Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Is It Possible Pocket PC is Now the Price Leader?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 08:00 AM
It didn't matter what features the Pocket PC had, there were always three things users of Palm OS devices could say that we really had no response to:
• Battery Life
• Size
• Price
For most of us, more functionality, much more functionality, was more important than those three items within reason. The Casio E-1x5 really exceeded those limits and was a niche player. With virtually all Pocket PC 2002 devices and the iPAQ 3600 Pocket PC 2000 device, size and weight became an important issue in the design of the device. Quite a contrast to the old Palm-sized PC days. Now these devices rival many Palm OS counterparts and even beat them in volume and mass. And where the devices came up a bit heavier or larger, it was a small price to pay for the bigger screens, full screen handwriting recognition, voice recording, multimedia capabilities, etc.
Battery life has also been an area Pocket PCs lagged behind Palm OS devices. Larger screens, a real speaker, more RAM and 206MHz processors. Sort of to be expected eh? Well, through all of that into a PDA and you also expect the price to be at a premium compared to a device lacking many of those features.
Well, Pocket PC OEMs (HP, Toshiba) and ODMs (Compal, HTC) have been fooling with Pocket PCs for over two years now and may have figured out a few tricks in getting all of this into a PDA for Palm OS prices. As far as I can tell, in every way the new Dell Pocket PC and ViewSonic Pocket PC exceed everything the original $499 iPAQ can do, and they do it for $199-$299! Palm and Sony have really only just gotten into the rich media full featured devices in the past year or so, and it wasn't integrated at all. Sony had to add a Digital Signal Processor to enable music, had to hack the screen API to get hi-res, and none of them still has a good file system for accessing the storage card. The new round of OS5 devices will close that gap, but this is their first round of devices with that OS and it shows. The Tungsten T comes out of the gates at $499. Yes, it has integrated bluetooth, yet lacks MP3 capabilities and only has 16MB of RAM. I've not seen prices on the iPAQ 5000 yet, but if their base bluetooth model is $499, it trumps the Tungsten T in just about every way. Of course, if it comes out at a $749 iPAQ 3900-ish price, HP can forget about it. The Sony NX70 is $599, though that includes the largest PDA screen available and has a camera. Still, neither of these devices have the full feature set the Pocket PC does. Want voice recording? Get the Tungsten T because the NX doesn't have it. All Pocket PCs do. Want integrated MP3 capabilities? Go with the NX. The Tungsten T will need a third party app, one that is yet to be delivered and will take up some of that precious 16MB of RAM.
What about battery life? I've seen reports that both the Tungsten T and NX are good for a week being used 30 minutes or so a day. That translates to 3.5-4.0 hours folks. I think even the Toshiba e570 beat that number. Most Pocket PCs easily get 6 hours and my 3900 regularly gives me over 8 hours unless I am playing a processor intensive game like SimCity 2000. Palm and friends haven't figured out how to make use of those 150MHz+ ARM processors and hi-res full color screens yet and still get close to the battery life of the old Motorola Dragonball devices.
Finally size. Held the Sony NX70? Expanded the Tungsten T so you could actually use it? Folks, in my opinion, Palm has given up the lead in price, size and battery life and has not claimed the lead in functionality. As I said in my post earlier today on Q3 market share numbers, the next 6 months could drastically shake up the PDA industry. This Reuters report says basically the same thing. What do you think?
• Battery Life
• Size
• Price
For most of us, more functionality, much more functionality, was more important than those three items within reason. The Casio E-1x5 really exceeded those limits and was a niche player. With virtually all Pocket PC 2002 devices and the iPAQ 3600 Pocket PC 2000 device, size and weight became an important issue in the design of the device. Quite a contrast to the old Palm-sized PC days. Now these devices rival many Palm OS counterparts and even beat them in volume and mass. And where the devices came up a bit heavier or larger, it was a small price to pay for the bigger screens, full screen handwriting recognition, voice recording, multimedia capabilities, etc.
Battery life has also been an area Pocket PCs lagged behind Palm OS devices. Larger screens, a real speaker, more RAM and 206MHz processors. Sort of to be expected eh? Well, through all of that into a PDA and you also expect the price to be at a premium compared to a device lacking many of those features.
Well, Pocket PC OEMs (HP, Toshiba) and ODMs (Compal, HTC) have been fooling with Pocket PCs for over two years now and may have figured out a few tricks in getting all of this into a PDA for Palm OS prices. As far as I can tell, in every way the new Dell Pocket PC and ViewSonic Pocket PC exceed everything the original $499 iPAQ can do, and they do it for $199-$299! Palm and Sony have really only just gotten into the rich media full featured devices in the past year or so, and it wasn't integrated at all. Sony had to add a Digital Signal Processor to enable music, had to hack the screen API to get hi-res, and none of them still has a good file system for accessing the storage card. The new round of OS5 devices will close that gap, but this is their first round of devices with that OS and it shows. The Tungsten T comes out of the gates at $499. Yes, it has integrated bluetooth, yet lacks MP3 capabilities and only has 16MB of RAM. I've not seen prices on the iPAQ 5000 yet, but if their base bluetooth model is $499, it trumps the Tungsten T in just about every way. Of course, if it comes out at a $749 iPAQ 3900-ish price, HP can forget about it. The Sony NX70 is $599, though that includes the largest PDA screen available and has a camera. Still, neither of these devices have the full feature set the Pocket PC does. Want voice recording? Get the Tungsten T because the NX doesn't have it. All Pocket PCs do. Want integrated MP3 capabilities? Go with the NX. The Tungsten T will need a third party app, one that is yet to be delivered and will take up some of that precious 16MB of RAM.
What about battery life? I've seen reports that both the Tungsten T and NX are good for a week being used 30 minutes or so a day. That translates to 3.5-4.0 hours folks. I think even the Toshiba e570 beat that number. Most Pocket PCs easily get 6 hours and my 3900 regularly gives me over 8 hours unless I am playing a processor intensive game like SimCity 2000. Palm and friends haven't figured out how to make use of those 150MHz+ ARM processors and hi-res full color screens yet and still get close to the battery life of the old Motorola Dragonball devices.
Finally size. Held the Sony NX70? Expanded the Tungsten T so you could actually use it? Folks, in my opinion, Palm has given up the lead in price, size and battery life and has not claimed the lead in functionality. As I said in my post earlier today on Q3 market share numbers, the next 6 months could drastically shake up the PDA industry. This Reuters report says basically the same thing. What do you think?
