It is not the business of this blog to make the case for smartbooks when there is strong evidence to the contrary. However, examining the conclusions of a recent Coda Research study on mobile broadband, notably its conclusion that the smartbook was a non-starter as a product category, something seemed horribly wrong. The conclusion that the potential smartbook market would be swamped by expanded features of the smartphone just did not appear to match the demographic trends we had been seeing.
The Wall Street Journal’s Oct. 7 blog item on AT&T allowing packet-voice applications on the iPhone, points to the underlying problem in the Coda study: as all voice traffic moves to a common packet base, Jeff Pulver’s old comment about “voice rides for free” becomes central in examining the functionality of handhelds. It is often hard to remember that an iPhone or Blackberry can be used for voice calls, when their use as data platforms is overriding all other applications.
By and large, Coda’s conclusions support that notion: the prediction that data traffic on mobile platforms will hit 724 terabytes per month by 2015, and the prediction that most traffic will be video-centric within that same period. Yet Coda concludes that 74 million Americans will access video via smartphones, with only 24 million accessing through notebooks and netbooks – with smartbooks as a negligible category.
Wrong. If anything, a platform that preserves a link to traditional 3G and 4G voice networks will be the platform under threat, even though 4G emphasizes packetized voice to an extent no previous digital cellular generation did. The mobile voice networks will experience just what the wireline networks experienced over the past five years – voice support becomes so secondary, it disappears through the skylight.
When that happens, the always-on, low-power platform that dominates may well be a smartbook, with smartphones grabbing what is left. Perhaps this view is overstated, but no more so than the Coda analysis that leaves no market space for smartbooks.
Loring
