| Convergence comes of age |
a guest column by David Wood (May 4, 2006)
Foreword: In this guest column, David Wood, co-founder and executive vice president of research at Symbian, explains why increasingly powerful and useful smartphones are beginning to proliferate. Noting the different categories of devices that smartphones are likely to supersede -- such as music players, games consoles, messaging terminals, and digital cameras -- Wood suggests that "all this functionality will be held together and enhanced by the low-cost high-performance core computing intelligence at the heart of a smartphone." This "unprecedented convergence [will bring] multiple opportunities for ground-breaking new products and services arising from the overlaps of previously separate devices," Wood believes. Symbian currently enjoys a 69 percent market share in the "smart mobile device" OS market, according to a recent Canalys report.
Convergence comes of age
by David Wood
Converged devices similar to smartphones have long been foretold. Characters in the science fiction Star Trek series made frequent use of intriguing contraptions such as "tricorders" and "communicators."
The term "PDA," standing for "Personal Digital Assistant," was coined in January 1992 by ex-Pepsi executive John Sculley, during his ten-year stint as CEO of Apple Computers. Sculley was delivering a keynote speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas -- in fact it was the first time for the keynote speaker at the show to be the CEO of a computer company. Sculley went so far as to describe the PDA as heralding a "trillion dollar mother-of-all-markets."
At the time, Apple was busily developing the Newton PDA -- a handheld computer with pen input, handwriting recognition, and a "built-in intelligent assistant." In his keynote, Sculley drew attention to the growing convergence of computing and consumer electronics, and also spoke about multimedia, communications, and increasing miniaturization.
Much of what Sculley predicted in general terms has now come to pass. Computers have transcended their earlier usage in industry and government, and are now widely bought for entertainment and home purposes. But Sculley's hope for PDAs turned out to be premature.
The first Newton went on sale in 1993, under the name "MessagePad." Five years later, with original company founder Steve Jobs back at its helm, Apple discontinued the Newton. Sales had been extremely disappointing. Although journalists had at first wanted this imaginative new concept to succeed, opinion fairly quickly turned against the Newton.
A series of episodes in the popular American "Doonesbury" cartoon strip lampooned the quirks and foibles of the Newton, and the device even made a guest appearance on "The Simpsons" -- where, again, it was the butt of ridicule (the Newton in the cartoon misinterpreted the memo "Beat up Martin" as "Eat up Martha").
An expensive price tag deterred many would-be purchasers, as did the fact that the technology failed to fulfil many of its promises. Sculley's idea of an "intelligent assistant" was great -- but Newton did not deliver. Instead of triggering a trillion-dollar market, there were so many unwanted Newtons that 30,000 were bulldozed into a California garbage landfill site.
Sculley's predictions for the Newton turned out to be as unconnected with turn-of-the-century reality as were the tricorders and communicators used by Spock and others in Star Trek. But here's what's different about today's smartphones -- reasons why increasingly powerful and useful smartphones are spreading ever more widely in the real world (and not just in science fiction): - Smartphones are an evolution of an existing device that is already highly popular -- the mobile phone. Smartphones can therefore take advantage of what's been called "the power of the mainstream." Mobile phones are ubiquitous, and people are well accustomed to using them
- Mobile phones have been steadily improving in functionality, while (on the whole) retaining their core simplicity and utility. There's never any doubt as to the usefulness of mobile phones. As such, they continue to appeal to the mass market, whereas devices like the Newton only really appealed to technology aficionados
- The lower purchase cost of mobile phones to end users means they are much more affordable than the Newton. One reason for the lower cost price is a business model that was never feasible for a device such as the Newton: operators frequently subsidise part of the purchase price (sometimes entirely, so that the cost at point-of-sale is zero), recovering this subsidy through subsequent monthly telephone call charges
- The huge size of the mobile phone industry means that strong learning effects and economies of scale operate, driving down costs even further
Today's smartphones have one other very significant advantage over Apple's Newton -- the benefit of around another dozen years of advances in technology, software, networks, and industry alliances: - The amount and sophistication of the technology in a smartphone far exceeds that in a Newton
- High-speed networks handling the efficient wireless transmission of meaningful quantities of data took longer to mature than expected
- Complex value chains involving many inter-connecting pieces have slowly been assembling
- Companies such as network operators, phone manufacturers, and providers of hardware and software components, needed time to learn new ways of working together effectively
Although Apple failed in its expectations for the Newton, it has of course done much better, more recently, with a different kind of mobile device -- the iPod portable music player. The iPod owes its success to a combination of factors: simplicity of design, stylishly executed, and great connectivity to the iTunes music library software.
However, despite appearances, the iPod is facing extinction, as all the music playback functionality it contains becomes increasingly available on smartphones. Because smartphones do a great deal more than an iPod, there will be many reasons for users to stop carrying two separate devices with them (their mobile phone and their iPod), to switch to carrying just one (their smartphone): - A single device takes up less pocket space than two devices
- A single electrical charger takes up less travelling space than two chargers
- If you're listening to some music on your iPod and your phone starts ringing, you have to perform a complex dance to find the iPod in one pocket to pause it, remove your iPod headphones from your ears, find your phone in another pocket, and answer that call (quickly -- before it diverts to voice mail!). All this happens much more smoothly when the devices are combined into one
- Smartphones have built in music wireless download features
- The open programmable character of smartphones means that it is easy for new navigation and control mechanisms to become available, improving the UI for different use cases. (Let's face it -- the iPod UI has its troubles when navigating long lists, among other problems)
- The open character of smartphones also means that innovative on-device music editing and music messaging applications continually emerge, addressing diverse user needs
The iPod is one of about thirty categories of device that smartphones are likely to supersede, ranging through games consoles, messaging terminals, music players, digital cameras, electronic train tickets, security badges, credit cards, digital diaries, data loggers, health monitors, alarm clocks, navigation guides, interactive newspapers, and so on. All this functionality will be held together and enhanced by the low-cost high-performance core computing intelligence at the heart of a smartphone. This is an unprecedented convergence, bringing multiple opportunities for ground-breaking new products and services arising from the overlaps of these previously separate devices.
Here's one more example: the music storage and playback features of smartphones can be re-purposed to store and play back audio books, such as those which you can download from audible.com. So you can catch up on your favourite reading during (for example) your walk to the train station, easily carrying with you a choice of many more books than would comfortably fit (in traditional book format) into your briefcase.
I can't say that the smartphone market will be the "mother of all markets." But there's a good case that it will be a "mother of all markets" -- with the potential for many hundreds of companies to soar in value through active participation in this market.
Copyright (c) 2006, Symbian Ltd. All rights reserved. Edited and reproduced with permission by LinuxDevices.com.
 About the author: David Wood was a co-founder of Symbian, having joined Psion (Symbian's original parent company) in June 1988. He has been successively immersed in virtually every department in Psion and Symbian. In the early 1990s, he managed teams that created highly successful software for SIBO, the 16-bit predecessor of Symbian OS. He went on to lead the build and integration team for version 1 of Symbian OS. From 1998 to 2002 he headed Symbian's Technical Consulting department, building and directing teams that worked with Symbian's customers to create the world's first smartphones. During 2002 and 2003 he held the position of EVP of Partnering, supervising the rapid growth of Symbian's partnering programs. Since 2004 he has been Symbian's EVP of Research. Before joining Psion, he spent eight years studying mathematics and the philosophy of science at Cambridge University, and was head of the mathematics department at a leading London tutorial college.
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