From all the portable devices that exist, only qualify two types are really useful and seeing a real success: the mobile phone (and I mean the simple phone, not the smartphone that tries to do everything but at the end doesn’t do the phone feature correctly anymore) and the MP3 player (a concept that was already proven successful with the original walkman). PDA only have the address book and calendar as really useful when away from a PC, two features that can be easily provided by the phone (it isn’t the case in most phones…).

Now I have a phone and an iPod, and there is still a problem with this: carrying both is a pain. I end up leaving too often the iPod at home and not having it when I would need it. Plus having to charge two devices is too much, so when I happen to have the iPod with me, it only has 15min battery time left…

Some phones today do MP3 playback, but they have the limitations of flash based MP3 players where one has to choose the songs to carry, an unacceptable limitations to iPod spoiled.

So what I really want is a simple phone with a hard-drive. It should still look like a phone (I’m ok for it to be a bit bigger if necessary for the hard drive and a battery lasting long enough). It should have good calendar and address book support and some firewire or USB2 for synching with the PC. That’s it. No MMS, camera, Bluetooth or other useless feature. The user interface should be like the iPod, i.e. simple and efficient to use.

Now with companies like Texas Instruments providing phone reference designs that allow basically anybody to build a phone, and small hard drives like the ones found in the iPod, why doesn’t such a device already exists?

I think it comes from the way phones are sold. Almost all mobile phones are not sold by the manufacturer to the consumer, but by the network operator to the consumer, and the operator generally subsidizes them. Mobile phones would otherwise be too expensive to reach a mass market. Or at least it was so a few years ago, today it would be possible to have phones at low prices and without being subsidized if they wouldn’t be crapped with useless features…

Such a model is bad for the consumer, as it brings the manufacturers to put features in the phone that are good for the operators - not the user - i.e. that will increase amount of money an operator can get out of the consumer. WAP, MMS, camera, etc. are all supposed to create traffic and can be billed each time they are used. A good calendar application on the other hand doesn’t bring any money to the operator…

So making a phone a good music player wouldn’t bring any money to the operator. On the contrary, it is likely to make the consumer spend less as when bored he/she could listen to music instead of using WAP.

This might also be the reason Apple hasn’t produced an iPod phone yet. Apple keeps the iPod being a music player without feature crap, but they obviously see how an iPod phone would be attractive, especially if they make it as cool as the iPod. But with phones, they cannot be in control of the distribution chain, and this is not in Apple habits.

Now such a device seems so interesting that I’m sure someone will do it. And if they do it right, with a good design, simple user interface, good battery life and a good price, such a device will give a tough time to the iPod. And I want one!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 at 5:26 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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