ZDNet: ZDNet's readers are always interested in knowing what folks like you who have access to all the prototype devices have tucked away in your pocket. What are you packing right now?

Nagel: Actually, right this second, I don't have any. But if you must know, I try to rotate so that I have a good idea of what's out there and what they're capable of. But when I travel, I like to bring a Treo--particularly when I travel overseas. But when I'm here in the U.S., I really love Sprint. So, I've been using Samsung's devices. I've been using Samsung's I300 and I'm just about to get Samsung's new I500. ZDNet I could never get used to the soft-keyboards on the devices like the I300.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Nagel: I actually like it. I have big thumbs, but it still works for me. It does have a couple of irritating features, though. The worst feature is that sometimes, maybe one out of ten times, my ear taps the button that turns on the speakerphone and I get this blaring thing in my ear. But, other than that, I like it. But I also haven't gotten into the habit of doing a lot of email yet. As a communications device, I mostly use it as a phone. Maybe one reason I'm doing this is because the ideal device hasn't shown up yet. Right now, there are all these integrated devices out there, particularly the ones with Bluetooth like the Sony-Ericsson ones, which take hours to get the integration working. I don't want to be a systems integrator.

ZDNet: Are you suggesting that carriers that sell integratable devices like Bluetooth-based phones will actually sell a whole package that includes the phone and the PDA?

Nagel: Sure. It needs to be preconfigured and it needs to work out of the box. Right now, it doesn't. I'm much more likely to buy two devices that are designed to work together and that I don't have to configure after buying them. Also, I'm happy to have a larger data device that I have to keep in my briefcase. So, it has a good keyboard on it and a big battery and my phone needs to be able to attach parasitically when I dock them. So, instead of the problem where the data device drains your phone, how about the opposite?

ZDNet: Well, now you're starting to talk about an industrial design issue, but earlier you said you really don't have that much influence over the industrial design process.

Nagel: I have no formal influence but I certainly jawbone our licensees like crazy. Some of them listen and some of them don't. Look, this is an extremely important area for us. The size of the market for phones is an order of magnitude and a half times the size of the market for PDAs and handheld computers and, frankly, we think this is our future. We're putting a lot into it.

ZDNet: What are your thoughts about the international front? One thing we hear is that the PalmOS doesn't have the sort of international critical mass it needs to succeed on a global scale.

Nagel: You mean Europe? You find this in Europe a lot. How do I put this delicately? I think the Europeans are slightly xenophobic--in the Eurocentric sense. They think Symbian is the obvious solution. The Europeans like this sort of collaboration idea. They haven't been real successful at it in the past so I'm not sure how successful it will be going forward. But Europe is a great case in point. We gained ten share points in Europe over the last quarter. It's the one market in the world that's growing. One reason we weren't in consideration in Europe for so long is that none of our devices worked on their networks until last year. (Editor's note: Europe has standardized on GSM for voice and GPRS for data and until last year, there were no PalmOS-based offerings based on GSM or GPRS technologies). That's changing, especially now with Samsung's new I500. So we'll be getting good visibility. I'm perfectly happy to fly under the radar. We're getting our act together on the phone side. I don't claim to have the last best solution. But we will have it.

ZDNet: Any thoughts on CDMA vs. GPRS?

Nagel: I think the early always-on data CDMA stuff is clearly better. It's roughly twice the throughput, maybe more of GPRS. It seems to be much more seamless. But CDMA also does some pretty goofy things. The SIM card on the GSM/GPRS side is absolutely fantastic. I travel to another country and all I have to do is move the SIM card to another phone and I'm up and running. There is no SIM card in the CDMA world and I don't understand why they didn't adopt that. For me, that is one issue.

Previous page |   1 2 3 4 5

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

[an error occurred while processing this directive]