When is a smart phone like Microsoft (News - Alert) Office? When the devices supply a single, integrated suite of applications, bundled as part of one user experience. When is a smart phone like Microsoft Office? When it crams too many applications and features into a single device. And that pretty well sums up the challenge mobile device suppliers face: up to a point, lots of functionality is a feature. After some point, extra functionality is a “bug.”


The conventional wisdom is that consumers want converged devices: single devices that combine the functionality of previously separate devices. Up to a point, that’s correct. It makes lots of sense to combine the functions of a personal digital assistant with a mobile phone. It makes lots of sense to combine email access with PDA and calling functions.

It may or may not make sense to combine all of those with MP3 music players, navigation devices, optical character recognition and scanner functions.

In the business market, there is limited demand for devices that bundle too many functions, say researchers at In-Stat (News - Alert). In fact, a recent In-Stat survey of U.S. business users suggests that beyond email-capable smart phones, there is little appetite for converging every more formerly separate devices into one.

The smart phone is a successful example of a converged device combining calendar, address book, email, voice and texting, says Bill Hughes (News - Alert), In-Stat analyst.

In this case, the smartphone offers a benefit to the user in the form of real-time data, typically wireless email,” says Hughes. More complexity comes at a price, though, in the form of battery life, for example. The other issue is interfaces. As additional device functionality is bundled together, trade-offs have to be made in device weight, cost, size and input and output methods.

The In-Stat survey indicates that many more users prefer to carry redundant devices, rather than having a multi-function device.

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Gary Kim is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

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