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Why Have PDAs Failed In The iPod Era?

Posted by Zonk on from the my-palm-she-is-dead dept.

mikejz84 writes "As the owner of a PocketPC PDA I am a very happy camper, with wifi internet access, Skype Voip, video playback, and of course the ubiquitous mp3 playback. In an era were everyone seems to talk about the Video iPod, and the next generation of mobile devices, it leaves me wondering - I already have all those abilities in a PDA that costs about as much as an iPod. My question for Slashdot: Given that modern PDAs have almost all the functionality of these separate devices, how has Palm and Microsoft/PocketPC developers failed in making PDAs a force in this new era of portable media devices? It is the poor marketing, bad media apps, public perception, or do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media?"

29 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. I think you nailed it. by kensai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the poor marketing ... BINGO.
    bad media apps ... BINGO.
    public perception ... BINGO.
    do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media ... BINGO.

    1. Re:I think you nailed it. by jtwJGuevara · · Score: 4, Insightful
      do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media ... BINGO.

      This might comparing be apples to oranges, but if this were true, then why does virtually everyone cell phone on the market come with so much more functionality than what a phone should ever be used for: pictures, video games, music, text messaging, etc. etc.

    2. Re:I think you nailed it. by ciroknight · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Device Flexibility: bingo.

      PDAs might be cool toys, they do a lot that a PC can do, and you can carry it in your pocket. Pretty cool eh? But when it comes down to it, what does the device actually do? Hard to define; it can do calendars, it can do media playback, it can do telephony, it can do internet-related tasks. But on the overall, it's a very obscure device.

      With the iPod, it's pretty clear what it does. It plays music. Now, it does do other things; it can watch movies, it can view pictures, it can broadcast music on an FM frequency, it can offload pictures from your digital camera, it can record class notes, it can keep your address book, notes, song lyrics. But these things are bonuses; the iPod's intention is to be the best damned music player on the market, and it nails that motive.

      Now, don't think I hate PDAs; I love palm, I own a Treo 600 and a Palm m130 personally, but I almost never use them anymore. I have found that I'm distracted by a device that does too much, and isn't particularly good at anything that it's supposed to do. When I'm writing notes, I find a pencil and a piece of paper faster. When I'm trying to make a call, the Treo is ackward to hold and often lacks reception compared to my Nokia. And when I'm trying to browse forums, I find the screen's resolution prohibitive and just go and find a dumb terminal somewhere.

      Give the PDA something to do, and you'll see people who need it to do that purpose, buy it. Instead of bundling everything and the kitchen sink, give it a very simple task, and expand upon the device in a way that's non-destructive to the device's original intent.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    3. Re:I think you nailed it. by CountBrass · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Because mobile phone makers need to you to keep buying new phones otherwise they go bust.

      My phone is a pda, has games, a camera, can browse the web. None of which I want, need nor use.

      In contrast it often hangs (Windows Mobile so no surprise) and I have to take the battery out. When trying to answer calls it sometimes declares there was an error answering the call!?! And sometimes it simply doesnt ring/vibrate when someone calls me.

      Why can't I buy *just a phone*? The original Motorola V (not the current bloated monster) and the Nokia 2110 were pretty much the perfect mobile phones: it's all been downhill since then.

      --
      Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
    4. Re:I think you nailed it. by lewp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because we do want those features, we just want them executed properly. In consumer electronics, as in everywhere else, the first few iterations of any new product are almost universally shit.

      I'd drop my RAZR's camera in a second if it'd mean a smaller and lighter phone, but only because the camera on it sucks so badly I end up carrying around my little Canon S505 most everywhere. When they put 3+MP cameras with decent AF in phones, I won't do that anymore, and we'll be one step closer to convergence.

      Likewise, when they give me a 20+gig PDA with the size and style of an iPod, with a large screen, the horsepower to play movies, and that lasts 8+ hours on a single charge, I'll be all over it.

      --
      Game... blouses.
    5. Re:I think you nailed it. by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think most phones have PDAs, they all suck. Few of them sync to your computer, and typing stuff in on the number pad is rediculous. The camera functions are equally bad. The only way to get the pictures off sometimes is to email them to yourself, and then they charge you for the bandwidth.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    6. Re:I think you nailed it. by Henk+Poley · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mobilephones are targeted at a minority group with a strong voice. This group loves "cool"; cool means: change/difference, which implies featuritis.

      It is that simple ;-)

    7. Re:I think you nailed it. by Cali+Thalen · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Why can't I buy *just a phone*?


      There's a *bingo*.

      Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*. Interface, and sound quality. Now I'm not sure how they made it so that every kid under the age of 30 *has* to have one...that's another story.

      Handheld computers just don't manage that simple job. They are sub-par computers with sub-par games and sub-par web browsing and some do a sub-par job of displaying video and playing songs. Yummy, just what I want...

      I haven't replaced my old Samsung SCH3500 phone because few phones available today do a better job doing the things I *want* a phone for...reception, battery life, sound quality. I'd replace the phone every 6 months if they came up with phones that were better at being a *phone*.

      In several respects, that's one of the reasons things are the way they are. Apple has always understood what the customer wanted (well, mostly anyway). It's just too bad they can't do it at a better price, or they'd be a frightening corporation...
      --
      Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
    8. Re:I think you nailed it. by sniggly · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That still leaves the question how is it possible that apple manages to be so cool that everyone wants what they make? Apple is the only computer company that understands fashion like some (swedish) car manufacturers and fashion companies do, and manage to appeal to a very wide audience.

      It doesn't seem all that hard to do but it's impossible for a company like Dell or HP to position itself as a fashion company. Nobody walks around proudly with a Dell laptop or Axim because the brand is about cheap and mass produced.

      Also I think apple managed to place the ipod outside of the perceived complexity of computer appliances. It isn't simple because you do need a computer, internet savvy, etc to get the thing loaded with songs. Loading songs onto an axim is not much more complex. If I had my mom do either one she'd be vexed either way.

      It's also got a lot to do with leadership and vision, It's almost as if Jobs is a magician that can control how people see things and influences them strongly.

      4 years ago I got a powerbook g4 (400mhz) with osx on it and after some initial trouble with the original osx it's stil one of my favourite computers - without being able to pinpoint the why of it, it just rocks. It's like driving around in an old saab, just a very weird piece of marketing trickery, mass delusion or just plain quality...

      --
      Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
    9. Re:I think you nailed it. by usrusr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      if you really need an organizer so much that you carry one around all day then a pda (or trusty old pack of dead tree) is certainly the best for you. but there are enough people who don't need the functionality enough to justify all that carrying stuff around business.

      it was a mistake (but a somewhat understandable one) how mobile phone makers used to target the first phones with organizer functionality at the businessman, he will always use the real thing. but in the mainstream market they do a great job at filling the gap between not having an organizer system at all and carrying around a second device, complete with all the hassle of keeping batteries charged, setting quiet mode during meeting etc. in the end it's all software running on some microcontroller anyway, technically it does not make much difference wether you stick gsm on a pda or slowly enable the phones to do the pda's job.

      wait, there's exactly one difference (or two, considering the "cellular network provider pays for the phone" issue mentioned elsewhere):

      pda are completely associated only with work by everyone exept the most die-hard geek while phones are also seen as a way to stay in touch with friends and family etc, so ironically the _p_da end up being perceived as much less personal than a phone.
      people (those not on /.) generally tend to have trouble accepting electronics invading more and more of their everyday life, i think said more personal connection to their phones (or, thinking of the ipod, their personal music collection) could well be the means by which new applications sneak into people's lives that would fail coming in a seperate device like a pda, where the less liked work functionality stands in the focus while leisure functions come second.

      ps: now one could speculate about how many of those "i want a phone that phones and nothing more" are people who are called more frequently by their boss/customers than by friends/family ;-)

      --
      [i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
    10. Re:I think you nailed it. by bmgoau · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Give me a 20 gigabyte + PDA, with media quality and feature ease of use on par with the ipod, with an 8 hour plus batter life at the same price as todays ipod and i, and i suspect many others, would buy it in a second.

      Simply put, PDA's lack the battery life and storage capabilities of the ipod.

      This relates to all portable devices with the exception of the ipod. Manufacturers keep adding more and more powerhungry and ill devised features to PDA' and Phones like video playback and camera support but always fail in two aspects:

      The initial quality of the feature developed is horrible
      They forget to upgrade the systems which these features need to be avaliable, which means phone and PDA hardware.

      The problem is space, no more no less, all this media, includeing thousands of songs, takes space, and consumers are not happy that they have to buy seperate memory for their device which is inferior to the built in memory of the ipod 20 fold.

      Take one of my family member for example, who recently bought a $400 camera, but in the process noticed that an increaseing amount of digital cameras do not include out of the box memory. Where was the marketing team on that decision. Surely they think if the dont include memory, consumers will be inclined to buy seperate memory, but what they forget is that consumers have the choice of the one with or without memory. The choice is clear.

