PDA-1

Given the hoo-ha on Wall Street and some very nasty remarks for Carly Fiorina quitting as Chairman/CEO of HP earlier this week, one might be forgiven to overlook what’s happening to the latest iPAQ models.

But … the iPAQs hx2755 and hx2715 has been out for months before. Why is there no buzz about them; which was such common practice whenever new iPAQs come out? Why the silence? We don’t think that these 2 models are any bad at all, but there could be several reasons why the media and consumers aren’t so uppity about them:

• Both feature “old” 3.5″, 240×320-pixel QVGA screens as compared to the latest 4.0″, 480×640 VGA on the iPAQ hx4700/4705.
• Both admittedly depart from the love-it/hate-it designs of the hx/rx/rz series with a more bulbous/thick look (and many still consider the h2210/h4100/h4300 series to be the best-looking iPAQs ever.)
• PDAs these days don’t come cheap - the hx2755 is $549.99 (lowest $473.00); the hx2415 goes for $449.99 (lowest $375.00) - approaching notebook territory.

Edit: We missed out the iPAQ hx2110 ($349.00, lowest $317.23) here; go to this page for a comparison chart of all three hx2000 series models.

All these simply translate to products that are no longer sexy in the current market’s eye. HP will definitely need to “re-Invent” (or “Change” is the tagline these days) if they want to stay in the PDA market.

Some will speculate that the PDA is heading the same way as dinosaurs. While we won’t debate that speculation, we do believe that there’s still some way to go before that happens.

Our prediction
Our take on what would happen to the traditional PDA - well, at least for the Windows Mobile powered - is that they will all take up cellular capabilities permanently, aka. PDAphones will be the new PDA. This is promised in Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Mobile 2005, which seeks to consolidate its various OS iterations into one for all devices (goodbye Phone Edition, Smartphone Edition.)

We predict in the near future - possibly by end of 2005 - our pocket would hold only one of two mobile information/communications devices: PDAphones or smartphones. After that … tune back in end-2005

Sidenote: A good example of the excitement and coming of our prediction is the level of excitement generated by HP’s own new PDAphone, the iPAQ hw6500 series and T-Mobile Germany’s upcoming 3G PDAphone, the MDA IV.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 and is filed under PDA phones, PDAs, Smartphones, Windows Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.