One Company To Rule Them All

Ed Hardy · 11-04-2005, 11:20 AM

There's a company that has risen to the point where it dominates a very popular mobile operating system. And it might not be the one you think.

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

Heda · 11-04-2005, 01:10 PM

theres no doubt HTC is the current king with a track record like that. the only device i've seen lately that can compete with theirs is Acer's N300, but i have no idea if it was designed by HTC as well. here was a thread i posted on it last month

http://discussion.brighthand.com/sho...hreadid=120605

sojourner753 · 11-04-2005, 01:19 PM

Its strange, but while reading your fairy tale I thought your were doing an article about Symbian and Nokia.

Anyway, I think I'm half and half my agreement with your conclusions. HTC has done a great job in bringing innovative design to Windows Mobile platform.

There are a few companies out there, albeit very niche at the moment.

Eten, FSC, Samsung (i730), and a few others whose devices haven't seen the light of day yet.

I agree that it will be difficult for other companies to become major players agains the HTC machine, but lets hope.

Competition is almost always good for innovation and consumers.

imported_Duncan · 11-04-2005, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by sojourner753
There are a few companies out there, albeit very niche at the moment.

Eten, FSC, Samsung (i730), and a few others whose devices haven't seen the light of day yet.

FSC use HTC too.

In general I'm not sure that HTCs dominance is that much to worry about - it isn't as if there aren't other companies that can do the work if it it comes to it - and after all - one company (Quanta) design and build most of the world's laptops...

madmaxmedia · 11-04-2005, 02:18 PM

Nice article!

I think that innovation is still very possible. Although I haven't used HTC to design my own brand of Windows Mobile devices, I imagine that Dell, HP, etc. have a lot of input, especially in the beginning stages of the design process. So if someone has a great idea for a new form factor or new hardware feature, HTC will try to design it for them.

wshwe · 11-04-2005, 02:38 PM

I don't think there's anything to worry about. Consolidation has been the rule not only in the PDA market, but the PC and notebook markets as well. Nokia and Sony Ericsson provide plenty of competition. I'd rather see Dell and HP sell HTC-designed PPCs than poor internally designed devices. BTW, HTC designs and manufacturers the Treo 650 for Palm.

ackmondual · 11-04-2005, 04:52 PM

Interesting article. Yet another wrinkle in my brain

Are most of Palm handhelds internal then?

Ed Hardy · 11-04-2005, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ackmondual
Are most of Palm handhelds internal then?

Aside from the Windows Mobile Treo, all of Palm's handhelds and smartphones are designed internally.

This leads to an interesting situation. Most people think of the rivalry as being Palm OS vs. Pocket PC. But the real emerging rivalry is Palm, Inc. vs. HTC vs. Nokia.

Of course, because nothing can be simple, HTC manufactures all Palm's devices. And, as I said, it designed the Windows Mobile Treo.

Co-opetition can be very confusing.

arb · 11-04-2005, 06:30 PM

This is fine that HTC designs and build most of the world's PPC and Palm devices, but as of late, I haven't seen anything worth paying money for. Some models are thicker than my laptop closed, others are too small to be useful, and the rest just look like tricked out jap-cars....

The market needs to return back to the older 3900/5000 series iPaqs. Nice simple PDAs. Even a nice updated 2215 would be refreshing.

Of you could read into this posting and think to yourself that having one company design and build all or most of the PDAs in the world has put a strain on good design/build/concept.

NewtonDKC · 11-04-2005, 07:23 PM

I think the heyday of the Pocket PC was the 4150. It simply had everything (at the time) one could want, in the smallest design EVER made for a full functioning, no-compromise handheld. Even the line at that time was great - low end 1900 series, mid range dual slot 2215 to "build your own", and the high end 5400/5500 series with the sleeve option to - again - build extra speciality stuff onto a "everything" base handheld. The 4150 was considered mid-range, but really it was high end in every sense of the word. The *only* lack it may have had was a CF expansion slot, but I can really think of anything it would have been used for at the time (obviously there are plenty of things for it, but I mean nothing that SHOULD have been there like most devices that lack an obvious feature).

I've ranted so many times on HP's bewildering decisions on design - it's nice to finally see that confirmed in this article. The 1950 is a good step in the right direction, though with HP's "quiet" (i.e. nonexistent) introduction for the 1950, one wonders what anger HP may be harboring over the failure of their own designs. But really, they are capable of designing a fairly attractive handheld (the 2700 series is no 4150, but it's no 3715 either). What HP's main problem is these days is crippling their devices by leaving things out! How many times have we seen people begging for HP to make a VGA 2700 series? That would be their own design (as far as I know) and it has all the goodies (BT, WiFI, built in cover, Dual Expansion, even BioMetrics!). Why don't they listen? Who knows. It's like they want to fail - or rather, that they simply don't want to build the ultimate device. It's like they are afraid of actually just making the durn thing and having it sell like crazy. If they have any doubt - any doubt whatsoever - the absolute top selling device of all time would be a 4150 (NOT the crippled 1950 which is a fine entry level device today, but needs WIFI and BT, tons of internal storage, and finally VGA to truly get HP back to the top).

Why does HP fear VGA? Why do they fear getting back their lost marketshare that the 4150 was a huge part of? I don't know. So much makes so little sense with HP's decisions in their PDA line that one wonders who they put in charge of it. The x51v is the closest thing to the perfect PDA right now - and if Dell would leave out the CF slot to make a thinner, smaller device to be the x51v's little brother, and an x51v with a built in MicroDrive, then Dell would quickly become the leader in PDA design.

Maybe HTC simply hasn't made a 4150 with VGA. There is no reason for it - the screen would certainly fit (just compare a 4150 with an x51v or x50v - if you take off the CF slot, the x50v is STILL thinner, so don't tell me a 4150 can't fit a 3.7" VGA screen. Add the storage capacity (a reasonable 100MB of storage or go all out and match Dell's 200 MB available storage from the 256MB Flash ROM). I'd would SOOOO buy this device right now.

Heck, if we'd get a VGA 4150, then all we'd need to have a perfect PDA it get WM5 fixed (the "Big 3" - Menu/icon bar needs brought back instead of the pointless twin buttons that take up space and only add more taps to get to what you truly want to do, the embarrassingly inane SIP, and the prehistoric handling of Notifications - bring back "all of them in one window and the freagin Dismiss all button! A PDA is NOT a tiny, non-touch sensitive phone!).

So then again, if Microsoft can't even understand how to build the OS any longer, I guess we can't expect a whole lot more from the PDA builders. :-) Sorry, I'm just not happy when things that were just fine start going the downhill, and things that could be fixed get ignored. Advance means "move forward and get better" not get worse, get harder, take longer, become less efficient, don't be intuitive."

Sorry for all you who have to sit thru my rants. I feel this with religious fervor though, and will keep complaining until things are the way we, the consumer, want and NEED them to be. I'll start a "Cult of PDA" if anyone wants to join (and no, I will not be a being that requires worship - just voicing your likes and dislikes to Microsoft and the various vendors so they'll LISTEN!!! :-)