      So to make it clear: PDA's fail because they have the features (poorly developed) but not the infrastructure.

      Give me a PocketPC PDA, with an IBM or Toshiba 20 gig microdrive, with a battery that not only promises but actually has an 8 hour+ basttery life in media playback, with the same price as the ipod and i would litteraly trash my ipod and buy it right now.

      But why are things the way that are?

      I suspect a features race between PDA's phones and media playback devices has left PDA's mortally wounded. I suspect marketing kept pushing for more features, not better features, and never gave one ounce of their time to the engenieers crying out in horror at the strain being put on backward technology, only to realise their jobs redundancy and a lack of demand from a detached marketing department for better hardware.

      Of course it may be a subject of the limits of todays technology, but again, not enough work is being put on the desks of hardware developers to make better storage and battery devices. Instead all the work is landing on the desks of software developers who lie awake at night, and pull out their hair, knowing full well they cannot possibly write a fully functional feature set with such hardware constraints.

      Consumers arnt stupid, esspecially when the average teenager has limited funds, and has to make every cent count. Consumers know the PDA only has 32 meg out of the box, and the similar priced ipod has 60,000 meg.

      Give me a 20 gig+, 8 hour+ battery (music playback), and fully developed programs (that means everything from a better UI to more effeciency) on a PDA for the same price as an ipod.

      Another great example is phones, where half asses features like camera's and operating system features (video, music) are more focused on than actually making a better fucking phone. I say work on the technology until its perfected, then implement these powerhungry features once the phone itself has been perfected.

    11. Re:I think you nailed it. by ozmanjusri · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Mobilephones are targeted at a minority group with a strong voice. This group loves "cool"; cool means: change/difference, which implies featuritis.

      The early '90s called. They want their yuppie group think back.

      Wake up there princess, you've been asleep for a looong time. Everybody has mobile phones now.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    12. Re:I think you nailed it. by wwwillem · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Part of the appeal of the IPods is that they do what they do *well*.

      Which is similar to why Google more or less wiped out Yahoo in searching. At the time, Yahoo was seen as the searching site that couldn't been beaten. Although we suffered their banners and other stuff. Google came and did nothing but searching, searching and searching, with a home page of only a few kilobytes. And even with textual advertising of only a few bytes. In short, the features were limited, but they did them well !!!

      So, I'm truly convinced that when there is a company (history tells that this will be a new starter) that develops a cellphone with a voice quality and battery life that doesn't let me say from the start "shall I call you back on a landline", they will have a gold-mine. Sidenote: when you think currt cellphone sound quality is 'good enough', think for a second why everybody is shouting into their cell phones so loud that they anoy everybody around them.

      It's all about KISS !!!

      --
      Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
    13. Re:I think you nailed it. by pthisis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which is similar to why Google more or less wiped out Yahoo in searching. At the time, Yahoo was seen as the searching site that couldn't been beaten

      Basic point is right, but this seems revisionist; Yahoo was mainly a categorized set of links (like dmoz.org) with a halfassed search engine tacked on as an afterthought. Indeed, at the outset it didn't even have a search engine--and even after adding one, it was never really a search engine back then. Altavista was the "preferred" search engine at the time (having replaced Lycos when Lycos decided to go in the portal direction).

      But yeah, Google came on the scene and did just searching, and did it better than Altavista and Lycos at a time when they had lost the search focus and were adding relatively crappy portal features instead of improving search.

      --
      rage, rage against the dying of the light
  2. Storage capacity by MadDog+Bob-2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unless you sprung for extra storage, the space on your PDA is measured in tens of megabytes. On an iPod, it's measured in tens of gigabytes.

    1. Re:Storage capacity by adrianmonk · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Unless you sprung for extra storage, the space on your PDA is measured in tens of megabytes. On an iPod, it's measured in tens of gigabytes.

      True in most cases. However, PDA manufacturers are starting to get the clue. It may be a little too late to capture much of the market, but just a few months ago, Palm introduced the LifeDrive which comes from the factory with a 4 GB hard drive. That is starting to be a decent amount of storage. In fact, it's sort of what a lot of manufacturers have realized is the sweet spot for a music device. (Unlike myself, lots of users apparently don't want to try to fit their whole music collection on their music player.)

      Now, here's the problem: the LifeDrive is priced at $499. That's basically double what you'd pay for the 4GB iPod nano model. Granted, the LifeDrive does a lot more, but the question is whether consumers need or want those things.

