'wireless data device' no need for voice. Blackberry already at 13,200 companies, US Congress included. And Pocket PC Phone Edition just inching its way out. RIM is in this space too. Not just a Nokia vs. MS deal. SmartPhone? Whole lotta cheerleading going on for something not even out yet.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...02043_6504.htm
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 04:50 AM
Ed Hansberry
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Originally Posted by Kilmerr
Smartphone, smartphone....

RIM is already becoming a 'wireless data device' no need for voice. Blackberry already at 13,200 companies, US Congress included. And Pocket PC Phone Edition just inching its way out. RIM is in this space too. Not just a Nokia vs. MS deal. SmartPhone? Whole lotta cheerleading going on for something not even out yet.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...02043_6504.htm
Sorry, but RIM is a bugfart in the handheld space (321,000 total users according to RIM's press release today) that has tons of media hype but not big volumes behind it, and nothing on the horizon that is going to make it take off. I know absolutely zero RIM users that don't take a cell phone with them as well, and from what I've seen of the new voice enabled RIM, that won't change things.

And all of that aside, if RIM doesn't figure out how to turn that red stuff on their income statement black, and the 27% decline in sales YOY isn't helping that, there won't be a RIM to worry about.
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 03:49 PM
marlof
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Old 04-10-2002, 03:58 PM
Janak Parekh
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Default Smart phone market projected to grow slowly

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
Interoperability in the US? HA! What interoperability? The mix of CDMA, TDMA and GSM make enough of a mess as it is, but you cannot even roam a Verizon CDMA network with your Sprint PCS CDMA phone without dropping into analog mode, a no-no for data services.
Interestingly, Verizon phones can now roam onto Sprint if you have the America's Choice plan. They signed a roaming agreement for that direction.

As to vice-versa, it's inexplicable why Sprint hasn't done the same. Part technological issue (a lot of Sprint phones are only 1900MHz CDMA, not 800MHz CDMA), but more importantly it's a business issue.

BTW, TDMA will be gone from the US in the next 2-3 years. AT&T and Cingular are aggressively converting to GSM as we speak. We'll be down to GSM and CDMA within the next few years, and as I mention in the next post wCDMA & cdma2000. Yes, it's not European interoperability, but it is getting better.

--bdj
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 04:00 PM
Janak Parekh
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Originally Posted by Duncan
ANALOG? You still have analog?! Dear Lord - the mobile situation in the States really IS in a mess! The sooner GSM/GPRS are adopted all over the better for you... you really have my utmost sympathy - somebody really screwed up with mobile network rollouts in the US!
Ahem... urban areas all have digital coverage. Analog is there as a FCC-mandated backup network in urban areas, and is actually quite useful in that regard. For rural areas, there is no profit motive for the wireless companies to invest billions of dollars upgrading.

As to GSM/GPRS, it's certainly available here, in most urban areas. However, even that is time-limited in Europe - we're all moving to wCDMA/cdma2000 phones in the next 4-5 years. Qualcomm has also mentioned that it is technically feasible to build phones that encapsulate both protocols -- time will tell if subscribers demand it.

--bdj
 
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Old 04-10-2002, 04:47 PM
Scott R
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Default Smart phone market projected to grow slowly

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Originally Posted by BigDaddyJ
BTW, TDMA will be gone from the US in the next 2-3 years. AT&T and Cingular are aggressively converting to GSM as we speak. We'll be down to GSM and CDMA within the next few years, and as I mention in the next post wCDMA & cdma2000. Yes, it's not European interoperability, but it is getting better.
This is what I thought as well. But a couple of weeks ago I came across a news article about the approval of a yet another new GSM frequency for use in the US. I believe it stated that both Cingular and AT&T would be selling phones which made use of this frequency. Adding new frequencies/technologies is the last thing we need here.

Here's the article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-863809.html

Scott
 
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  #10  
Old 04-10-2002, 06:47 PM
Janak Parekh
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Default Smart phone market projected to grow slowly

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott R
This is what I thought as well. But a couple of weeks ago I came across a news article about the approval of a yet another new GSM frequency for use in the US. I believe it stated that both Cingular and AT&T would be selling phones which made use of this frequency. Adding new frequencies/technologies is the last thing we need here.
Yes, GSM 800 (850MHz) will be coming to the US. They need it as they don't have 1900MHz licenses everywhere. Quad-band phones are coming... I'm no fan of it either, but wireless technology needs more and more spectrum to handle greater capacities and bigger applications.

Worse, we haven't even begun the road to 3G. Did you know that the FCC will be giving 700MHz spectrum to the wireless carriers once TV's move out of that spectrum, for example? Long-term, we'll need much more than tri-band or quad-band phones.

http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?id=144

--bdj
 
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