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	fpp	2007-07-09 , 17:39
	Posts: 2,853 \| Thanked: 968 times \| Joined on Nov 2005	#215

Originally Posted by ragnar

Sorry to stick to this issue, but I disagree quite strongly on this. Let me start by saying that I love the Psion devices. The Psion 5 still does some things better than nearly any device out there in the market. I think it was a wildly successful device in many terms: engineering, design etc.
But I cannot really buy "wildly successful" in terms of popularity and sales. Nor to any other non-connected PDA device. Zaurus was discontinued some years ago. I don't believe it's a question of "not marketing". Truly great devices and services gain popularity with "zero marketing", and vice versa, no amount of marketing can help to really sell a non-useful device or service.

Actually the Zaurus line was only "officially" discontinued early this year, and despite this the latest models are still easily available through import dealers (like in Germany). I still think that if Sharp had localized, sold and supported them abroad the audience would have gone way beyond the enthusiast Linux hacker crowd, as it obviously did in Japan. Same for the Psions : if those machines had been at today's electronic gadgets prices, of course they'd had sold more. But they were available everywhere and visible in shops, which the tablets are not. To me both qualify as "successful".

Quoting numbers from: http://www.ericlindsay.com/epoc/mhist.htm Be it 25000 Psions a month or 163000 devices year or whatever, that is nowhere near even moderately successful. By successful I mean mass market appeal. A device that the majority of people would seem worthwhile to buy. PDA's focusing on personal information management have never reached this target. Mobile phones are wildly successful.

Don't you find it strange that enquiries about sales of the 770/N800 are met with polite demurral ? Don't you find it strange that even lowly phones carry PIM essentials as a matter of fact ?

I do agree with this thing, however. I use PIM functions on my E61 phone, since it is my primary device. I use the PC suite to automatically sync with my Outlook calendar. Even if my tablet would have PIM functions, I simply wouldn't use them. Writing down the entries wouldn't be as comfortable or as fast as with my phone. I don't carry the tablet in my pocket all the time so that I could check my calendar or notes.

Our different points of view definitely come from totally opposed use cases. My Tablet IS my primary device, as the Psion then the Zaurus were before. In fact I didn't have a phone until I bought the tablet, and I chose the cheapest Nokia model that had EDGE and BT at the time. I don't want a device that's more expensive than the tablet, with yet another keyboard and big screen. To me, a phone is a modem. Sometimes I speak into it, but not much. And I only use its calendar function because the tablet has none -- but I'd take GPE or Dates instead of that trinket any day if only they could sync with something.

Maybe Nokia employees have overly easy access to luxury phones, and that skews their judgment :-)

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