      The big problem here is probably just that PDA companies (at least Palm) aren't big enough players to make a profit on a cheap device. Apple can sell iPods for virtually no profit as a way of getting the iTunes Music Store off the ground, but a smaller company like Palm can't do that. Unless they can radically increase sales volume, they can't make a PDA with 4GB for much less than $499 and still make a profit. So, that makes the PDA a lot less competitive with a dedicated music player than it could be.

      Also, keep in mind that there are reasons why PDAs are more expensive to make. They have to have more RAM, faster processors, and (most importantly) a bigger screen than something like an iPod has. The screen on the Palm LifeDrive is 320x480 pixels and 16-bit color. Any music player's screen isn't anywhere close to that, and it doesn't need to be for a dedicated music player device. Even the new video iPod only has a 320x240 screen, which is half the resolution. Just like in laptops, a bigger screen will really cost you.

  3. 40 Gb Hdd? by CDMA_Demo · · Score: 4, Insightful



    It is the poor marketing, bad media apps, public perception, or do people simply not want an all-in-one for mobile media?

    iPod is just a glorified HDD which makes it important. Your PDA is a teeny weeny computer which makes it not-so-important. Plus,what is the biggest HDD you can put in it? Apple understands the low-profile-market better

  4. simplicity and capacity by fredistheking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most people just want to listen to music. Also show me a PDA with a 60GB drive.

  5. Clue 1 by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Clue #1: Cellphones have become PDAs.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Clue 1 by Jozer99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Clue #1 Cellphones have become PDAs (3 day battery life) Clue #2 iPods have become PDAs (18 hour battery life) Clue #3 Laptops have become PDAs (my 3lb Centrino) (4 hour battery life) Clue #4 PDAs have become desktop computers (2-3 hour battery life)

  6. Its the interface by john_chr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My take on why PDA's haven't been as succesful as the "ipod" - its the interface. Apple got that bit right and it became a hit.

  7. Laptops by RUFFyamahaRYDER · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because laptops have 90% of the function of a PC and they run on the stuff that people already know (MAC OS and Win XP). The only thing a PDA has on a laptop is size, and even then size can work against PDA's because it's easier to type on a bigger keyboard and look at a bigger screen that all laptops have...

  8. PDAs haven't failed... by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have a Treo 650. It's a phone, it's a PDA, it's a pretty good MP3 player, it's a pretty good games machine to pass the time when I'm bored travelling and it's power-efficient too (and has a removable battery). All in a small form factor.

    People who make generic statements such as "PDAs have failed" are just simply wrong.

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  9. My View... by michaelzhao · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My parents have often asked if I needed a Pocket PC. Invariably, my answer is always "no." I thought about it for 5 minutes of why I said "no" upon reading this article. I have come up with reasons (BTW, I have an iPod):

    1. No use. I have a laptop, a desktop, a cellphone, and iPod. The laptop and desktop are meant to be ubquitous devices. They handle anything I throw at it. The iPod is for use for my huge music library (50 Gigabytes). No PocketPC could handle that. And my cell-phone is my phonebook.

    2. Price. A PocketPC is around the price of an iPod. However, why didn't I buy a PocketPC instead of an iPod? Simple. Refer back to reason 1. I have no use for a PocketPC. I have no need to addictively log on to Technorati, Digg, or Slashdot. Also, checking e-mail every 5 minutes gets old. To me, the PocketPC doesn't do any one factor well. The iPod does music extremely well. What does the PocketPC do well? Organization? Well, between the back of my hand, my memory, and my pen and paper, I do got that base covered.

    3. Price of Internet. Lets assume I'm not near any unsecured WiFi hotspot. To utilize the expensive brick I just bought to the max, I would have to get online. Well... T-Mobile Internet is $20 a month for abysmally slow Internet. Also, why would I connect using a PocketPC when my cellphone connects to the Internet just as fast and just as well?

    4. Lack of Apps. Lets face it, PocketPC's lack Apps. I put everything I need on my laptop. I owned a PocketPC before, it died, I didn't need a new one. But lack of apps really hounded it.


    My views on improving the PocketPC.

    1. Bigger hard-drive. Between my 80 Gig Laptop, my 73.4 + 2x250 HD's on my laptop, and my 60Gig iPod, the PocketPC suffers from suitable space.
    2. Lack of Apps. With not enough users, developers are loathe to code for it.
    3. Price. Clocking in at the price of my iPod and considering how little I would never considering dropping the cash.

