Devesh,
your point is well taken. But what puzzles me is that with Nokia's
formidable capabilities with respect to handset and related consumer
products manufacturing, why is there not by now a broader family of 770
products that all take advantage the ongoing growing investment in
software. The PDA market has been characterized by a very high rate of
innovation/improvement in hardware and it is common for a new revision
of a manufacturer's hardware baseline to occur at 18 month intervals or
less. I realize that the 770 at least right now seems to be targeted to
a very specific market niche (I have yet to see someone pull one out at
a meeting or conference here in the U.S.) so it may be that the slow
uptake of this product has caused Nokia to hold back on implementing an
aggressive hardware upgrade roadmap.
One factor I think that holds back this product is price. As with many
consumer goods there is a price elasticity of demand for this kind of
product and right now the price is well above that which is necessary
for product sales to take off to the point where you actually see lots
of people caring one of these around. If the price gets down to $150 or
less then you may see people having several of these things laying
around the house for convenient www browsing, remote (RDP/VNC) access
into the home network, serving as remote controllers for Microsoft
Windows and other media center systems, as well as control of home
environmental/security/irrigation/lighting systems. In that sense the
product could be repositioned as the "Home Network Intranet Tablet" or
something like that. At the right price they could even take market
share from some of the purpose specific providers on touch-screen
products for high end home entertainment systems (e.g. Crestron and
others) most of whom by now are using Linux any in their embedded OS
environments.
Here by the way is the url to some recent commentary from Ari Virtanen,
vice president of convergence products at Nokia on what they are
considering for future hardware revisions:
http://news.com.com/2100-1044_3-6086747.html?part=rss
If Ari or his team are listening on this thread then I say to him/them,
don't wait for WIMAX, but get on with the next revision of hw soon, as
in 6 months or less to address the deficiencies in the current hardware
baseline! By adding a expresscard slot (assuming there is room) and a
USB interface the product would be able to accommodate almost any
external device supporting one or the other interface including a future
WIMAX client card that should be available in the market in the next
6-12 months. Also, how about a wall/desk mount cradle for the device so
it can be charged when it is not in use?
Best Regards,
John Holmblad
Televerage International
GSEC Gold, GCWN Gold, GGSC-0100, NSA-IAM, NSA-IEM
(H) 703 620 0672
(M) 703 407 2278
(F) 703 620 5388
(O) 410 849 2376 (has voicemail to email)
primary email address: jholmblad at aol.com
backup email address: jholmblad at verizon.net
www page for texting: www.vtext.com/users/jholmblad
text email address: jholmblad at vtext.com
Devesh Kothari wrote:
> ext John B. Holmblad wrote:
>
>
>> All,
>>
>> has Nokia given any indication of if/when the next revision of the 770
>> hardware will become available? If the 770 is going to be a stable
>> ongoing member of the Nokia product portfolio, as opposed to a one
>> shot offering, then it would be reasonable if not prudent for Nokia
>> to provide a hardware roadmap so that developers have an incentive to
>> continue developing software for the platform.
>>
>
> It is nokia policy not to give out details about future products to
> general public. Though such information (or some of it) is available to
> nokia partners who have all the confidentiality agreements in place.
>
> As for "one shot offering" , all i can say is nokia is definitely here
> in this space for a long haul. If it was a "one shot" thingie, why would
> we have taken all the trouble with creating a open development
> environment, working so closely/listening/contributing with community,
> established maemo :)
>
>
>> I noticed in the Maemo software roadmap on the www page whose url is
>>
>> http://maemo.org/platform/docs/roadmap.html
>>
>> a reference to x86 device emulation/virtualization but I wonder
>> whether the performance of the current hardware would be anywhere near
>> sufficient to allow anything useful to be accomplished in a vm
>> environment.
>>
>
> The reference in the roadmap about virtualization is purely as a
> development platform, so that the developers can transform their PC into
> a n770 device (together with attached peripherals like usb WLAN, or USB
> BT dongles) in a VM and cut down development and debugging time
> (hopefully). No specific work has been done on that front :( yet
>
>
>> Interestingly, and as some on this list may be aware, Microsoft has
>> recently released an ARM device emulator that runs on Windows OS's and
>> is entirely decoupled from the Microsoft Visual Studio development
>> environment. For anyone interested in trying out this emulator, here
>> is the url at the Microsoft www site to it:
>>
>>
>> www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C62D54A5-183A-4A1E-A7E2-CC500ED1F19A&displaylang=en
>>
>> It includes images for Windows Mobile 5.0. have tested it (the
>> emulator + the WM 5.0 images) and it works fine on Windows XP SP2 host
>> as long as the host system processor speed and ram are sufficient. It
>> runs fast enough that I can stream audio from a live radio www site
>> through IE + Media Player on the emulated device over to the host OS
>> and play it out on the speakers on the host OS without any noticeable
>> stuttering. The payload measured by Media Player in this case is ~22kbs.
>>
>>
> This is very interesting. I will check this out. Thanks
>
>
>> I have also installed and tested a SyncML client from Funambol on the
>> emulator. Funambol, for those who are not aware of the company,
>> markets an opensource technology based on SyncML that allows PIM
>> servers such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, etc to be sync with
>> mobile devices that implement the SyncML protocol stack. Here is the
>> url to the Funambol www site:
>>
>> www.funambol.com
>>
>> On the subject of syncml I have two related questions:
>>
>> 1. Does the 770 software support/implement syncml?
>>
>>
> Currently 770 does not have a syncml implementation, but I hope someone
> would port one :)
> Best Regards
>
> Devesh
>
>
>> 2. Has anyone successfully tested the 770 with the Funambol software?
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>>
>>
>> John Holmblad
>>
>>
>>
>> Televerage International
>>
>> GSEC Gold, GCWN Gold, GGSC-0100, NSA-IAM, NSA-IEM
>>
>>
>>
>> (H) 703 620 0672
>>
>> (M) 703 407 2278
>>
>> (F) 703 620 5388
>>
>> (O) 410 849 2376 (has voicemail to email)
>>
>>
>>
>> primary email address: jholmblad at aol.com
>>
>> backup email address: jholmblad at verizon.net
>>
>>
>>
>> www page for texting: www.vtext.com/users/jholmblad
>>
>> text email address: jholmblad at vtext.com
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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