Handhelds Are Doomed

[Ed Hardy]

Brighthand's Editor-in-Chief decides to come clean and admit that handhelds have no future. And rather than fighting the trend, he's decided to embrace it.

Read more at www.brighthand.com/article/Handhelds_Are_Doomed

[Ed Hardy]

By the way, this is the only thing Brighthand will be doing to observe April Fool's Day. None of the news articles will be made up.

[Mike Cane]

Handhelds are like a guest who came and then overstayed their welcome. palmOne should know better and just close up shop tonight! I'll even go further: ALL digital devices should go home now too! Back to the silicon, you leeches!

Don't worry, Ed. Belief is a powerful thing! Look at what it did for the career of my avatar!

[youponder]

Ed,

Tounge-in-cheek aside there is plenty of truth to your article.

While no one is suggesting the PDA will die and we'll resort to pad and paper, many are saying the PDA will simply morph into the cell phone.

I think its a given that the PDA as we know it is on the verge of extinction.

[treo007]

No offense, but I this is the type of article I'd expect coming from a site who's slogan is "Nothing but Handhelds".

In reality though, it's pretty hard to deny they're an increasingly marginalized product segment. I think there's a reason Best Buy quit devoting shelf space to them for instance. Not to mention Sony and others dropping their PDA lines all together, etc....

[komal]

This is a rather poor attempt at copying the editor of scientific american's rather amusing article detailing the failings of science at the hands of religion. Good try, but come up with something unique next time.

[Ed Hardy]

Originally posted by youponder
While no one is suggesting the PDA will die and we'll resort to pad and paper, many are saying the PDA will simply morph into the cell phone.

I think its a given that the PDA as we know it is on the verge of extinction.

I've been saying for years that eventually almost all handhelds will have cellular-wireless capabilities built into them. This will make them much more useful than the devices we use now.

By and large, the argument that handhelds are going to be replaced with smartphones is mostly the result of what things are called. A lot of devices that are really handhelds are being called smartphones.

A Treo 650 or BlackBerry is just as much a handheld computer as an Axim X50v is, but you can also make phone calls with them. So many people call these devices smartphones, not handhelds.

So don't worry, handhelds aren't going away. They are becoming more useful and -- for some reason -- acquiring a new name.

[Ed Hardy]

Originally posted by komal
This is a rather poor attempt at copying the editor of scientific american's rather amusing article detailing the failings of science at the hands of religion. Good try, but come up with something unique next time.

Except that I haven't read that article. And I'm sure he wasn't the first person in history to write a sarcastic article, either.

It's a fact of life that no one has come up with an original joke since bearskins were the height of fashion. Everyone is just coming up with variations on the old ones.

I'm sure when fire was discovered there were jokes about how much better life was huddling under mounds of fur and eating raw meat.

[treo007]

Originally posted by Ed
I've been saying for years that eventually almost all handhelds will have cellular-wireless capabilities built into them. This will make them much more useful than the devices we use now.

By and large, the argument that handhelds are going to be replaced with smartphones is mostly the result of what things are called. A lot of devices that are really handhelds are being called smartphones.

A Treo 650 or BlackBerry is just as much a handheld computer as an Axim X50v is, but you can also make phone calls with them. So many people call these devices smartphones, not handhelds.

So don't worry, handhelds aren't going away. They are becoming more useful and -- for some reason -- acquiring a new name.

Obviously, but they've got to at least look and function like a typical cell phone a little bit. In other words, the Zire's of the world will continue to be a shrinking market segment.

[treo007]

Originally posted by komal
This is a rather poor attempt at copying the editor of scientific american's rather amusing article detailing the failings of science at the hands of religion. Good try, but come up with something unique next time.

Lighten up, huh?