Brian's Brain

Three coincident situations prompted me to act on this particular long-standing planned blog post:

1. As you'll see here, I've become intimately reacquainted with my Smartphone in the last 24 hours.
2. I just read a report which suggested that one of the reasons behind Transmeta's recent 'rightsizing' is that its 'Hail Mary' plan to sell CPUs into third-world countries, partnered with Microsoft in the FlexGo program that I wrote about at last year's WinHEC conference, hasn't panned out to the degree that Transmeta hoped.
3. Microsoft, at this week's 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, unveiled version 6 of its various Windows Mobile flavours; Classic (formerly Pocket PC), Standard (formerly Smartphone) and Professional (formerly Pocket PC Phone). Note, they don't run version 6 of Windows CE. But all three variants now natively support viewing, editing and saving various Office file formats; the Smartphone version of Windows Mobile 5 required third-party intercession and, even then, operated in a read-only fashion.

What do these three things have to do with each other? Much ink has been spilled over the years, both at EDN and elsewhere, regarding the burgeoning functionality being squeezed into cell phones. In a month, for example, you'll be able to read in EDN about the latest advancements in camera phones, both CES and 3GSM were satiated with announcements regarding mobile television, and of course we can't forget about the Apple iPhone.

Although there are functional and other shortcomings to all-in-one devices versus a collection of standalone alternatives, and although not everyone wants every feature of an all-in-one product, the general trend (driven by economy-of-scale factors, among others) is clear to me. The average cell phone will continue to bundle more and more features over time, at the market share expense of standalone devices. The cell phone is the device we're most likely to have with us at all times, and therefore it'll be the nexus of the Moore's Law-fueled integration trend that begins at the phone's semiconductor subsystem level.

So here's my vision, and I'll state up front that it doesn't necessarily just encompass Microsoft O/S-fueled phones (although I'd argue that Microsoft Office format compatibility will be required in any case). Why keep trying to push PCs into the third world, where subscription-based usage models are immature and piracy is an accepted practice? Why not, instead, just sell advanced versions of the cell phones that potential customers are already 'pulling'? They've got email. They've got web browsers. They've got multimedia playback. Now they've got full Office file format support.

They've got robust data connectivity. Battery life won't be an issue when they're AC- or otherwise external power-tethered. They could easily, with the addition of a mini-DVI or other connector (or not: ultra-wideband wireless, anyone?), drive a tethered display with VGA-or-higher resolutions and with decent frame rates, and without breaking a sweat. Considering the density and form factor trends of both flash memory and HDDs, you could squeeze a decent amount of capacity inside a phone, with Bluetooth-tethered storage as an unlimited supplement. And speaking of Bluetooth, mate a wireless keyboard and mouse to the phone and, I'd argue, you'd be all set for satisfying the needs of a significant percentage of today's non-PC-owning population.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that this idea isn't solely mine; check out this blog post from Alfred Biehler and this discussion thread at Smartphone Thoughts. And now I welcome your thoughts!

Followup: Wow, I'm honoured that Vinton Cerf agrees with me....