Digitalwall: 3G Time Comes (6) Phones Don't Need to Be Smart

Without market demand, smart phones will get nowhere.

Thanks to the efforts of leading communication equipment manufacturers around the world, more and more functions are being added into handsets. Although the concept of the smart phone was raised many years ago, manufacturers are smart enough to see that it's not the time yet. What they are doing at the current stage is only to upgrade mono-color handsets into multimedia models to allow the presentation of more colorful images and more pleasant ringtones.

Will handsets eventually be integrated with PDAs? The answer will decide whether or not the two industries will confront each other one day. Microsoft has been dreaming that one day the handset market would be like today's PC market, where it could dominate with its operating systems. Handset manufacturers, of course, wish this day never comes.

What's interesting is that both parties are betting on the smart phone. Leveraging its existing advantages in application software, Microsoft has been pushing Windows Media Player and the mini-versions of many other familiar applications into handsets. It simply intends to turn the handset into a miniature computer.

The smart phone developed by handset manufacturers, however, looks less like computers. Even with some of the functions of the PDA and capable of playing online video programs, they seem more like handsets.

Difficult to explain as it is, the difference is obvious when the two kinds of handset are put together. A quote from Mr. Irwin Chen, the general manager of BenQ communication business unit seems to make sense: "A phone is a phone. It should look like a phone, not a PDA with an antenna."

The paradox is, since "a phone is a phone", what's the point of stuffing all the PDA functions into the handset? In my view, that is merely the wish of handset or PDA manufacturers themselves.

The advent of the 3G time means higher data rates for handsets, which, inevitably, will result in more Internet access behaviors (the size of user group and the question whether the Internet is the largest application of 3G have been discussed in my previous articles). However, it does not mean that consumers will require more functions for handsets.

If we were able to gather all consumers together, we would discover that what most consumers need in their daily life is just a "portable phone", which would enable them to "make phone calls" for now and "watch phone calls" in the 3G time.

Among this consumer group, some do have the requirement for the Internet service. They might want to have access to the data they need, to play games for time killing, or to download interesting images and ringtones. Yet few would use their handsets as a PDA.

The PDA is a tool for busy office people. Due to its operation interface and screen size, the smart phone will not be able to satisfy the demand of those people. In other words, putting the functions of the handset and PDA into one product would only hurt both.

Here is one typical example. Today many handsets offer the calendar function to allow users to keep records and arrange their agendas. But how many people are actually using it, which is the primary function of all PDAs? Ask your friends around you and you will get the answer immediately.

I believe that, one day when the price of the smart phone drops to a level considerably low, many people would buy; yet many of those "smart" functions will never be used. They buy because they feel more comfortable to pay the same price for something with extra functions.

The 3G handset will not be a thing like what Microsoft has envisioned: a large unified platform. Handsets are so popular because they have so many different models and configurations of functions, which could create numerous market segments to cater for the taste of different user groups. Handsets will never become commodities without individuality like computers.

Therefore, in the foreseeable future, the 3G handset will have the following positioning and applications:

-communication: as such handsets are used just for making phone calls, the fewer their functions are, the cheaper their prices. In the short term, such handsets would be good enough for most people.

-video communication: in addition to making phone calls, such handsets would also enable the video phone service. Yet they cannot be used to access the Internet, nor receive and send MMS (as MMS has to be enabled through the Internet), nor download images and ringtones.

-Internet access: such handsets will not offer the video phone service, but can be used to access the Internet and, therefore, to download images and ringtones as well as Java programs. Some, with built-in cameras, could even receive and send MMS. But not all such handsets will have built-in cameras.

-entertainment: these would be ultra-powerful handsets, which might better be called multimedia players. Having integrated a lot of functions including the video phone, Internet access, MMS and built-in Java, such handsets might be used by youngsters for entertainment in spare time.

-business: although functions like built-in schedule management, calendar and phonebook are more or less available in every handset today, they will be the highlights of such phones. Another special feature of such handsets will be the ability to transmit such data between handsets and computers. In addition, as most business people have the need for the email service out of their offices, such handsets will have to provide the Internet access too.

I once believed that, with the advent of the 3G time, all handsets would adopt a unified set of specifications, as it would reduce the resistance to the mobile Internet service. Now I have given up that, because it would be impossible from a practical point of view. In addition, consumers also have diversified demands for handsets.

Not everyone needs a smart phone. Nor will the handset become another kind of computer. It reminds me of another set of wireless communication standards derived from the sector of computer: WLAN.

In the next article, we will move onto another topic to talk about the relationship between 3G and WLAN. (
2003/04/20 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )