The War for the Corporate Palmtop

Mobile devices converge, yet keep their distinctive flavours The war for the corporate desktop that pitted Windows PCs against Apple Macintosh computers is now ancient history, even if Mac diehards imagine they’re still fighting a rearguard action. However, another war, with similar religious overtones, is brewing, this time for the corporate palmtop. As cellphones evolve into "converged devices" or smartphones—essentially networked computers that fit in the palm of your hand and double as mobile phones—three broad classes of devices from three distinct heritages are vying for market share: cellphones, especially those based on the Symbian operating system platform; RIM BlackBerry devices; and Palm and Pocket PC PDAs.Cellphones from vendors such as Nokia can now do email and Web browsing and feature beefed-up personal information management (PIM) applications. Most recent BlackBerrys add mobile telephony and Web browsing to traditional email and PIM functionality. Palm devices such as the Handspring Treo line and Pocket PCs from a variety of hardware vendors incorporate GSM/GPRS or CDMA telephony. We’re calling them all smartphones. While much of the phenomenal 34% worldwide growth in mobile phone shipments reported by IDC for 2004 was driven by consumer demand for colour screens and camera phones, it’s clear that growth in adoption of smartphones, mostly by business users, also played a part. Gartner recently reported that quarterly shipments of smartphones worldwide grew to 6.76 million units in 4Q04, an increase of 66% over the previous quarter. Common FeaturesIn terms of functionality, the differences among the three classes of device we’re talking about appear small. All are available in multi-band models, all have PIM functions, all do email, all do Web browsing, all can connect to an enterprise data network, all are available in models with Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi wireless LAN capabilities and flash memory card storage. Some, but not all, of the differences relate to form factor and user interface. Most Palm and Pocket PC smartphones still look like PDAs and feature touch screens and handwriting input. Most smartphones from traditional cellphone vendors still look like cellphones with smaller screens and numeric keypads. Most BlackBerrys still look like traditional BlackBerrys—short but wide enough to fit the miniature QWERTY keyboard and larger screen. Not that the lines are always clearly drawn. Some smartphones from cellphone makers, for example, incorporate the BlackBerry email service platform under licence from RIM. BlackBerry has introduced a more phone-like model with a new patented alphanumeric keypad technology. And PDA vendors have introduced models with alpha keyboards. New smartphones based on the Windows Mobile platform blur the line between PDA and cellphone functionality with their Pocket PC-like application suites. And cellphone makers have been experimenting for years with hybrid form factors. Nokia’s 6822, available from Rogers, is a current example, a transformer phone that looks and acts like a cellphone when folded, but unfolds to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. Will convergence in functionality, form factor and user interface continue to the point where handsets eventually become as much a commodity as desktop or laptop PCs? Is there one best operating system platform for corporate users? Should enterprise IT and telecom managers be looking to standardize on one platform corporate-wide? The answer to the first two questions is, tentatively, no. As for the last: it depends on the extent to which you plan to extend legacy applications into the Wide Area Network (WAN). Form Factor, InterfaceAs much as vendors may trumpet the advantages of their own platforms, even they recognize that there will continue to be demand at least for different form factors and user interfaces. "I would say that convergence will definitely continue," says Mark Relph, manager of the developer and platform team at Microsoft Canada. "But I would stop short of saying we’ll end up with a single jack-of-all-trades device." RIM recognized the need for multiple form factors with the introduction of its BlackBerry 7100 series phones. When the first PDA phones appeared, many prospective users balked at their size and shape. Holding one to your ear felt awkward and you couldn’t see the screen when using it as a phone. The fact that both problems are neatly solved with headsets, either wired or Bluetooth, didn’t seem to matter. Some people just didn’t like it. Hence the BlackBerry 7100. It looks like a slightly oversized cellphone: longer, narrower—11.7 x 5.8 x 1.8 cm—and lighter than traditional BlackBerrys and with a necessarily smaller screen. RIM figured it could please even traditional BlackBerry users because the new 20-key QWERTY keyboard with its inset number pad theoretically allows rapid text input. The keypad is laid out in the familiar QWERTY pattern, but each key has two letters plus a punctuation mark, symbol or number. The key at the