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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Thursday, October 10, 2002Steve has a rant on the lack of innovation in the PDA market, spurred by my earlier entry. I had actually started that post as a long rant, and started restating my arguments again just now, but I don't think we really need another long rant. I'll keep this relatively short and sweet.
All of the innovation is happening with non-PPC devices. The primary reason for this is that PPC vendors depend on contract manufacturers for just about everything, following the PC model. Palm OS licensees mostly follow the Apple model, designing nearly everything themselves and using contract manufacturers solely for manufacturing.
The good news is that the decline in prices puts PPC vendors on nearly equal footing with Palm OS licensees. The bad news is that PPC innovations will likely remain few and far between due to the dependance on contract manufacturers, and declining margins will make PPC vendors even more risk-adverse (ie: cool stuff won't be widely available until the costs are low enough to attract Dell).
I think I am slowly convincing myself to go back to the Palm platform. The Sony NX70V makes me drool and the Kyocera 7135 (review) is a highly appealing SmartPhone alternative. I wonder if anyone will come up with a way to directly sync a Palm OS 5 device with a Palm OS 4 phone...
I realized sometime on Monday that it was gonna happen. Too many people reading it, the Network Effect had been triggered, and I was expecting an email any minute. Sure enough, I got an email from a web app engineer at Danger, in response to my rantings the other day. [Anil]
After reading Anil's original rant and posting about Danger's lack of developer information, I sent an email to developer@danger.com asking if they had any "guidelines for creating web content that renders well" on the HipTop / Sidekick. I have received no response.
What good is a web browsing super phone if nobody knows how to design content for it?
How the Pocket PC market will shake out
Here is how I see the platform and price aligning. The Pocket PC platform will be low to midrange in price depending on memory, screen quality, and expansion capabilities. Prices will hover in the $300 price category. The Pocket PC Phone Edition platform will be the new, high-end platform around the $500 price and feature wireless voice and data, along with more memory. [Frank McPherson]
Agreed. I want to believe that there is still room for premium, non-vertical devices that aren't simply cloned PPC PE designs... but I'm not sure that there are any innovators in the current Pocket PC market.
I would love a Pocket PC rendition of Sony's NX70V.
