It was the sort of moment any businessperson dreads. Walking
through an airport to catch a flight, entrepreneur Brad Beckstrom
glimpsed an important client-and realized he'd forgotten the
client's name, although he recalled the name of the
client's company.
Dreading a faux pas, Beckstrom grabbed his mobile phone. With
his thumbs, he began typing the company's name into his contact
application, which contains roughly 1,000 entries. Seconds later,
the mystery person's identity popped up, and Beckstrom walked
over to say hello. "It rekindled the relationship," he
recalls. "He remembered my name, so I was really glad I
remembered his."
It's just one more reason the 42-year-old co-founder and COO
of Momentum
Marketing Services, a $15 million creative and marketing
services firm in Alexandria, Virginia, swears by his PalmOne Treo
600, one of a new generation of smartphones. A bona fide road
warrior who spends at least one to two days out of the office every
week, Beckstrom also uses the Treo 600's built-in camera with
his Sprint voice and data service plan to send snapshots home to
his family while he's traveling, a feature he thinks could
become the basis of new Momentum promotional campaigns in the
future.
Content Continues Below
Beckstrom is not alone. The Treo 600 is widely considered a
breakthrough for the smartphone, and almost a year into its life,
the product is consistently back-ordered. It's probably a good
time for me to disclose that I am a Treo 600 owner and have also
used two previous generations of the device. I'm hooked. Still,
at $450 to $699 (depending on whether you need a service plan), the
Treo 600 isn't for everyone. Nor is it the answer to every
mobile computing need. Even Beckstrom also relies heavily on his
wireless-equipped Apple G4 PowerBook laptop to do his job on the
go.
That's why Entrepreneur has dedicated this year's
special report to exploring the latest trends in mobile computing.
From smartphones to notebooks to wireless hot spots, this guide
provides a map to what you should look for-or expect-from your next
mobile gadget and how you can make managing them and keeping them
secure just a bit easier.
Talk to Me
It seems like everybody's out to get mobile phone users-from
restaurants and fitness centers that have banned their use for
privacy reasons to the myriad municipalities that have made it
downright criminal to use them while driving.
But the buying (and talking) public has been snapping up the
devices in record numbers. At least two leading market research
firms project unit sales of close to 600 million worldwide this
year, and year-over-year sales growth rates ranged from 30 to 34
percent for the first and second quarters of 2003 and 2004. Nokia
remains the market leader, although Motorola and Samsung have been
steadily eating into its share. What's more, the smartphone
category, combining voice communications features with data-centric
functions such as e-mail and personal information managers, has
come into its own with upwards of 50 models to choose from.
"There aren't that many basic phones left that are
limited to 2G capabilities," says Todd Kort, principal analyst
for PDAs and smartphones for technology research and consulting
firm Gartner Inc. in San Jose, California.
Consider that more than 100,000 units of the Treo 600 were sold
in the first month of its release in fall 2003, with the company
projecting sales of more than 1 million units by early 2005. A
next-generation edition is set to ship late this year.
But that's only a tiny fraction of the 17.7 million
smartphones that Gartner and IT and telecom research firm IDC
expect will ship this year. About half of those units will use the
Symbian operating system favored by Nokia.
Indeed, Nokia is moving aggressively into smartphones. Although
it recently pared down the number of models it will offer, the
ultra- high-end Nokia 9500 Communicator is due in the fourth
quarter of 2004. With its feet more in the land of data
communications than voice, this handset looks like a traditional
cellular phone, but it unfolds clamshell-style to reveal a qwerty
keyboard and a color screen. The Nokia 9500 Communicator will
support three communications technologies, including EDGE, GSM and
wireless LANs. It supports Bluetooth for short-range wireless
communications, an increasingly common feature for mobile phones
that allows them to connect to other devices such as handheld
computers or printers. The Nokia 9500 Communicator comes with the
requisite digital camera, support for spreadsheets and presentation
files, and a whopping 80MB of built-in memory. No price had been
set at press time, but some smartphones push $800, which is
considered one of several downsides to the category.
"One of the probems with smartphones is that they're
expensive phones, even though they are great as a business tool.
There are issues, though, when the weekend comes around," says
Kevin Burden, program manager for mobile devices at IDC in
Framingham, Massachusetts. "Do you really want to bring a $500
phone out on a boat with you? This market has always been about
preferences."
That's why analysts are eagerly awaiting this fall's
release of the next-generation Motorola MPx, which will probably be
priced closer to the $300 mark. The device will act as a GSM/GPRS
phone and run Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, which means the
display can be switched between landscape and portrait modes. Other
features include built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless support, a
2.8-inch 16-bit color display, up to 1GB of expanded memory, and a
1.2 megapixel digital camera with flash.
What else is out there? The recently released Motorola i710, for
instance, offers GPS features and includes speakerphone and
walkie-talkie functions for about $125 (all prices street) before
rebate. Of course, if you don't have a hankering for e-mail and
all that other stuff, you could spend as little as $50 for just a
basic handset.
Page 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 