top left is both Q and W, for example, to the right of it is the E/R key and so on. The RIM SureType software uses artificial intelligence to predict—reasonably accurately—which letter the user intends, based on context and its built-in dictionary. User PreferenceRIM, unlike vendors in the other camps, is focused exclusively on the enterprise, or at least the business market, so it’s not a question of designing one form factor for consumers, another for business users—or even different form factors for different types of business users. "There appears to be no one specific type of user that prefers one over the other," says David Werezak, Vice-President of RIM’s enterprise business unit. "It’s really just personal preference and choice." Microsoft has similarly acknowledged the split in market preference. Its Windows Mobile operating system is now being used in both Pocket PC phones that adhere to the traditional PDA form factor as well as products that Microsoft and its hardware manufacturer partners refer to as Windows Mobile smartphones. They’re the size and shape of traditional cellphones, with cellphone-style numeric keypads, as well as more Pocket PC-like navigation keys. Audiovox, I-mate, Motorola and Samsung all have Windows smartphone models. Some are flip phones, but Rogers Wireless recently introduced the Audiovox SMT 5600, which it claims is the smallest Windows Mobile device on the market—10.8 x 4.6 x 1.6 cm and weighing 100 grams. This makes the screen necessarily small—176 x 220 pixels, 6 lines of text—and text input is by the tedious method familiar to cellphone users: press each numeric key multiple times to select one of two or three letters. Clearly if users need to not only receive but frequently respond to email while they’re mobile, a device with a keyboard like the BlackBerry or handwriting input like the Pocket PC would be a better choice than this more traditional style of smartphone. The form factor and brilliantly designed interface is one important reason for the BlackBerry’s success. "It’s built around the communications and messaging needs of business users," Werezak notes. "That’s the reason for the screen size—for ease of viewing calendar, email, Internet data. And that’s the reason for the keyboard size, to make it easier to input data. It’s ultimately built around user experience." Voice-CentricOn the other hand, if users are voice-centric, if they mostly need to monitor incoming email, refer to calendar information synched from a desktop, retrieve phone numbers from a synched contact list, and only rarely input text while mobile, then a cellphone-like form factor and user interface is just as clearly preferable. Differences in the market are determined "partly by function," says Microsoft’s Relph, "partly by personal preference." The fact that Nokia, according to Gartner, held a whopping 66% of the world market for smartphones in 4Q04 suggests that the smaller more phone-like form factor has many more adherents. With a few exceptions—the already mentioned 6822 and its Communicator line—Nokia mostly sells smartphones with the smaller form factor and phone-like interface. The fact that both Microsoft and RIM introduced cellphone-like smartphones only after first trying the market with PDA models suggests a realization of the same market reality. Part of this has to do with the consumerization of the mobile market. (See "The Real Convergence: Consumer/Business Technology" in Telemanagement #225) Business users, are also consumers—as all vendors, with the possible exception of RIM, are well aware. They use their mobile devices as consumers outside business hours, and the smaller form factor has more appeal in that environment. In social settings, nobody is likely to think your clunky PDA phone is really cool. And notwithstanding the rising popularity of consumer data applications such as streaming video and digital photography, voice retains its primacy in the consumer space. The question is, are personal (that is, consumer) preferences so strong and ingrained that they sometimes get in the way of business needs? Would mobile employees use email and SMS more, respond more quickly to emails, use fewer expensive voice minutes and need to fire up a laptop and plug into a wired network less frequently if they overcame their disinclination to use larger PDA-like devices that make text input easier? If you decide that force fitting all users with an email-friendly smartphone platform is simply not politic and that you must support both types of users with their supposedly different functional needs and personal preferences, then it would seem that RIM and Microsoft still have an edge as enterprise platforms because they offer both form factors. A single platform and multiple form factors should reduce technical support, training and management costs. Operating System, FunctionalityDespite apparent uniformity of function, there are still important differences among smartphone platforms beyond form factor and user interface. It’s not always easy to separate form and function, though. A cellphone may