From The Industry Standard:
Smart Call
By Alexei Oreskovic
Issue Date: Apr 23 2001
(Note, Phone Pic at kyocera.com )
If the buzz over Kyocera's latest product is any indication,the
wireless industry may have finally created a smartphone that isn't
dumb.
At a Verizon wireless store in downtown San Francisco, Jeff Livingston
and Marc Warren rush to inspect "The Phone." As they poke and prod the
device, the pair look more like kids in a toy store than financial
analysts on a lunch break. And they aren't the only interested
shoppers. Salesman Dan Martinez, who says most of the calls he gets
are about rate plans, now fields dozens of inquiries each day
from folks curious about The Phone.
You can't take pictures with it. You can't scan bar codes with it. You
can't even play MP3s on it. So why the buzz over Kyocera's new phone?
Just this: While the market's getting crowded with handheld devices
that are the digital quivalent of the Swiss Army Knife, the
unimaginatively named QCP 6035 is first-to-market with the industry's
true killer app: a mobile phone and a Palm combined.
That's it.
It's a simple concept, but trying to integrate a phone and a PDA has
frustrated companies - and consumers - for years. Early attempts by
the likes of Nokia and Qualcomm turned out unwieldy electronic bricks
with homegrown operating systems that were little more than glorified
electronic organizers. The Kyocera phone is a direct descendant of
1999's Qualcomm pdQ phone, which had most of the same features as the
QCP 6035 but never caught on. Critics point to Qualcomm's spotty
marketing, an $800 price tag and versize design. After that failure,
many of Qualcomm's engineers moved to Kyocera when the Kyoto,
Japan-based
ast year.
Kyocera seems to have learned from its
predecessor's mistakes. For one, it's spending a fortune on
marketing, running two-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and New
York Times. And though it isn't tiny and it isn't cheap, the phone
isn't too bulky (a problem with the VisorPhone, an add-on for
Handspring's Visor PDA). At $499, the QCP 6035 costs no more than a
phone and a Palm bought separately.
Verizon Wireless, which began offering the phone
in early March (other carriers will follow shortly), won't say how
many units it has sold. But Strategy Analytics, a Boston-based
research firm, estimates that smartphone shipments will total 5
million units this year. That's about 1 percent of the overall cell
phone market, but the share is expected to grow with Kyocera's new
offering.
Kyocera's solid debut has competitors redoubling
efforts to come up with their own cell phone-PDA combos.
Handspring,which initially sold the VisorPhone exclusively through its
Web site, recently announced it would offer the product at Best Buy
and Staples stores as well. And Microsoft continues to enlist partners
for its Stinger smartphone operating system, including HTC, Mitsubishi
Electric and Samsung.
Given how much Kyocera improved upon Qualcomm, and
how much more the phones will inevitably be refined, consumers may
want to wait for the next generation before buying in. The Kyocera
phone, for instance, requires you to dial in each time you want to
check e-mail or browse the Web; most smartphone handsets in
development promise always-on Internet
connections.
Still, the buzz over Kyocera's phone comes as
something of a relief to the wireless industry, which lately has
endured a spate of bad news, from shaky results at Ericsson to fears
over gadget fatigue. Judging from the reaction of many customers, the
latter probably isn't an issue. Chris Gostyla, who works at a wireless
company, picks up wireless gizmos like a sweater collects lint. He
bought a Kyocera the day it came out and considers it a "killer"
product. "This is going to be my only phone," he says.
HYBRID VIGOR - The Kyocera Smartphone - aka the QCP 6035 - bids to
become the first cell phone-Palm combination to catch on with
non-gearheads.
TOGETHERNESS - Tapping a name in the address book
can automatically initiate a phone call or e-mail.
WEB CRAWLING - A wireless 14.4Kbps modem lets
(patient) owners send and receive e-mail and browse the Web in three
modes: HTML, WAP or Palm's Web-clipping application.
FULL-FEATURED - Includes conveniences like speed
dialing, voice dialing and a headset jack - plus 15,000 Palm programs,
including a photo album and an e-book reader.
SPEAK UP - A speakerphone lets users carry on a phone conversation at
arm's length while operating the PDA.
THE BIG SCREEN - Same size as Palm's m100 handheld.
POWER PLAY - Most cell phones have less than 1MB of memory. The QCP
6035 packs 8MB, just like a standalone Palm.
IN THE POCKET - Only slightly larger than the smallest cell phones,
the QCP 6035 is an inch thick, 2.6 inches wide and less than 6 inches
long - significantly slimmer than Qualcomm's failed PDA-phone combo,
the pdQ. |
