Marketing UMPCs. My thoughts refined…by a paperback book!

Last Friday I did something stupid. I exercised! I exercised too hard. It was too hard and too soon in my Solar ultra mobile PC training schedule and as a result I hurt my back. I spent the next three days either laying down or hobbling round like a on old man and finally today, I’m able to sit at my desk for short periods. [Excuse me while I go and get another cup of tea – I need to move about you understand.] During the time on my back I was pretty happy to have a couple of UMPCs around me. I used the Q1 (a bit too heavy to use while lying on your back) and the N800 (lighter but slower) but finally I settled on a common garden paperback book. (common garden UMPCs don’t exist yet as the screens aren’t bright enough!) The book is called Crossing The Chasm [aff.] by Geoffrey Moore and it will be familiar to many marketing people in fact I picked up the tip on this through ‘Brown Knows’, the blog of VIA’s Richard Brown. Its an amazing book. Not because there’s anything ground-breaking in it (I’m not formerly trained in any form of marketing but it all seems to make good sense to me) but because on every other page I’m hearing ‘UMPC’ in the back of my head. I’m only half way through the book but I guess I’ve had to stop 20-30 times to ponder on a paragraph or to make some notes related to UMPCs. I’ve expanded my notes and thoughts here into a fairly long post but as is often the case here, its a post that’s as much for myself as it is for others. I need to get these thoughts organised and writing a report is the best way I know of doing it. You might want to hit that PDF icon there and print this one out for the train home! If not, read on…

The book, originally written in 1991 but updated in 1999 and 2002 is apparently a big seller in marketing circles and it outlines a process for marketing disruptive technology. That is, new, different technology that has a clear advantage but can be difficult to market because it requires people and processes to change in order to utilise the advantages. It talks about how easy it can be to bring a new technology product to technologists and early adopters and it then talks about mainstream customers and how vastly different they are. For example, technologists will buy a ultra mobile PC just to see how it works. Early adopters will buy a product if they see advantages and are prepared to make changes in their own processes (in life or in business) to get the advantage. Then there’s the mainstream customers who are not really prepared to make much change in order to take on new technology. They don’t want untested, unproved, unsupported, under-financed, non-standard unknown-brand tech. Then there’s the late majority of people who can actually be resistive to new technology. I know a few of those people! The core of the book is that the while the early adopters are a relatively easy market to reach out to, its a small market. The mainstream market, where the big money is, requires pushing the product (not letting the product be pulled) into acceptance as a mature and trusted tool that already has a customer base within the mainstream market. There’s the chasm and the catch-22. In order to gain acceptance in the mainstream market you need to be in the mainstream market because the mainstream market looks for purchasing advise from similar mass-market people. Not technologist and possibly not bloggers either (I’ll attempt to answer that below.) The book then goes on to talk about how you might focus and push hard into a very very small niche of mainstream customers to build a tiny vantage point from which you can grow. Its a concept that I find quite warming and natural. Focus focus focus rather than money money money!

I want to talk about where UMPCs are in this model and whether they are disruptive but before that, lets take a moment to think about where the mass market for the ultra mobile PC could eventually be. Is it business customers or is it consumers. Or it it both? or it is a sub-section of one of those segments. I don’t know but according to Geoffrey Moore If the ultra mobile PC makes a success in a small part of a targeted market, it could spread into other segments and then, spread across into the consumer market. One of the main points of the book is that you should not target a device at multiple segments. You should hit one small segment hard, make a success of it and use that success to support your marketing in connected areas. We could talk about the tabletpc as an example at this stage (no keyboard – too disruptive?) and try and work out why its not crossed the chasm but I think that subject could be better left to some of the expert commentators in that niche but I do want to cite one example that I hear every day – modern chart music that uses backing tracks from older 70s and 80s hits. Its a great bit of marketing and simply makes modern music less disruptive in order to reach a far wider audience.

So where are we with UMPCs? How far along the process are we? I guess most people would say ‘early adopter stage.’ I agree but I think that we’re only just entering the early adopter phase. Although there have been attempts at ultra mobile PCs in the past, ultra mobile PC’s are different. They are Internet connected mobile PC’s now and these are different to the Palms’, Psions and Apple Newtons of the past. This new breed of Internet device is still being tried and tested in the market. Project Origami itself wasn’t much more than a marketing exercise. It wasn’t intended to bring UMPCs to the masses as that would have been a silly and unattainable target. Its aim was simply to bring together a group of manufacturers, VARs and industry experts and assist them to bring some test products to market though a low-risk collaborative project. It was aimed at the technologists, some niche business markets and probably, to the Internet search engines. It was a good effort and supporters of UMPCs should really thank Microsoft for pulling together enough resource in order to incubate the new segment. Without it, the segment might not even be born yet.

