When laptops are too big, smartphones are perfect!
When it comes to surfing the Internet, playing games or watching movies on the road, a laptop can be too big and a smartphone too small. That’s why some tech heavyweights have been working on a device that falls in between.
The gadget — essentially a handheld computer — has about the same processing power as a laptop but in a considerably smaller size. Like a smartphone, it can connect to the Internet while out on the road, but it offers a bigger screen and the ability to display Web sites that most smartphones can’t.
A new generation of the devices, sometimes called ultra-mobile personal computers, or UMPCs, is scheduled to hit stores this fall and has some consumers salivating.
Pat Merg, a program manager at toolmaker Snap-on and a self-described techie, tested out a Samsung UMPC demonstration unit two years ago and is eager to own one. Merg, who at 6 feet, 5 inches is a big guy, finds his smartphone too small to take notes on and his laptop too big to use easily on an airplane.
The UMPC, though, “is a perfect-size device,” said Merg, of San Jose, Calif.
But technology analysts are skeptical that most consumers are like Merg. The technology industry has been trying to market UMPC-like gadgets ever since Apple debuted the Newton 15 years ago, but consumers haven’t embraced them.
“It’s been proven over and over and over again that the world doesn’t want such a device,” said Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at technology research firm IDC. “I see no reason why that’s changed.”
But backers of the new devices, like Intel, say they’ll find a mass market among consumers who are used to using the Internet for entertainment or to connect with friends and who increasingly expect to do that while away from their desktop computers.
“The market potential is huge,” said Pankaj Kedia, who is helping to organize the company’s handheld-computing effort.
Microsoft kicked off development of the latest version of handheld computers two years ago with its “origami” project, but it never really caught fire with consumers.
More recently, Intel has been working to refine the idea with its Mobile Internet Device platform built around some new, low-power processors.
Intel envisions that manufacturers will develop at least four different types of such gadgets: some for entertainment, some for navigation, some for communication and some as general office devices, replacing laptops.