come with a notetaking application, for example, but given the tedious input technology, it’s neither as useful, nor, inevitably, as well developed a piece of software as in the Pocket PC, Palm or BlackBerry device. Because Palm and Pocket PC devices have bigger screens, one can also imagine using a wireless keyboard with them for mass text input, something that really doesn’t make sense with a cellphone. Email functionality is still a clear differentiator. BlackBerry’s push technology remains, if not absolutely unique, at least distinct among mobile devices. A BlackBerry Enterprise server integrated with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise automatically sends messages to mobile devices as they’re received at the email server. The BlackBerry Internet Solution achieves the same result for individual users with POP mail. In either scenario, users don’t have to remember to check for messages, and they receive them almost as soon as they arrive at their corporate or POP email server—assuming the device is turned on and within the carrier’s coverage footprint. The BlackBerry push technology is clearly superior to Web mail access, a common way to retrieve email on other smartphone platforms. However, most now also offer email client software that resides on the device and can be set up to periodically poll a POP or corporate email server and download new messages—the same way their desktop PC clients work. This may be sufficient for most users. All the major smartphone platforms can synchronize calendar, email, contact and to-do information with Microsoft Office and other enterprise desktop PIM applications, and download Microsoft Office files, such as Word and Excel documents. Downloading files, especially, may be more seamless with Windows Mobile-based devices than with Palm or BlackBerry. Choice of SuppliersVendors of all the major platforms—Palm OS, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian—claim theirs has an advantage when it comes to developing back-end enterprise applications. The principal argument in favour of Symbian and Palm is that they are quasi-open platforms with enormous installed bases and thousands of third-party developers and products. But gauging market share for smartphone platforms proves almost impossible because no two reports use the same product segmentation. According to Gartner, for example, Symbian holds an 80.5% share of the "smartphone market"—versus 9.7% for Windows Mobile and 4.6% for Palm. But Gartner doesn’t include BlackBerry in this calculation. In a separate report, Gartner shows RIM with a 20.8% share of the "PDA market" in 1Q05, versus 18% for Palm, 17.6% for HP and 9.9% for Nokia—with RIM growing fastest year over year at 75.6% and Palm losing ground. Case for MicrosoftMicrosoft makes a very compelling case for Windows Mobile as the logical enterprise platform. First, notes Relph, it’s a common user interface and application suite across desktop, laptop and palmtop hardware platforms. Second, Windows Mobile devices can synch directly with Exchange servers, which dominate the enterprise email market. According to The Radicati Group, Exchange currently has 33% of the installed base of enterprise messaging software, up from 31% last year—and Radicati says Microsoft will continue to grow market share. Most important, Relph says, Microsoft makes it easy for software developers to build mobile applications that integrate tightly with existing corporate applications. "If I’m a software developer, I’m using the same development tools for building applications for the PC as for Windows Mobile," he points out. "In fact, I can take the same business logic and compile it for a laptop or build it for a Windows Mobile device." Conclusion Enterprise IT and telecom managers need to think about the kinds of mobile applications they expect to deploy in future and how they need to integrate them with legacy applications. The Microsoft solution may not be best in all cases, but as enterprises look to extend legacy applications out into the terrain of wide area networking, they will have to standardize on one platform or other, just as they did with desktops. In the meantime, the convergence and consolidation in handheld devices will continue. Look for more and more devices to include multiple radios—Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as well as 2.5G and 3G PCS. The first multimode devices that will enable seamless hand-offs from PCS to IP voice over WLAN have already been announced by Motorola and others. Bluetooth could enable more radical form-factor and interface alternatives in the future. The current and probably foreseeable trend is toward more convergence of functions onto one device. But another possibility is tightly integrated mix ’n’ match components—a telephone handset and radios in one unit, screen, processing and mobile text input in another, headset for handsfree telephony and full-size keyboard—all connected using Bluetooth.

The War for the Corporate Palmtop

News | 05/26/2005 4:00 am EDT

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