If you want to see how much the mobile computing market has exploded, look back 10 years.
Lightweight laptop computers were rare then, and most cell phones were too big to carry in a pocket. Today, the mobile market is a competitive, vibrant space where devices boast having multiple functions.
Even the old standby, the PC, has several mobile renditions of laptops, Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, and combinations of the three.
The merging of several technologies and functions into devices that were typically only used for one function in the past is doing interesting things to the marketplace.
Vendors and resellers are scrambling to form partnerships with companies they have never done business with. Systems integrators find they need to develop remote support skills. Consumers are faced with an overwhelming number of choices and functions. Business and entertainment markets are converging.
Will there be enough space for all players? Probably not, says Eddie Chan, a research analyst for mobile and personal computing at IDC Canada in Toronto.
“”Traditionally, up to this point, these have all been complementary devices,”” he said. “”Down the road though, we are going to start to see some degree of cannibalization.””
Jonathan Eunice, president, principal analyst and IT advisor at Illuminata Inc., in Nashua, N.H., also sees the cut-throat nature of today’s mobile marketplace.
“”What started as a specialized niche (pagers for doctors, cell phones for real-estate agents, etc.) has morphed into a genuine social phenomenon. Not having a cell phone is now like not having a television, or not having indoor plumbing. We are way past the ‘tipping point’ on this trend,”” Eunice said.
Would he go as far as using the word ‘cannibalize’ to describe what vendors will have to do in order to survive?
“”Absolutely,”” he said. “”The cell phone is king, because everyone has to carry one. (But) PDAs are under enormous pressure, and will not survive — at least not in their traditional form.””
He predicts that the only PDA devices that will endure will be ones that have “”morphed”” into cell phones. Take what has happened with palmOne Inc.’s Treo smartphone. A company whose bread and butter was its PDAs has realized it had to change with the times.
“”Disconnected PDAs are the proverbial island of information — insufficiently integrated. Being sync-able is OK, if that’s the best you can do, but being connected is great,”” Eunice said.
User’s choice
Until very recently people had to choose between portability and function, Chan said. A handheld device could be portable but couldn’t store a lot of data. Or, you could have a laptop with all your data and functionality but couldn’t fit it into a pocket. And if you wanted to make phone calls you needed a separate device.
Now “”you can take your horsepower with you,”” he said. Not only that, but the flexibility of the newer devices, combined with wireless capability, is allowing them to be used in several ways at once.
One obvious driver of this whole mobile movement is the cell phone industry, and the carriers and infrastructure behind them. Phones are starting to eclipse a lot of other devices that were “”must haves”” in the business world a couple years ago, Eunice said.
“”Phones are becoming so much more capable. They’re phones, of course, but also PDAs, MP3 music players, GPS receivers, digital cameras, etc. — the Swiss Army Knife, all-in-one utility device,”” Eunice said.
There are already more camera phones than there are digital cameras.
Eunice predicts that products like iPods, high-end GPSs and zoomable 4-megapixel digicams are not going to be overtaken by the cell phone market in capabilities for the next few years, (partly because there just isn’t enough space in a cell phone yet, at current semiconductor fabrication densities).
“”But how often are you going to carry a separate music device that holds 20,000 songs when your cell device carries 2,000?”” he asked.
“”How often will the average person carry a separate camera rig when their cell will take perfectly adequate 1 or even 2 MP photos?””
Chan agrees that cell phone capability has drastically changed the typical mobile worker’s options.
“”When you look at what’s coming down the pipeline with the new IXRTT capable devices that can sync over digital networks, you see that, on the device side, mobile phones are getting much smarter — they have moved from being dumb terminals into the PDA space.””
New competition
This leads to competition in many areas like never before, Chan added. Whoever can offer the best service with the most features, the most inexpensively and the most securely, will be the winners.
“”Convergence right now is all over the map, both on the hardware front, and on the utilities front,”” he said. “”At the end of the day, users don’t care (about the infrastructure).””
Greg Michetti, president of Edmonton-based systems integrator Michetti Information Solutions Inc., agrees with Chan that people don’t worry about where their service is coming from, as long as it gets the job done quickly.
“”They just want you to be there to fix their problem when there is something wrong,”” Michetti said.
“”Then they want you out of there, and they want you out of there fast. And if you can do it remotely, even better.””
Blurred lines
The advent of mobile computing has further blurred the lines between office and home hours, between work and play, he said. As a systems integrator, he adds, this means developing new service skills.
“”Telephone support skills, strangely enough, are needed more than ever now. This need really didn’t exist as much a few years ago, because we weren’t on the phone as much. So instead of being in front of a person, now you are on the phone, or maybe using a computer, or maybe on a Webcam.””
The infrastructure that allows mobile and wireless capabilities have made many things possible, but we are still in the initial stages — there are many “”public access interoperability issues”” to overcome, according to Tony Stramandinoli, director of worldwide marketing for SMC Networks Inc.
“”If you go to a Starbucks (to use a wireless device) you need to have T-Mobile service, but if you are sitting at the airport, you need to have some other service,”” he said. “”Nobody wants to pay for eight different services just to be able to be mobile, and truly use their laptop everywhere.””
One solution is with a ‘hot spot in a box’ — a term many companies, including SMC, are starting to use, Stramandinoli said.
“”This is where you have all your billing and authentication software built in to one low-cost package. And it’s just a wireless router with all of the software built in and a little thermal printer,”” he explained.
“”So the little coffee shop can have someone come in and pay (a nominal fee) for 30-minute blocks. (It) prints out their user name and password, and they can just go back to their table with their coffee and log on.””
The security challenge
Another challenge is security. There is still some unwillingness by users and their employers to broadcast important data. However this reluctance is slowly going away, said Rob Moffat, president of Toronto-based Wallace Wire-less, a company that makes incident management software for hand-held devices.
Most of Moffat’s customers use RIM’s BlackBerry, largely because of the recent advent of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) software, which complies with government standards for secure e-mail and secure data, he said.
“”There was a big hurdle overcome there, from a security standpoint. Once they put the BES piece in the background, it has allowed applications to be much more viable.