  10. Jack of all trades.... by irritating+environme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Truly a jack of all trades, master of none problem

    The iPod is a focused device that does its original intent quite well. PDAs never did any of their information tasks very well, and considering a mini-laptop was far more useful and almost as portable, PDAs beyond address books (which a watch or phone does better now) never justified their 300-500 dollar price point.

    I worked at a startup that chased enterprise apps on PDAs in the early 00s.

    Developer tools sucked/expensive/closed, and the APIs changed constantly. MS does this junk on the desktop all the time with technologies, as in OLE->COM->DCOM->whatever, but can hide backwards compatibility in the OS bloat, but PDAs don't have room for backwards bloat. So no vibrant utilities or third-party apps really flourished. Palm wasn't much better, either.

    I mean, try making an enterprise app for all the diffrent flavors of Palm+PocketPC. Jesus, it's like writing a 3D driving game for the NES, SNES, and Playstation2 all at once. Too expensive, and not enough money to be made.

    Heck, processor architectures and fundamental OS capabilities (single-thread vs preemptive multitasking) changed constantly.

    Battery life was always terrible, and if you ran out of battery, POOF! goes your installed apps and data (on the iPaq at least).

    Finally, when I had to pay $150 for a damn PCMCIA sleeve for an iPaq that cost only $250, man, that is just WRONG. Any interesting thing you could do with it, from early WiFi or heck even wired networking went out the window with that.

    So basically, the PDA market fragmented into dozens of minimarkets, where nothing could flourish. This was okay in the nascent PC market back in 1980 and you could release a computer with just BASIC interpreter and an extremely rudimentary OS, but people have far different expectations of applications (actual user interfaces, connectivity to internet, etc).

    --


    Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
  11. It's marketing, and software by digitalgimpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The iPod is successful for two reasons: ease of use, quality

    That's something lacking on most PDA's. Palm OS was great, has become patchzilla with about a billion things bolted on that old OS, and the new version is still vaporware. Microsoft on the other hand, released a complex, ugly looking OS that makes that tiny screen feel way to overwhelming.

    As far as quality goes... well think about it. The Treo isn't bad, but has it's downsides, those cheap Dell PDA's are just that, cheap.

    For there to be a winner, someone has to do what Apple did. Combine killer features, and quality with ease of use.

    Palm had that formula for a while, but dropped the ball a few years ago. Sony picked up the hardware side with the Clie, which I still carry around. As far as the software goes... it never came back.

    I'm still waiting for my new Apple PDA.

  12. Exactly by sterno · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fact of the matter is that there are very few people who really need PDA's. If they can get a phone that has PDA features without paying a lot more, they'll take it. But as a standalone device, the PDA is the jack of all trades master of none.

    If you take a straight up pocket PC, you can:

    -Make phone calls
    -Listen to music
    -Schedule appointments
    -Send e-mail
    -Watch movies

    But how many of those tasks is it really exceptional at? It's great for keeping track of a calendar and corporations are the biggest buyer of PDA's for that reason. They set up a centralized meeting system and then hand out PDA's to everybody.

    It's not ideal for phone calls. I have a treo which is about as good of a compromise as you can get it and it's still a bit bulky for the average person. It'll fit in a pocket but it bulges quite a bit. You can listen to music but then you have storage space issues and the interfaces aren't nearly as good as what's on an ipod. You can send a small e-mail with ease but you need a laptop for real productivity. Movies... well, if you like watching movies on a 2 inch screen, more power to you and your optometrist.

    The niche that a PDA is trying to fill is deceptively difficult. Basically give people a computer that they can carry in their pocket all the time. There's practical limitations to how small you can make the display and keyboard before it becomes unusuable. The treo is the best compromise I've seen and by most phone standards it's huge.

    --
    This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
  13. People dont want mobile video. by GeorgeMcBay · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only reason Apple made a video iPod is the idea comes basically for free once you have the new nicer screens and a big harddrive sitting in the unit.

    People who are looking at the video iPod as a validation of the demand for mobile video are mistaken.

    99% of the people who wind up owning a video iPod are only ever going to use it to listen to music.

  14. The teenage daughter test by monkeyGrease · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Very simple... My teenage daughter paid her own money for an iPod and can use it easily. She walked into the Mac store (Glendale Galleria), played with one for three minutes, and could use it. No problem. She bought it. She now wants a Mac Mini.

    She tried to use a PDA, with guidance, and still lost interest almost immediately. She said it was like trying to use a PC with ten foot chopsticks.

    Apple == Ease of use. Zero learning curve to start. Like a toaster.

    Note that this does not exclude a learning curve and more sophistication _after_ entry. Entry must be immediate and rewarding.