Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Philly Pocket PC Summit: Derek Brown keynote
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 08:33 AM
Derek Brown has kicked off the first "official" day of the Pocket PC conference with an overview of what Microsoft is up to - they're focusing very heavily on the phone space right now with both their Phone Edition and Smartphone platform. Why?
Derek gave us a very compelling example of where the industry is at right now: Carphone Warehouse sells 35,000 GPRS phones a month. Guess how many of this 35K people sign up for a GPRS data account? 200 people. That's a 0.05% conversion rate from "phone user" to "serious data user". WAP and SMS are not going to drive 2.5G/3G data networks - people need compelling services, not simply a functional device. Current GPRS phones don't have smart client software that can support rich data experiences, so the adoption rate of serious data use is very low. Pricing structures are also a huge barrier, but if I can get unlimited GPRS data in Canada for $50 CND a month ($35 US), the rest of the world will catch up to use sooner or later.
Wondering where the Phone Edition devices are? Derek gave us some information on what's happening now and in the future. The following US carriers will be offering Pocket PC Phone Edition devices:
VoiceStream - HTC hardware ("Spaceneedle" in the USA), July 2002
Verizon - Audiovox Thera, out now
Sprint PCS- AudioVox Thera, mid 2002
Europe is also coming on strong:
mm02 - XDA, June 2002
T-Mobile - HTC hardware, 2002
Orange - Jornada 928, mid 2002
Vodafone - Jornada 928, mid 2002
People sometimes wonder about recording phone calls to a WAV file in the same way you record voice notes. The Wallaby/Spaceneedle hardware can do it (the 02 XDA will have this functionality), but it's up to the carrier to decide if they want to allow it or not (Voicestream won't be supporting it). Pocket PC Phone Edition devices have four states: Pocket PC on/phone on, Pocket PC on/phone off, Pocket PC off/phone off, and Pocket PC off/phone on.
And what about the Smartphone 2002? Confirmed partners are Sendo, Samsung, HTC, Compal, and TCL. TCL is a new one to the list, but perhaps one of the most important in terms of sheer driving force: they're a significant Chinese manufacturer, and with China now having the most mobile phone users of any country in the world, this is a huge market waiting to be tapped into. North American trials are underway (still!), but in the US, Cingular will be carrying a Smartphone 2002 device (I'm not sure which hardware). Launch time is still "In the not too distant future" - we've been hearing that for a long time, but I think this is the year that it will happen.
One odd thing with all the presentations was that the elmo (presentation camera pointed at the Pocket PC) had a painfully slow refresh rate, so every Pocket PC demo done under it made the device look very slow. And in the middle of Beth's demo, her dad called her back just as she was about to show the ring tones - the audience loved that one.
Microsoft is tying the abilities of the Phone Edition quite heavily on tight integration with Exchange. With the right server pieces, you can sync against your Exchange data directly instead of your desktop. Timed sync (ie: pull down all your new data at 9 AM every morning), control over attachment size (ignore all attachments over 100 KB), and other features.
I've always liked Derek's presentation style, so this was a good session.
Derek gave us a very compelling example of where the industry is at right now: Carphone Warehouse sells 35,000 GPRS phones a month. Guess how many of this 35K people sign up for a GPRS data account? 200 people. That's a 0.05% conversion rate from "phone user" to "serious data user". WAP and SMS are not going to drive 2.5G/3G data networks - people need compelling services, not simply a functional device. Current GPRS phones don't have smart client software that can support rich data experiences, so the adoption rate of serious data use is very low. Pricing structures are also a huge barrier, but if I can get unlimited GPRS data in Canada for $50 CND a month ($35 US), the rest of the world will catch up to use sooner or later.
Wondering where the Phone Edition devices are? Derek gave us some information on what's happening now and in the future. The following US carriers will be offering Pocket PC Phone Edition devices:
VoiceStream - HTC hardware ("Spaceneedle" in the USA), July 2002
Verizon - Audiovox Thera, out now
Sprint PCS- AudioVox Thera, mid 2002
Europe is also coming on strong:
mm02 - XDA, June 2002
T-Mobile - HTC hardware, 2002
Orange - Jornada 928, mid 2002
Vodafone - Jornada 928, mid 2002
People sometimes wonder about recording phone calls to a WAV file in the same way you record voice notes. The Wallaby/Spaceneedle hardware can do it (the 02 XDA will have this functionality), but it's up to the carrier to decide if they want to allow it or not (Voicestream won't be supporting it). Pocket PC Phone Edition devices have four states: Pocket PC on/phone on, Pocket PC on/phone off, Pocket PC off/phone off, and Pocket PC off/phone on.
And what about the Smartphone 2002? Confirmed partners are Sendo, Samsung, HTC, Compal, and TCL. TCL is a new one to the list, but perhaps one of the most important in terms of sheer driving force: they're a significant Chinese manufacturer, and with China now having the most mobile phone users of any country in the world, this is a huge market waiting to be tapped into. North American trials are underway (still!), but in the US, Cingular will be carrying a Smartphone 2002 device (I'm not sure which hardware). Launch time is still "In the not too distant future" - we've been hearing that for a long time, but I think this is the year that it will happen.
One odd thing with all the presentations was that the elmo (presentation camera pointed at the Pocket PC) had a painfully slow refresh rate, so every Pocket PC demo done under it made the device look very slow. And in the middle of Beth's demo, her dad called her back just as she was about to show the ring tones - the audience loved that one.
Microsoft is tying the abilities of the Phone Edition quite heavily on tight integration with Exchange. With the right server pieces, you can sync against your Exchange data directly instead of your desktop. Timed sync (ie: pull down all your new data at 9 AM every morning), control over attachment size (ignore all attachments over 100 KB), and other features.
I've always liked Derek's presentation style, so this was a good session.
