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3/28/99 - Smart Phones a Difficult Accomplishment
Mar. 28 (San Jose Mercury News/KRTBN)--Talking may be the least important thing you do with your next mobile telephone.
Wireless-phone makers are blending hand-held computers and personal digital assistants into mobile telephones, creating what
they call smart phones: devices that intelligently process data, not just make phone calls.
Smart phones handle e-mail as easily as voicemail, provide remote access to your company's network without a laptop computer
and allow you to surf the Web on the go.
Eventually, every wireless phone will become a simple smart phone. As we increasingly rely on digital information, we will need to
dial in to data sources, like the Internet, as often as we dial each other. Although almost 30 million wireless phones were sold in
the United States in 1998, Dataquest of Santa Clara projects that sales will jump 43 percent to $43 million by 2000, and more than
4 million of those will be smart phones.
"Cell phones and voicemail were a perfect fit," said Andrew Seybold, a wireless-communications analyst in Boulder Creek. "But
now e-mail is equally important. Only having voicemail access is not good enough."
Smart phones are great in concept. Reducing the number of gadgets we carry in our pockets is generally a good thing. But in
reality, first-generation smart phones fail to make the merger of your computer and your phone something that's very easy to use or
comfortable to carry. Not to mention the fact that some wireless carriers are not even ready to provide the kinds of data services,
like fetching e-mail or accessing the Web, that will make your phone as smart as you'd like it to be.
Sending data over the airwaves requires the wireless carriers to upgrade their networks, a process that has slowly taken place over
the last several years in the U.S. And in the process of making these upgrades, U.S. carriers are following three divergent paths, in
contrast to Europe and Asia, which have embraced one transmission standard.
The primary purpose of the upgrades is to increase voice capacity. Turning on data services is a second step that most service
providers have yet to implement.
Already an array of smart phones exist, from super smart phones that are like small, mobile PCs, to high-end wireless phones that
don't have PC applications built in, but serve as a conduit to any kind of digital appliance. In between are smart phone hybrids that
provide a simplified set of data features but still feel like a phone.
Which one fits you best will depend entirely on how much you think you'll use your phone for tasks that don't involve talking and
how long you are willing to wait for them to become affordable and useful digital sidekicks.
Nokia Inc. created the smart phone category with the 1996 shipment of the Communicator 9000, the first blending of a wireless
phone and a handheld computer. At 14 ounces (which feels like a brick when held at your ear for more than a minute) and a price
tag of $699, Communicator's best selling point is that it eliminates the need to carry both a wireless phone and a laptop, common
baggage for business travelers and field professionals but not for the mass market.
Communicator and other super smart phones that follow in its footsteps will probably find their way into the hands of very mobile
professionals like insurance adjustors who can process an auto accident claim in your living room or at the scene of a house fire.
One step down from Communicator is the pdQ from Qualcomm Inc. The pdQ combines a wireless phone with the PalmPilot, the
popular personal digital assistant from Palm Computing Inc., a division of 3Com Corporation.
Another effort to merge two gadgets commonly carried together, the pdQ prototype succeeds in bringing the best of those two
worlds together. Imagine this: when you look up a phone number in the Palm address book, you can simply tap an icon to have the
pdQ place a call for you.
But the pdQ is still not much lighter or cheaper than Communicator. Getting information like an address from the Palm Pilot
interface while talking on the phone is next to impossible. And waiting for the pdQ may be a long prospect. It is built to work only
on Code-division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, but those networks have yet to provide for data services.
According to Paul Jacobs, president of Qualcomm Consumer Products, CDMA carriers like GTE and Sprint should be ready for
data services by mid-1999 and so will the pdQ.
When that happens, the pdQ could be a good option for people who use both a wireless phone and a Palm Pilot regularly. But
because of its size, many of those same folks may also choose to have a smaller wireless phone to carry when all they need is
voice communications.
"There's a downside to smart phones," said Matt Hoffman, an analyst with Gartner Group. "You give up all the advantages of
today's smaller phones only to get a device which requires you to carry around much more than you regularly need."
Instead of convergence, Hoffman thinks the most exciting advances in mobile phones are smaller devices that do voice
exceptionally well and have the ability to connect to data devices only when necessary. "Think of the phone as a conduit, not an
appliance," said.
To be convenient, that conduit has to be small enough to go everywhere. Size continues to be the defining factor in high-end
wireless phones.
This year alone, Qualcomm will introduce its CDMA Digital Thin Phone and Nokia its 8800, which looks more like a Zippo lighter
than a phone. Samsung Telecommunications America Inc. will roll out its 3.1 ounce SCH-6000, the lightest CDMA phone for the
U.S. market, and Motorola Inc. plans to introduce its V series, a degree smaller and sleeker than Motorola's current StarTac line,
with phones that are about the size of a stack of 20 credit cards.
Between these two extremes -- super smart phones on one end and high-end wireless handsets on the other -- a new category is
beginning to emerge. Smart phone hybrids, also called simple smart phones or "voice plus" devices, have made the handsets as
small as possible while still enhancing the screen as much as possible for data transmission.
"Consumers don't fit neatly into voice-centric and data-centric categories," said Seybold. "People who need some combination of
the two will be the biggest market."
Hybrid smart phones will be priced as mass market products and serve as receptors for new data services like short messaging
from Sprint, an option to receive text messages of up to 100 characters on the phone. These hybrids are more intelligent smart
phones, said Phillip Redman, an analyst with Yankee Group. "They offer only the functions that most people want in a size and
with a price that the mass market will buy."
The most interesting entry in this new market is the NeoPoint 1000 from start-up Innovative Global Solution Inc. of San Diego.
"NeoPoint is a phone first and communications device second," said IGS founder and chief executive William Son.
A large display, big icons and easy-to-use menus make the data functions of the NeoPoint simply better for people who want to
use them like they use their phone, not like they use their computer.
But whether the NeoPoint will be able muscle past similar phones from industry giants like Motorola, with its new i1000 plus, and
Nokia with the upcoming 7110, remains to be seen.
Whatever the outcome, simple smart phones are soon to become the standard offering for many network carriers, as they work to
get wireless phone users to spend more on-air time by using their phones for e-mail and other data services.
Like the phones, smart phone data services are in their infancy. The industry recently established WAP, the wireless application
protocol, which is designed to help information providers like the yellow pages or a stock quote service make their information fast
to download and easy to read on a smart phone and, in turn, encourage consumers to spend more time on the phone.
From traditional news media to Internet publishers, businesses with lots of information are busily working out deals to be the
exclusive sources of content for wireless phone users. For example, on March 18, IBM, Nokia and the Sabre Group Inc. announced
they were working on a travel service to be delivered via mobile phones. Travelers will be able to make flight changes and receive
updated information from airlines about flight times from anywhere. "Carriers are desperate for an alternative to voice to boost their
revenues," said Redman, the Yankee Group analyst. "But it is a chicken and egg situation. Until there are useful data delivery
services available, there won't be much of a rush for consumers to buy smart phones."
By Deborah Claymon
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