The CES handset scene: 150-inch televisions cast long shadows, handset news didn’t ‘pop’

An informal survey of four analysts on the mobile devices on display at the International Consumer Electronics show this week in Las Vegas quickly took different directions with a common theme.
Mobile, handheld devices on offer were “evolutionary,” not “revolutionary” and that ratcheted up expectations for the next few months, the analysts said. The lack of compelling handset news out of the show was not entirely unexpected, nor any reason for hand-wringing, they said.
“People are keeping their powder dry in light of the 70-foot televisions,” said John Jackson, Yankee Group analyst, half in jest. “There’s a growing trend that device announcements are made apart from the big shows like CES, where virtually all industries are present.”
Jackson shied away from using the term “convergence” – rapidly acquiring meaningless buzzword status, he said – when searching for a concept or term that would capture the traditional mobile handset business as it enters a period of “inter-dependency” with other technologies such as computing, Web access and navigation.
“I’m optimistic about a lot of developments in this industry,” Jackson said. “We’re seeing hints of it. Everyone gets it. The technology is formidable, but it’s not a barrier. Companies understand how to leverage complementary assets in adjacent domains. There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic.”
Iain Gillott, analyst at IGR, said that in terms of traditional handset news from incumbent vendors, CES was “kind of disappointing.” But Gillott saw signs that bear out his thesis that smartphone vendors would “scale up” their competencies and that PC and laptop players would “scale down” theirs to offer hybrid products between the two industries, perhaps in the $200 to $1,000 price range. Multiple mobile Internet devices were on offer at CES from various vendors, he said. And semiconductor vendors such as Qualcomm Inc. and Marvell Technology Group Ltd. made the point that their existing product roadmaps can serve the new hybrid devices.
“There were lots of incremental improvements,” said Bill Hughes, analyst at In-Stat. “But no sea changes.”
Hughes did mention a Salt Lake City startup called Celio Corp. and a product it displayed called Redfly Mobile Companion – a monitor and keyboard combination akin to a folding laptop that depends on a separate smartphone for modem, processing power and memory. (Ironically, Hughes said the Redfly echoed Palm Inc.’s recently cancelled Foleo product.) He said that Redfly may be a harbinger of things to come.
“I’m a stick-in-the-mud on ‘convergence,'” Hughes said.
That’s because a recent In-Stat survey found only 11 of 1,400 respondents willing to leave their laptop at home in favor of their smartphone on productivity-oriented road trips, according to Hughes.
Analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group mentioned a new product displayed by Hewlett-Packard Co. dubbed the “Oak,” which he said displayed many of the productivity features cited as lacking in Apple Inc.’s iPhone, which may enable it to compete with Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry. And he noted that the Swedish firm, Neonode, which has been hawking its small touchscreen device for a couple years, may be ready soon to announce a United States carrier deal or other distribution agreement. Enderle agreed with others that the concept of smartphone-as-modem-and-hard drive is gaining attention.
“That’s where people are focusing,” Enderle said. “I still don’t get the sense that the traditional incumbents are doing anything exciting at this time of year because of their emphasis on the fourth quarter.”
In other words, give the familiar players time to dust themselves off after the fourth-quarter retail scrum and look for more dramatic announcements in coming months, Enderle said.