> It is somewhat bulky, however, and the Palm Pilots have a much cleaner profile.
Yes, Palm's case is much neater looking. Not sure how the ruggedness compares, would assume RIM's stuff is a lot tougher.
>I heard, though, that the VII's per character charge is prohibitive.
Well, expect that's totally dependent on the carrier that's offering the service. If no competition, high charges, but with competition like US long distance cellular last 6-8 months, and upcoming DSL 4-6 providers per market, price drops like a rock, enabling mass device sales.
The big thing I'm waiting for is for Palm and RIM to slug it out for a mass market gorilla position in mobile wireless. It would take a killer app, and it has to be client/server (eg web apps do not give any one company a lock on the end point device). RIM's email push app is close, but IMO not enough by itself. (Ref "The Gorilla Game" by Geoffrey Moore, and the G&K threads here on Silicon Investor)
My choice for a killer app, and either Palm or RIM is capable of doing this I think, would be audio instant messaging -- cellular phone + voice mail + messaging like ICQ or AOL has. You would go 'online' by turning on your pager, at which time you would pop up as 'active' on each of your friend's pagers, and you would see which of them are online, and can speak back and forth without dialing. Combine with voice mail, and I think it would sweep the market. (not my personal cup of tea, but the 18-25yr crowd would eat it up, and a high percentage of housewives are chatty types once they get husbands and kids out of the house in the morning)
For other killer app examples, add an IR port and thumbprint pad to the device, and a national service to authenticate the prints (accessed from each wireless basestation), and the device becomes a credit card, checkbook, driver's license, commuter pass, etc. Add hardware to cars and homes, and it becomes car keys and house keys and office keys and office security card and computer login and television/stereo remote control etc etc ad infinitum ... ... ...
So, which comes to market first? I have no idea, so I own both RIM and Palm (via 3Com until spinoff), plus some SBL, and wait ever so patiently (NOT! :-).
- Dway |
