Docking stations in Europe? To do what? Don't understand.
Chaz, let's just make sure we're on the same page here. By docking stations, we're talking about "dumb" devices that consist of a monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard, which can be hooked up to a cell phone or a PDA, with the cell phone/PDA acting as both the processing source and the internet connection, right?
If this is the case, then the reason that Europe, along with South Korea (I take back the Japan comment given the low PC/wire-line internet penetration there), would lead in the deployment of these stations for the time being, is due to extremely high levels of wireless penetration. To be honest, this will still take about three years or so to get going, in order for things like graphics, flash memory, etc. to catch up, even if the device accesses software via a thin client.
You have to remember two things:
1. Many of the applications that these docking stations will allow phones to run won't be internet-related, aside from the fact that they're hosted off of a network server. Things like scaled-down versions of Word, Powerpoint, Excel, ERP and CRM apps. The primary constraint to the running of applications such as these will be processing, memory, and graphics capabilities, not bandwidth. 30 kbps isn't much, but it should be enough for the necessary data transfers to take place between.
2. Assuming that these stations become a viable concept within the next few years, I don't think that too many European wireless subscribers are going to stay away from using the internet through them simply because they're stuck with relatively slow 30 kbps GPRS connections. Put yourself in their position: if you were on a street in Oslo three years from now with a GPRS phone, and wanted to read the latest ZDNet articles without having to squint at your WAP browser and press down on your phone's roller bar 20 times, would you walk away simply because you only have a 40 kbps (I'm assuming speeds will have picked up a little by then) connection?
Which now leads to why certain European nations, along with South Korea, will lead: extremely high penetration. It's all too obvious, actually: you put these things where people will use them. Could you imagine a series of docking stations being placed in Omaha or Birmingham in 2003, even if the devices are capable, and Sprint and Verizon have rolled out with 3x and/or HDR? Sure, they might exist in major urban areas, such as Seattle, Manhattan, San Francisco, etc., and maybe in airports and bus stations, but that's about it. On the other hand, it'd be possible to have them in just about every major town in places such as Denmark and South Korea.
You would be right in assuming that people who would use such services would want the highest data rates possible, and for this reason, the widespread availability of docking stations within such nations, assuming that they become a reality within a few years, could greatly speed up the conversion within these nations to 3G. But I might be looking too far ahead here. There's no knowing how long it'll take before Moore's Law allows handsets become advanced enough to handle all the stuff I was talking about.
Chaz, with all due respect, I think that it'd be better if you stopped blasting the Europeans here, and started looking at the big picture. Let's assume for a moment that the concept of docking stations starts taking flight around 2003, with GPRS being used in most European settings. By 2004, when 3G really starts getting rolled out, in every nation with high penetration rates, there could very well be a mass rush to high-end 3G handsets. Do you have any idea what that would do to ASIC and handset ASPs, not to mention the level of subsidies offered by carriers, and how much all of this would benefit everyone related to the industry, ranging from Nokia to ARM to Intel and AMD to that company in San Diego that we all know and love? A world full of W-CDMA networks doesn't seem too bad once you put it all into that perspective.
Eric |
