Interview: Cell phone, PDA makers don boxing gloves

The PDA has redefined mobile computing, but cell phone manufacturers are fighting back, funneling millions of dollars into extending phones’ data and application functionality. Executive News Editor Mark Jones and Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz pitted a PDA proponent, Hewlett-Packard’s Ted Clark, against a cell phone advocate, Nokia’s Randy Roberts. At stake: the future of handheld devices. The encounter was civil until the subject turned to operating systems.

Randy, what’s your vision for how the cell phone will evolve in light of the PDA's corporate popularity?

Randy: We absolutely believe that there’s going to be even more segmentation in these areas, meaning that there is no right answer — there is no one right product or answer for every consumer.

Ted: We [also] believe there’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy here. There’s one set of customers who are maybe more e-mail-centric, and they want to be doing maybe more high-powered e-mail and occasionally talk on the phone. I would call those [customers] more data-centric people. There is another set of people who are more voice-centric.

Ted, let’s say you are a data-centric person. Do you think you would want a data-centric handheld [rather than] a cell phone?

Ted: Yes, you’re going to want a little bit bigger screen to get more data and more interaction. You might want a little bit more flexibility in your input device, so you might want a full keyboard as opposed to, perhaps, a 12-key pad.

Randy, how will converged voice and data devices affect mobile-device usage?

Randy: I think as a consumer you’re going to get to the point very, very soon — if not already — where you walk into a big-box retail store and you’ve got all these wonderful devices in front of you and you’re going to have to figure out which applications carry more weight for you.

So how will the purchasing model change as these devices become corporate IT decisions?

Ted: I think that is going to be a fundamental shift in business, [where the] IT department has a much broader reach when it comes to devices like that. When these devices start to touch the data networks, then the IT departments have all of the concerns about manageability and security. It means that standards are going to have to be set. You're going to look more than beyond just the device, you’re going to look at the whole end-to-end solution you need to make sure that the data gets from point A to point B.

Are IT departments starting to specify what mobile devices employees can use based on corporate requirements?

Randy: Yes, absolutely. But to be honest, for the most part that’s happening with the idea that voice is the application that people are going to be using. The larger companies are just now beginning to ask questions around what’s underneath [the surface] — the operating system, the connectivity, the security layers, and those kinds of things. So when we think about enterprise applications and connecting to enterprise networks, I agree it is about the end-to-end solution. What’s really important is what’s underneath, whether it’s Pocket PC, if it’s Palm, or even if it’s a Symbian operating system, which is what Nokia is using.

Do you think Symbian compares favorably to, say, Pocket PC when it comes to working with enterprise data?