The following article has some interesting points about cell-phone and pda :
"Putting cell phones on hold
Handset manufacturers, seeing slowing sales, are cutting back on the rollout of new products"
By Carmen Nobel, eWEEK
February 5, 2001 12:00 AM ET
As cell phone manufacturers absorb the body blows of
sluggish sales, evaporating profit margins and a
nonexistent upgrade trend by consumers, the fallout will
be clear: fewer new products announced, shipments of
planned smart phones delayed and rollouts of new
networks postponed.
It seems as though no U.S. or European manufacturer is
being left unscathed. In Europe, for example, giants
Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp. and Ericsson SpA have each
announced poor financial results recently.
"The margins on phones are going to continue to
collapse," said Bob Egan, an analyst at Gartner Group
Inc., in Stamford, Conn. "You're on the threshold of
seeing an acknowledgment of a focus on infrastructure."
Motorola announced last month that it was shutting down
its Harvard, Ill., handset manufacturing plant and planning
to outsource all manufacturing to foreign partners.
Ericsson followed suit in January, announcing the
cessation of all handset manufacturing, with plans to
outsource to Flextronics International Ltd., whose
corporate headquarters is in Singapore.
Nokia last week announced that its first-quarter earnings
will be flat. While Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila promised to
stay ahead of Motorola and Ericsson, he said operating
margins on cell phones will fall at the end of the year,
while profit margins in the infrastructure division—which
competes mainly with Ericsson—will remain steady.
But as companies such as Nokia shift away from phones
and toward back-end products, rollouts of new and
promised handsets will be affected.
Nokia, for instance, will be late with its GPRS (General
Packet Radio Service) handsets, which were due next
quarter but now won't be out until at least the third
quarter. GPRS enables high-speed packet-data service,
up to 170K bps for phones.
While Ericsson's forthcoming R520 GPRS phone is due
to ship in the United States some time this year, much
depends on the networks, which lag behind Europe's.
In other words: no network, no reason to buy a phone.
In addition, Ericsson is nearly a year late in shipping its
high-end R380 Global System for Mobile
Communications smart phone to the United States. The
phone, which has been available in Europe, will cost
about $600.
But even when it arrives, some users aren't willing to
spend that kind of money on a phone.
"I still await the arrival of the killer device, i.e., a
combination phone/PDA [personal digital assistant] that
is truly useful and easy to use," said Lester Morgan,
senior manager of IT for the National Football League, in
New York. "There isn't one yet. When it arrives, I'll buy
it—when it costs $100."
That could take awhile. While the three companies
maintain that product development will remain in-house,
even if manufacturing won't, combination-device efforts
may be impeded by the fact that there is less focus on
handsets these days.
Psion plc., Europe's biggest handheld computer maker,
recently ended an agreement with Motorola to co-develop
wireless devices. At the time, Psion officials said ending
the relationship was another way for Moto rola to cut
costs.
Nokia and Ericsson report that plans for smart phones
that run PDA operating systems (from Palm Inc. and
Microsoft Corp., respectively) are still on track, but the
companies have yet to give dates.
zdnet.com
Mang |
