Single vs. Multiple Portable Devices

Analyst Jerry Purdy of MobileTrax discusses the ongoing debate on how many mobile devices consumers are willing to carry in this lengthy newsletter article. He says nothing earth shattering, but he does present the both sides of the coin for carrying single purpose devices (i.e. iPod, digital camera and phone) or one integrated multi-functional device (i.e. smartphone).

In the end, his safe conclusion is people:

"will carry around all the devices that provide clearly differentiated value with most likely one device that does a lot (such as a feature rich cell phone) and then one or two special purpose devices that provide value in one specific way that the user feels they cannot get or enjoy in the generic device."

Obviously, it all comes down to individual preference. I use to carry a cell phone and PDA that always got left behind due to lack of pocket real estate. I then migrated to a Treo 180 that combined the best of both worlds until it broke.

Now I have a Windows smartphone that provides enough functionality for me. I primarily use it for phone calls, syncing with Outlook contacts and calendar, light emailing (mostly staying on top of emails when away from the computer), surfing the Internet (i.e. sports scores or Bloglines), and some casual gaming to keep the kids occupied when we're out and about.

The phone has decent multimedia capabilities but I couldn't see it replacing a camera and MP3 player or being used as a portable video player. The Sony PSP is another example of a cool albeit expensive device that has lots of potential, beyond portable gaming and video, but still lacks certain functionality such as the phone, messaging, camera, etc.

Which actually brings up a bigger question. Technology is constantly improving/shrinking and manufacturers could build an all-in-one device right now, but at what cost? Let's say my ideal mobile device has a phone, keyboard, high-speed data access, wi-fi, integration with Outlook, a 3-4 inch LCD screen for gaming/video, a 3-4 megapixel camera with a "good" lens and a decent-sized micro hard-drive for storage.

Usually a mix of these features requires design and cost tradeoffs (i.e. bigger screen for less on board memory and/or no HDD/optical drive) so this "ideal" device would be a very expensive and unwieldy and still would compromise certain fucntionality (i.e. phone) for others (i.e. video). Until technology advances further and the cost of manufacturing this all-in-one device drops significantly for selling at a reasonable retail price point ($100 - 200?), we will probably continue the single vs multiple devices debate for some time....

via MobileTrax