New iPaq A Dud Says Gartner

Written by Adam Gosling

Thursday, 01 March 2007

IT Industry analyst outfit, Gartner, is increasingly willing to call a spade a spade and this time it's turned its attention on Hewlett Packard's latest hand held offering the iPaq 500 smartphone. Gartner reckons the new iPaq is unlikely to attract much interest from end users and if anybody does buy it they'll probably be your average consumer than the business set HP usually goes after. In a report on the new phone, the company's analysts said only a small group of business users would get much benefit from theiPaq 500 and recommended potential buyers to "evaluate competitive products"! Gartner reckons the only company's likely to be interested in the phone are those that have a strong bond with HP and are planning to rely on HP support or want a single device across multiple geographies. HP announced the iPaq 500 series at the 3GSM show in Barcelona last month. The new handset is a break away from the traditional PDA-style iPaq and is more mobile phone than PDA. The dual mode phone runs the new Windows Mobile 6.0 and connects at GSM Edge speeds and will be available in North America during the (northern) Spring. Gartner's not buying though. According to the report: "Gartner believes that HP's first iPaq smartphone will not meet the expectations of HP's customers, and is unlikely to gain much traction in the consumer or enterprise markets". The problem, says Gartner is that the design is outdated and it doesn't have a full Qwerty keyboard, like the hugely popular BlackBeryy from Research in Motion. If anybody buys the thing, says Gartner, it will be consumers as several of the phone's features will appeal more to them than business users.. The ability to record audio messages to send as a digital file for example. Its a quirky feature, but the sound quality isn't very good according to Gartner and business users just won't be willing to use it. You have to doubt consumers will be interested, though. HP plans to sell the phone via its own website rather than (subsidised) through cell phone carriers. Interestingly there seems to be not a lot of love between Gartner and HP at the moment, just check out this blog by David Gee global head of marketing for HP Software. Related news items Now Every Kiwi Has A Mobile, What Next? -08/08/2007 Two New Walkman Phones From Sony Ericsson -17/06/2007 Aussie Buyers Still Love Their Moto's -24/04/2007 Notebooks Up Again: IDC -20/03/2007 Dell Pessimistic About Laptop Sales -13/03/2007 Newer news items Palm Backs Hands Free -27/03/2007 SAGEM Offers Another Shell -26/03/2007 Google Phone Would Be Significant Departure -19/03/2007 Award Winning Low-Cost Motofone Debuts -14/03/2007 Nokia Introduces Software Updater -07/03/2007 Older news items Nokia Tips Navigation As The Next Must Have -25/02/2007 Sony Ericsson W880i Launched On 3 -22/02/2007 Talking To Your HP iPaq About FMC -22/02/2007 Dopod Quick To Add 6.0 -20/02/2007 Treo 750 On Telstra NextG -18/02/2007 Tag This Now: