Handhelds will displace laptops

(another Jim Chard entry)

Wireless applications began as pale imitations of their client server cousins with slower response times, limited data and dearth of user friendly features. As networks have become faster and more pervasive, devices more powerful, and developers more sophisticated about mobile applications, the software available to workers on the move has improved radically in its utility and productivity. As a consequence the barrier is continually being raised for software developers wishing to compete in the wireless data market. Just like Netscape and Internet Explorer kept raising the bar every 6 months when Internet browsers first emerged, wireless enterprise developers are competing to enrich functionality in wireless handhelds at an asymptotic rate.

Initial mobile applications were characterized by the need to synch devices physically at the end of the day. Or by lack of local data base capabilities resident on the handheld device. Or by data stores that were not replicated with server databases throughout the day. Therefore changes in inventory, project status, pricing, crew deployment, etc. were not reflected appropriately in either central or remote mobile databases. Management was still in an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind environment where activities could not be monitored throughout the day without reverting to voice, calling on the phone and asking “how ya doing?”

With the rollout of 3G networks and the introduction of handhelds with many megabytes of memory, the paradigm literally changes. Now mobile users are just as hooked into corporate networks as their desk-bound brethren. Their data is as fresh and accurate and their response time is nearly comparable. Data in the field is no longer untimely or out-of-date; it is just as accurate as data available at the desk top. The resulting enhancements to business management are reflected throughout the organization:

• inventory - management and stock reordering
• employee - routing and tasking
• accurate - time accounting
• customer - billing and cash mobilization

All these consequences, generated by wireless applications, will continue to squeeze inefficiencies out of operations. And these benefits are delivered over a device that is always on, fits comfortably in a breast pocket, is reasonably rugged and is priced at an affordable price point. Through a sort Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest”, wireless handhelds will displace both laptops ­­and paper in corporate field operations and other mobile environments. Mobile workers will have no real need for a bulky, fragile and heavy device when a handheld can do the job better.