News from the portable device land: 10,000,000th Sony PSP shipped.
Gizmondo is 770 competitor inly by a stretch of imagination, but nevertheless they also try to sell a handheld that supports wireless. CNN runs a pretty negative story on Gizmondo:
Two years ago, Nokia introduced the N-Gage, which quickly became viewed (by the community, if not the industry) as one of the worst hardware launches in gaming history. Hold on to your hats, folks: Here we go again.
Perhaps Nokia could surprise us by a similar deal when the 770 (now scheduled for Q4) launches.
McDonald’s will offer free Wi-Fi to Nintendo DS users.
“This is such an interesting direction for McDonald’s,” said Anita Frazier, an entertainment industry analyst with the NPD Group, a research firm. “This could encourage kids to go to McDonald’s to play games. It is like the kids’ version of Starbucks’ wireless hot spots.” As with the toys that have long been packaged with McDonald’s food, the relationship will help draw customers to the restaurants, she said.
Thanks to DamnInteresting for linking to to a new Philip Greenspun article, where he is ready to make a jump from the PC world onto the mobile world:
This is a plan for building an appliance into which a mobile phone plugs and that extends the phone’s capabilities without requiring the consumer to become a system administrator or be aware that he or she owns more than a phone. In the rest of this document we will call the new device “The Appliance”.
Om Malik points to an article in Nordic Wireless Watch saying Nokia is planning to deliver VoWLAN phones some time in the first half of 2006 (make it second half, if you’re familiar with Nokia deadlines). The company expects more than 100 mln of such devices to sell around the world by 2009.
PC World runs a review of PepperPad, a 20 gig Linux-based tablet that is somewhat competing with Nokia 770 on many fronts (except the price factor). Looks like the PC World folks weren’t terribly impressed with it, but they still have some good advice that perhaps Nokia 770 engineers would note:
My dissatisfaction started soon after I powered up the Pepper Pad. From a cold boot, this “instant-on” device takes nearly 2 minutes to get up and running. You can then put the unit in a sleep mode for faster subsequent startups, but the battery continues to drain. And I was surprised by the battery’s short life span: During my informal tests, the unit lasted less than 2 hours on a full charge.
Yes, for a mobile device like this users tend to get pretty picky on things like battery life and speed of startup.
Russell Beattie from Yahoo! wrote a lengthy post on the future of mobility, featuring Nokia 770 shots:
The latest news I’ve seen about the Nokia 770 is that it’s going to have a host of applications ready for it at launch, including VoIP software, streaming media, chat applications, Doom, etc. The thing that’s so amazing about this is that the 770 is essentially the *same exact hardware* that’s on my Nokia 6680, yet the development pace for the 770 is way more rapid. In addition, there’s at least a half a dozen blogs and bloggers dedicated to the device, and it hasn’t even launched yet. This shows the power of an open environment and the draw of Linux and its fans.
PortableGadgets.net is a new gadget Web site that had some things to say on Nokia 770 and other gadgets. I like the author’s personal style of writing, lots of places right now would just reprint the gadget manufacturer’s press release.
Cisco Systems is interested in buying Nokia. What a strange marriage that would be, but there are some reasons to believe MarketWatch rumor:
The move is part of Cisco’s effort to increase its wireless infrastructure technology, according to the newspaper, which did not identify the source of its information. The report said Cisco had traditionally concentrated on acquisitions of niche technology players, but its Chief Executive John Chambers is believed to be interested in merging with a wireless infrastructure company, and Nokia has been identified as a likely target.
Update: BusinessWeek offers more insightful analysis:
It’s an audacious project, one with the potential to make Linksys more of a household name — maybe not as a maker of phones, TVs, and cameras, but as the company that makes them all work together. With the number of networked homes expected to rise from 2.5 million in 2004 to 21.6 million in 2009, according to IDC analyst Jonathan Gaw, there’s a rich potential market.
Note to Nokia - how about pricing the 770 below $200? Parks Associates says that’s where the user interest peaks and the big bucks start rolling in.