Dallas played a pivotal role in the last smartphone craze, which burned brightly from 1996 to 1998 but quickly petered out. Smartphones have been going through a revolution of sorts in the past year, too, and now Dallas has a chance to emerge as a center of innovation as these devices become mainstream for businesses and consumers alike.
In 1997, Nokia, which has its domestic headquarters in Dallas, launched the U.S. version of its 9000i Communicator here at a wireless industry trade show. That device was seminal in the evolution of the smartphone—and a great reminder of how far wireless technology has advanced in a few short years.
During the heady ’90s, lots of folks were convinced smartphones—clever devices combining the features of a personal computer, an electronic contact minder, and, oh yeah, a phone, too—would permanently change the way we do business. They didn’t back then, but they will very soon.
The theory then wasn’t flawed. Always-connected smartphones meant people would be instantly reachable wherever they were. And without needing to boot a laptop or fetch a fax, they could sign purchase orders, alter contracts, conference with colleagues, share video of a future headquarters location, or even check their GPS (global positioning system) feature to make sure their Town Car driver hadn’t gotten them lost again.
All that was supposed to be possible from a device you could clip on your belt. Well, it never worked out that way. But it’s a reality now—one that must be embraced by businesses who want to stay in constant contact with their customers and far ahead of their competition. There are still a few kinks to work out, but most of the pieces are in place for a dramatic shift in the way businesses function. Workers have never before been completely liberated from their desks, but they will be soon.
The wireless networks back in the 1990s were only suited for voice calls, not data transmission, and Internet usage itself was more the exception than the rule in most businesses. But just as the Internet boomed, wireless networks likewise had a transformation and surge in popularity.
Now wireless network operators all over the world are leapfrogging each other every few months with network upgrades and, especially in North America, that has fueled an avalanche of new data applications for the smartphone set.
The Nokia 9000i was designed for greatness, but computing technology and slower networks never allowed it. The thinking behind that device, though, helped Nokia maintain the dominance it still has in the smartphone market. In 2006, Nokia shipped nearly half of the 64 million smartphones that were in use worldwide.
The 14-oz. Nokia 9000i had 8 megabytes of total memory and cost around $899—way out of reach for the average office worker a decade ago. On top of the device cost, you also had to foot the bill for a data service that cost $5 a month and 10 cents a minute. So while you were tapping your way through a document and browsing the Web at an agonizing 9.6 kilobits per second, you were also being fleeced—charged by the minute for using a device and a network that caused the simplest of tasks to take a long time.
The Nokia 9000i—again, a revolutionary device in its time—had the most smartphone storage capacity of any comparable device. But compared to today’s latest gadgets, it doesn’t measure up. Apple’s iPhone, also a device that’s as much a phone as it is an information tool, weighs 4.8 ounces, costs $399, and has 100 times as much total memory (8 gigabytes).
Indeed, the iPhone is proof that the smartphone revolution this time around is truly different. Apple debuted its flashy new gadget in the United States late last June and sold about 1.4 million in just four months’ time.
So in four months, a set of customers approximating the population of Tarrant County were suddenly toting a phone that checks e-mail, downloads and plays movies, and allows users to buy, play, and store digital music. These aren’t the jet-setting execs toting BlackBerry devices. These iPhone consumers are teens, tweens, and twenty-somethings, people raised on a steady diet of information all the time, right now.
Is it fair to compare a business tool of the past with a consumer plaything of the here and now? Yeah, it is. The lines have blurred that much.
DEMAND TO SOAR
You can no more consign the iPhone to being just a consumer device any more than you can pretend you haven’t seen a soccer mom toting one of the new crop of BlackBerry phones, those with names like Pearl and Curve and a color selection that includes “sunset red.” Today’s smartphones are consumer devices that you take to work. And they’re work tools you slip in your beach bag.
“The iPhone’s popularity tells me the world is changing,” says Kermit Ross, principal of Millennium Marketing, a telecom consultancy based in Frisco. “In the palm of your hand you’re packing up to 8 gigs of memory—more processing power than a mainframe computer had just a couple of decades ago.”
This time around, smartphones appear to have all the circumstances in place to create a demand for software and applications that outstrips anything we’ve seen in the personal computer business. “Decreasing prices are one of the key levers that welcome the early majority instead of the early adopters,” says Melanie Angermann, vice president of marketing at Handango, an Irving-based company that manages a marketplace for smartphone applications.
Some of the most basic smartphone applications for business include viewing and editing documents as well as tracking product repairs, service calls, and sales by uploading spreadsheets and figures to central company databases. In other words, they’re reducing the time people spend going back and forth to the office, keeping them in the field or on the road longer, and giving them a chance to make more money for their businesses.
Today, smartphone technology is for real and it really works. And the demand for the phones, along with the networks supporting them, have been a huge help of late to the aforementioned Nokia as well as to Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nortel Networks—all telecom infrastructure firms that keep major North American offices in and around Dallas.
Research In Motion, a Canadian company that makes the ubiquitous BlackBerry phones, recently picked Irving as the location for its U.S. headquarters. Proximity to telecom network builders—and the talented engineers building those networks—was a key consideration, company representatives say. Soon RIM will be adding 1,000 employees to its ranks locally as it continues its rocket ride on the smartphone highway.
RIM’s BlackBerry subscriber account base at the end of the third quarter of 2007 was approximately 12 million worldwide. Those BlackBerry users, mostly executives and office workers, make up only part of the smartphone market. Non-business consumers, as we noted earlier, are now solidly in the smartphone camp as well.
As of this writing, analysts said some 3 million iPhones were expected to be in consumers’ hands by the end of 2007. That fact alone should stir CEOs to take a hard look at how their firms can benefit from the popularity of these devices.
It won’t be a pain-free process. Today, developing applications for Nokia, Apple, and RIM devices requires three different types of software to be written. That can be expensive, but Google and other companies are working on ways to make software written for mobile devices work on dozens of different devices, regardless of the manufacturer. And one wireless carrier, Verizon, is making it so one application written for its network can run on virtually all the phones connecting to that network.
Heads of companies and business should roll up their sleeves and experiment with all the most popular smartphones out there. When they do, they’ll find some allow them to make custom applications for their employees. And they can work with network operators and Internet firms like Google and Yahoo to reach smartphone users with relevant advertising, another facet of this smartphone boom that will certainly eclipse anything imagined in the ’90s.
CEOs need to take it upon themselves to see how their companies fit in. Sure, you may already be making your work force more mobile. But have you come to terms with the fact that your customers are likely packing the same two-way devices as your chief technology officer? How are you reaching out to that group?
Looking back at devices like the Nokia 9000i reminds us of where we were. Watching the surging popularity of Apple’s iPhone tells us where we are now. It’s up to business leaders to figure out how smartphones can change their companies in the next few years. Their collective wish lists of applications and demands for mobile device makers and network operators, however futuristic, will tell us where we’re going.
Phil Harvey, who lives in Fort Worth, is the editor of Light Reading, a telecom news Web site.
