re smart phones

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
> Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 04:50:48 -0700
> From: Dan Gillmor <dgillmor () mercurynews com>
> Subject: Fyi re smart phones
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
>
> http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001429.shtml
>
> Orange, a unit of France Telecom, is one of several companies around the
> world now selling devices that begin to validate the notion of the
> overpromised and, to date, underdelivered "smart phone" ...
>
> --
<http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001429.shtml#001429>'Smart' 
Phones Making More Sense
• posted by <mailto:dgillmor () sjmercury com>Dan Gillmor 03:16 AM
• 
<http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001429.shtml#001429>permanent 
link to this item

This is also my Sunday column in the <http://www.mercurynews.com>San Jose 
Mercury News.

BERLIN

Solomon Trujillo punched a button on his mobile phone. The display showed 
an e-mail inbox. Another button, and there was a calendar.

Coming soon, he said, will be a one-click gateway to the schedule for the 
high-speed Eurorail trains that run between London and Paris, where he 
spends most of his time. And he was looking forward to a day, not too far 
in the future, when voice-recognition technology would help him handle his 
e-mail while he's driving.

<http://www.francetelecom.com/en/group/organisation/managment/comex/trujillo.html>Trujillo, 
who once ran US West, a regional local phone giant, is now chief executive 
of <http://www.orange.com>Orange, one of the world's biggest mobile 
communications companies. Orange, a unit of 
<http://www.francetelecom.com/>France Telecom, is one of several companies 
around the world now selling devices that begin to validate the notion of 
the overpromised and, to date, underdelivered "smart phone," several models 
of which he brought to the 
<http://conference.dasar.com/OQ/etre2003.nsf>European Technology Roundtable 
Exhibition in Berlin.

Orange, with some 45 million customers around the world, and its 
competitors are betting heavily on smart phones. As markets get saturated, 
they need to keep existing customers, for one thing.

And they have to justify the billions of dollars they paid for airwave 
rights to deploy third-generation, or <http://www.fcc.gov/3G/>3G, mobile 
services. Even though they could lose their bet, they're helping to define 
tomorrow's communications style.

The key feature of these new phones is how they become almost a hybrid of 
the two major communications devices of the late 20th century, voice phones 
and personal computers. They're phones plus computing platforms, taking 
advantage of specialized network services, but not so complex as devices 
that they become as unwieldy as PCs or so simple that they can't be adapted 
to other uses.

For Trujillo, the mantra is simplicity. It has to be easy to use, intuitive 
and so compelling that customers will spend more time online -- on today's 
and tomorrow's digital mobile networks. A wide range of applications will 
be available, but customers will choose a relatively small set that are 
specific to their own needs.

No longer will mobile carriers have to create large market segments that 
put people with differing needs into a single category, he said in an 
interview. Each customer will be "a segment of one."

It's a fairly compelling notion as far as it goes, and the phones he and 
others brought were early evidence that it could work. 
<http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handset/orange_spv_e100/details>One was 
running Microsoft's latest handheld operating system, and it was a dramatic 
advance over earlier systems from the world's dominant software company, 
which has stumbled in this arena. Another, the just-released 
<http://www.handspring.com/treo600/index.jhtml>Treo 600, was from Palm. 
Still another, coming soon, will run the <http://www.symbian.com/>Symbian 
operating system from Europe.

All have to meet certain design specifications from Orange. There's a 
certain look and feel, and ease of use is a requirement.

Combining carrier-specific network services with smarter phones means 
giving customers the ability to select precisely what they want from their 
phones. For Trujillo, one such service will be his train schedules, where 
he finds a train at the time he wants to leave and then buys the ticket -- 
a total of "only three clicks," he said.

Someone else might be fond of finding movies showing nearby, watching a 
video preview and then buying a ticket. The possibilities are intriguing.

What makes this vision of the future different is the insistence that the 
customer actually gets to pick and choose. Several years ago, a technology 
executive showed me the screen of his Palm device and said, "This is the 
most valuable real estate on Earth" -- a statement suggesting that someone 
else, not the customer, owned it.

The earliest handheld devices had a discrete set of functions, noted 
Silicon Valley's 
<http://www.3com.com/corpinfo/en_US/investor/resources/executivebios/benhamou.html>Eric 
Benhamou, chairman of 3Com, the networking company, and Palm, which 
pioneered the "personal digital assistant" category. The more extensible 
devices of today could be too flexible if we're not careful, he said in an 
interview.

"We've got to add a few things" to the smart phones that are just hitting 
the market, Benhamou said. "We should not add too fast, or else we'll fall 
into the trap of the general purpose platform."

The more serious trap for Trujillo and his compatriots is financial. They 
overpaid for the 3G spectrum they're now aching to justify.

Trujillo claims confidence that Orange, at least, can make customers so 
happy about the new services that they'll spend enough extra time online to 
pay for the infrastructure and turn a profit for the company. Is this 
wishful thinking?

Quite probably, said <http://www.accel.com/team_detail.asp?pid=25>Joe 
Schoendorf, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with Accel Partners in Palo 
Alto. He likes the idea of the highly capable new devices, but thinks 3G is 
a financial sinkhole. His money is on wireless Internet ideas such as 
<http://www.weca.net/OpenSection/index.asp>WiFi and its successors, which 
may fill in enough around the network edges -- and take advantage of 
rapidly improving Internet telephone capabilities -- to carve off any 
possibility of profits from the 3G players.

Could Microsoft and/or Intel pull a "Win-tel" play on the mobile industry, 
meanwhile? Both are clearly trying, and they are attracting some interest. 
But carriers and handset makers alike are wary of being turned into 
commodity suppliers where most of the profits wind up elsewhere, as in the 
PC business. Orange is selling a Microsoft-based phone, but the brand and 
revenue are Orange's.

None of the geopolitical wrangling among technology companies and carriers 
diminishes the potential, however -- though that could change if one of the 
players can achieve a chokehold on some critical infrastructure. When 
Trujillo advocates "one touch, one screen, one step," he's describing a 
system that has potentially enormous value but could also lock in customers 
in ways they might ultimately regret.

For now, the market is refreshingly competitive. Innovation is afoot, again.

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