Making the phone-PC connection

Instead of just making mobile phones, PC makers should make mobile phones work better with PCs

Meanwhile, Gartner analysts Leslie Fiering and Neil MacDonald have written and spoken on a concept they call "Portable Personality Solutions."

The idea is that people interact with a limited number of elements while at their PCs -- a smattering of documents, user data, configuration information, a few utilities and applications and so on -- and that those items could be downloaded to a mobile device, then uploaded to any other computer the user interacts with.

So, for example, instead of syncing a laptop with your desktop and lugging the laptop around, that synchronization data would be automated and download to a mobile device. Later, when you arrive at your destination, you could sit down at a PC provided by, say, your hotel, and upload all your "stuff" and pick up with your work right where you left off. Fiering and MacDonald see the key benefit here as cost savings for companies, which wouldn't have to buy so many laptops.

The problem with their vision is threefold. First, they de-emphasize the one device everyone always carries -- mobile phones -- in favor of dedicated flash storage "thumb" drives or media players. Second, they don't advocate or fully describe what I think would be the "killer app" for "Portable Personality Solutions," which is automation over wireless. And finally, the benefit isn't lower costs, but higher productivity -- if done right, "Portable Personality Solutions" could create a cost-justifiable reason for companies to upgrade to better laptops, not abandon them.

Instead of instituting policies where corporate employees are issued flash drives and instructed to download their personality profiles before traveling, I'd like to see a world where the PC is constantly downloading whatever the user is interacting with, along with configuration data, then offering to auto-upload it when the user sits at an arbitrary PC. Such a vision would actually benefit from the entry by PC makers into the handset business.

Your "personality" would always be with you in the mobile phone, and would be available on any other device, uploaded and downloaded wirelessly and automatically.

PC Makers: If you're going to enter the mobile phone business, what do you have to offer? Can you make a better phone than RIM or Nokia?

Why not drive innovation and standards in the industry to make RFID readers standard equipment on PCs, and RFID chips standard equipment in mobile phones? Why not drive better wireless mobile-phone connectivity, applications that sync with mobile phones and secure, user-updatable "personalities."

Why not give customers the functionality they want, but don't have, rather than yet another mobile phone?

Any company that makes both PCs and mobile phone handsets is in an ideal position to provide a combined solution that uses the mobilel phone to make the PC better, and the PC to make the mobilel phone better -- and give users a reason to buy both.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, The Raw Feed.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

More about AcerAppleDellGartnerGoogleKillerMotorolaNokiaPC ConnectionResearch In MotionVisa

Show Comments
[]