Study Says: Smartphones Will Outsell Handhelds this Year

[Ed Hardy]

Smartphones are growng in popularity and will actually outsell handhelds this year in the EMEA region according to one study.

Read more at http://www.brighthand.com/article/St...sell_Handhelds

[Timothy Rapson]

This is where I usually bust into a thread and ask Gartner or the market prognosticators of the day who they think they are and how accurate were the predictions they made last year and the year before....Like did they predict the Ipaq would so completely take over the PPC market or why is the Palm M515 STILL here then?

But, I think these guys are only stating the inevitable. It's coming. Phones will be the pocketable info device of the future.

This study seems more passionate...it takes a position on the emerging formats and is not so pretending to be so objective as the other guys tend to do.

I have read that Sony is disolving it's partnership with Erikson on smart phones. The general view is that Sony is not happy with their sales. I take the opposite view. I think Sony sees the market for Sony Smart Phones is so big the don't have to share development costs with Ericson to spead out the overhead.

This could be bad, as Sony will go all Memory Stink and does not know Symbian as well as Ericson does.

But, then maybe Ericson, without the millstone of Sony and it's memory stink format will design an even more stunning P800+ model soon. The P800 is truly wonderful as is, it could only be better without MS. But, I see a lot of US sales when it gets here in full force. A LOT.

[Ed Hardy]

Originally posted by Timothy Rapson
This could be bad, as Sony will go all Memory Stink and does not know Symbian as well as Ericson does.

If Sony breaks it off with Ericsson, it probably won't be using Symbian at all. Here's a quote from that infamous interview with Sony's CEO from a few weeks ago:
"In terms of our OS strategy, it is not clear whether Symbian ... is the right way to go for the mobile phone. And I can't tell you why Sony has a Symbian OS on its phones and Palm OS on its PDAs. Even Bill Gates asked me if I was crazy."

http://www.brighthand.com/article/CE...Buy_PalmSource

[ipaqgeek]

Okay, Rant-O-the-week:

Call me a purist - but I think all this hoopla about how wonderful the integration of the cell phone with PDA's being so immediately wonderful is a bunch of bunk. I mean the only reason you'd converge them is to surf wirelessly over CDMA or GSM network and send each other cute pictures of warthogs or great finds at a garage sell.

It's too expensive to do this for most people to do on a regular basis - and only a very small fraction of users live in areas where they can do so at reasonable speeds. Why? THE INFRASTRUCTURE AIN'T THERE! Right now people are much better off using a wireless PDA at free and blazingly fast access point for surfing, and use a cheap dedicated cell phone for making phone calls. If you need wireless email big deal - you don't need a smartphone for that. Those are the cold hard facts.

The majority of us will do it that way, nonetheless we will continue to be plastered with "Hey, It's another SmartPhone! Weee! Everyone's doing it - even if it is expensive - we'll pretend it isn't and make it look deceptively easy and fun with commercials of people beaming cute pictures to each other, because everyone will have a smart phone by December!" Right. My digital camera takes much better pictures, and everybody can wait until they read thier email to view them when they're relaxing.

Of the dozen PDA users I personally know none of them plan on buying one of these in the next year or so. My mom might buy one to replace her cell phone - but she won't know how to use it - and she'll quickly become frustrated. She'll be calling me for help - and ...we'll let's not go there.

In the meantime, precious space in the PDA is being used by cell phone chips and anteneas instead of more battery juice, beefier CPU's, and precious memory - or multiple CF slots for greater expansion.

Give SmartPhone technology another year or so when it's cheaper and easier and the infrastructure is there. In the meantime I hope the SmartPhone blurbs mellow out - though I know they won't. Oh well... Iif cell phone makers want to throw all their money away then that's thier business (no pun intended).

[Timothy Rapson]

And out of nowhere:
Samsung unveils SGH-D700 smartphone

I had no idea Samsung would sell a Sony Clie NR70V phone. They look so much alike it is scarey.




http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/3306.html

[ipaqgeek]

Samsung unveils SGH-D700 smartphone

Hey, It's another SmartPhone! Weee! (Not)

On a more serious note: Will the United Federation of Planets sue Samsung for using the Starship Enterprise logo?