Editor's Letter
June 2001
Techno geeks
Products must offer value to the mass market, not the geek market.
Maury Wright, Editor-in-Chief
In April’s Inside The Digital Den (see "Pick Pocket"), my good friend and colleague Brian Dipert argued that the Pocket PC platform is superior to the Palm platform. I voiced an opposing opinion in a sidebar. Brian would likely tell you that comments from the peanut gallery largely echoed his views. Call me a sore loser, but I must respond to the zealot techno geeks who apparently spend so much time tinkering with their PDAs that they missed my message. Perhaps I can also offer some guidance to those of you who are developing convergence product concepts.
More than one techno geek proclaimed that I just didn’t get it. Well, I’ve got news for them: Techno geeks don’t represent a valid market for a sustainable business. They didn’t make Palm a success, and they won’t decide the Palm-vs-Pocket PC competition either.
Now, before anyone takes offense to the “techno-geek” label, let me admit that I am one myself. But if geeks like us were indicators of market acceptance, Beta would still be around, HDTV would be widely deployed, Amiga would stand atop the PC market, and we’d all be carrying Apple Newtons (and perhaps driving DeLoreans).
Truth is, products that cost more than pocket change must offer value to the mass market, not the geek market. Business users made Palm a success because the small, simple devices handled critical apps easily and offered long battery life. Even a techno geek like me gets a lot more practical when it comes to business travel. I'll only carry a device whose value offsets the weight and bulk of the device plus its power source. Sure, Pocket PCs can handle neat applications like MP3s and ebooks. But until a Pocket PC matches my Palm in battery life and size, I can’t imagine carrying one on the road.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not writing the Pocket PC off. Battery life is improving and prices are coming down. But I’ll stick by my original opinion. First, Palm devices dominate because they accomplish the simple tasks that the bulk of the market wants. Second, the Pocket PC vendors seem to be on the wrong design path. I believe DSPs, coupled with power-miserly RISC microprocessors, represent the best choice for providing multimedia features. The Pocket PC vendors, however, are following the PC playbook—using faster (read more expensive and power-hungry) processors. Palm vendors haven’t really unveiled their plans yet.
In any case, the true battle may not be the one between Palm and Pocket PC. I believe cell-phone/PDA integration is the next major market for the business customers who necessarily drive product success. And integrated DSPs will be even more critical if PDAs are to compete in that space. As Managing Editor Matthew Miller discussed in May’s Digital Den (see "This one's too..."), only one PDA vendor today offers a cell-phone option, and that’s an add-on module with its own power needs. But cell-phone vendors already make a pretty good PDA, and at least two phones sport a fully integrated Palm PDA. Cell phones, you’ll note, rely on integrated DSPs.
So listen up, techno geeks: The largest group of PDA buyers—business travelers—will get far more from a hybrid phone/PDA than from a PDA that’s a mediocre game machine and an overly power-hungry music player or ebook reader. Unless the Pocket PC—or any stand-alone PDA—can actually replace the business user’s notebook PC, it will be at a disadvantage relative to an integrated PDA/cell phone.
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