Monthly Archives: September 2010

There are countless examples of mobile technology hitting the market before the world was ready, before all of the parts were in place to make them a success and before the inventors really knew how to market them. The announcement of the BlackBerry PlayBook brought this subject up in my mind because of the integration with BlackBerry devices. This feature was the main force behind the Palm Foleo which was inexplicably pulled before anyone could buy it.

The Foleo was announced in May 2007, a time when the Netbook was unknown (they would start to appear later that year), and at a time when only laptops and desktops dominated the computer industry. The 10.2” display, 5 hour battery life and low 2.4 lbs weight are not far from what is considered an ideal form factor today. Sadly, as I said earlier Palm ditched the idea and the very first Netbook / mobile companion never saw the light of day.

Then there was the Palm LifeDrive. A high-resolution 3.9” screen, 4GB of internal memory, Wi-Fi and a 1660 mAh battery in a device dating back all the way to 2005. It was the iPod Touch of its time and was capable of music, video gaming and everything else, but in a time when internet connections were slow and there was no widely known method of adding media to it. It did everything we wanted, but the eco system surrounding it had not been invented yet. I look back at the LifeDrive now and realise that it was ahead of its time, sadly about 3 years too far.

Palm did it again with the Treo 650. Back in 2004 it was the smartphone to own or to be more precise, the only one worth owning. I remember a trip to Orlando where I witnessed Treo after Treo hanging off belts (awful way to carry a phone by the way) and was stunned at just how popular it was. The Treo 650 is not necessarily an example of a product that was so far ahead of its time that it wasn’t successful, but is an example of a product that missed the golden generation of the industry it was in. We all know that Palm should have done a lot more with the Treo range and we can look back now at the countless errors, so easy to do in hindsight, but there is little doubt that the 650 was another example of a product without an eco system surrounding it and crucially, a culture where smartphones were recognised by the masses.

Notice the trend here? Palm. To be fair others have suffered this fate- Psion is a classic example from the birth of mobile computing and you could look back on some of the early Windows CE devices and see the Netbook form in them.

The fact is that no-one can tell why some products take off and others don’t, but history tells us that releasing products that are better than others in an industry that is mature is the best bet. Creating an entire new industry is incredibly difficult for anyone. Apple did the with the first iPhone- there were tons of smartphones on the market, but Apple did something new and made the smartphone a household name. Apple threw in an eco system, eventually, that included apps, games, music, video rentals and anything else you want to put onto an iPhone. Apps and games were available long before the iPhone, but Apple did it better.

The iPad is not a new product at all, but it is better than the tablets we had been subjected to prior to its release. Apple has not created a new industry here, but again did things better. Palm innovated time and time again, but didn’t do things better because there was nothing to compare those products to, and there was nothing surrounding them that made them worth a second look for most people. It seems to me that innovation, in terms of a whole product, has historically come from companies who failed to deliver the ideas at the right time. The real money has come from companies that feed off these ideas when the time is right for the whole world to use them.

Today’s comment of the day comes from Philippa on the subject of driving with mobiles- “Being distracted in a car is dangerous because your reaction times are reduced. I saw a recent study which showed someone talking on a mobile (hands free) had reaction times similar to being at the drink/drive limit. That’s a good few metres less to stop in time for an obstacle or person. There are many other reasons to be distracted of course, playing with the stereo, eating a sweet or checking the satnav. I frequently see women doing their makeup which is ridiculous, as well as both sexes on mobiles. And there is the problem that we all just lose concentration briefly from time to time anyway. To be honest we already had legislation to deal all of these things though, i.e. driving without due care and attention and dangerous driving. When I hear about someone getting pulled over for eating an apple I want to know if they were swerving or braking late, not what the initial cause was.”