Thread: Death knell for PDAs, will Internet Tablets flourish?
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frethop is offline frethop
2007-11-12 , 15:01
Posts: 283 | Thanked: 60 times | Joined on Nov 2005 @ It's dark in here. I hear laughing.
#6
Originally Posted by rs-px View Post
It's depressing that companies like Palm, Microsoft or Symbian just don't get it. It takes a company like Apple or to a lesser extent Nokia to get it. To understand what people want and to be brave enough to give it to them.
I don't think that's quite fair. For companies providing handheld devices, the target is moving and multiple factors are moving it.

People still don't know what they want. And technology is changing so rapidly that it's extremely hard to combine technology and functionality to reach users.

For example, Nokia tried a "tablet" form factor with the Nokia 7710. Cool device; I have one. But it fell flat -- mostly because it was too early and did not get the technology right (no wireless, for example, and the phone part wasn't thought through real well). Fast forward 3 years or so, and now the same form factor works in a tablet. No phone function (go figure) and great wireless advances.

And still Nokia is trying to climb out of the niche market with these tablets. I think it's really tough these days. People are just now coming into the idea of what functions they want and need out of a handheld device. And by the time they know, technology will be way ahead of them.

-- Mike