How many computers do we need to carry with us? If the handset is powerful enough as is (and it will be in many cases), why hasn’t the simple add-on keyboard/display strategy worked? I think I have the reasons – and why there should still be hope for the future of this concept.
Have you seen the TV ad for the Motorola Atrix where the poor user is explaining to airport security officials that the add-on keyboard/display docking station for his handset turns his phone into something of a notebook PC? It’s not looking like our friend here is going to make his flight (a questionable ad at best, IMHO), but the technology concept seems sound: if handsets are so powerful these days, why not just add on a larger keyboard and display and eliminate the need to carry a tablet or notebook?
Personally, I like the idea, but it’s never been successful. The first product along these lines, Palm’s Foleo, was withdrawn from the market before it ever shipped. Part of the problem was likely the price – $499, less a $100 rebate – but Palm’s ongoing strategic issues at the time, which ultimately led to their acquisition by HP, surely helped the decision here.
Another product in this space, the Celio Redfly, has also proved less than popular. While the pricing is reasonable (starting at $199), the supported phones are limited in number, and all BlackBerry and Windows Mobile – not a good strategic move in this day and age. And the industrial design is questionable – I’d call it ugly and dated, but that is, after all, a matter of personal taste.
And speaking of the Motorola Atrix, this one also has a number of issues, the biggest also being industrial design. I wouldn’t have designed the dock for the Atrix so as to block the handset’s screen; this makes no sense at all. And the $400 bundled price from AT&T, while not a bad value, is probably still too much.
The biggest issue, though, isn’t styling or even dollars, it’s applications. We’re not at the point where most people can convert entirely to cloud-based computing, although I still believe we’re going to get there over the next few years and that there are some vertical apps where such makes a lot of sense right now. But most people will still need to carry a PC for content creation, and that pretty much makes the keyboard/screen docking station a boat anchor for most at present. Still, once we do move to the cloud, this is an important direction. And, I know this is hard to believe, but this solution will even prove superior to the tablet for many.
And there’s one other gating item here, interconnect. I think a solution based on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or USB is the way to go, with a universal standard for the required protocols defined. Wireless video out of a handset is on my wish list regardless, and Bluetooth keyboards are already plentiful, so this doesn’t seem like all that big of a challenge. Maybe we could even have wireless HDMI (Amimon and WHDI come to mind here) and finally be able to give presentations from our handsets with no requirement to plug in. And maybe that presentation could even reside in the cloud with the handset really little more than a remote control and relay point. And we could easily create and edit that presentation with the add-on keyboard/display dock. Sounds useful, right?
I have high hopes for the keyboard/display “soft dock” as a key future direction, especially once cloud computing becomes the norm. In the interim, we have some work to do, but the concept is sound and the technologies required for successful execution are all available today.