At CeBIT 2007 we saw, what I believe, is the first sign that companies have gathered the results of the 2006 efforts and are positioning and preparing themselves to move UMPCs forward past the early adopter stage and into the mass market. Intel announced they they would create a new silicon platform and announced that they saw four consumer markets. Location info, Entertainment, Productivity, Communication. Their actions proved that they where prepared to put money into it and indicated that they want to target niche segments in the approach that Geoffrey Moore promotes. Then, at IDF, we saw an Intel marketing exercise aimed at splitting business level devices away from the consumer devices. I saw this as a positive move and one that would allow Intel, manufacturers, VARS and maybe even early mainstream distribution channels to focus their efforts on a niche set set of users. Its more proof that Intel is preparing for the mass market. Don’t forget that Intel doesn’t just design and make the silicon, they are also designing and licensing ultra mobile PC products. They have a lot to gain and are keeping a tight control on their partners.

This won’t be the final market split or positioning we will see. We’ve already seen some focus on the automotive market and there will be more to come. In three weeks we’re likely to get an idea of where VIA is going. Are they going to continue just to design silicon platforms and let their OEMs decide on the direction and niche or are they going to take a tighter control of where their OEMs go? So far, they haven’t and it might make sense to split out their platform into two or more niches in order to guide the OEMS into preferred target markets. For example, standardising on a motherboard size for UMPCs could help with bringing down costs for targeting the manufacturing and control industry. Could they put the CoreFusion SOC on a Pico-ITX mother board and create a ultra mobile PC motherboard standard? Could they team with a 4G supplier and HTC to build a complete x86 smartphone package? Who know? [Brown Knows. Badum…Tschhh!] Whatever happens (I’m getting too deep into details here. Focus Steve. Focus,) OEMS need to be targeting fine niches. There has to be a seed market and by targeting UMPCs into fine niches, there’s a better chance that the seed will take root.

I could write about this for days but I want to keep it shorter than the book I’m reading so lets move on. Here’s a list of some of the disruptive elements of the ultra mobile PC and how it might affect mass market acceptance both in the business and consumer sectors.

Keyboard. The ‘touch’ experience is disruptive and the keyboard could be to tool that helps bring the ultra mobile PC into the mass market. Handwriting on a screen even more disruptive. I understand that its a natural thing to do in everyday life but when talking about computers and the Internet, touch has never been mainstream and therefore, mainstream customers are going to have to learn and adapt if they want to use a ultra mobile PC without a keyboard. This is especially important in business where taking time to re-learn can be unproductive and frustrating.

Small screen. Mainstream computer users are used to huge screen sizes now. The small screen is going to be disruptive. That’s a simple one to solve though. There needs to be easy ways to make the screen bigger when needed. VGA ports are the obvious answer. Bluetooth displays, docking stations USB screens are also possibilities. In the future we could be looking at the roll-out screen and the built-in projector but these are still a few (I think 5) years away from mass market devices.

Industrial designs. Mobile phones are stylish. Mobile computers are not. Stlye is becoming more and more important in the mass market. Customers are extremely demanding and I believe that unless UMPCs tidy up their style, (HTC Shift, OQO Model 02 and US700W are that only UMPCs I would give any style points to) they will not be accepted by the mass market. That goes for business AND consumer devices. What are the two most talked about disruptive aspects of the new Fujitsu UMPC? The lack of Bluetooth and the style.

Battery life. Its not notebook PCs that set the standard in battery life, its mobile phones. Most mass-market notebook owners I know suffer with sub 20hours battery life! In the mobile phone world 2 day standby and 4 hours usage is the norm for every customer. Anything that needs to be charged more than once per 24 hours is going to be very disruptive. Battery life really needs to be sorted out and I think everyone would agree with that.

Size. is going to be a major issue and will require careful marketing in order to avoid problems. Lets take the consumer market as an example. A pocketable consumer UMPCs should not be the aim. If you are planning a pocketable ultra mobile PC you have some problems. 1) Mass market (cheap) technology isn’t quite ready for you yet. 2) You could end up being assessed as a competitor or, worse, a replacement to the mobile phone. I believe that for a consumer focused mass-market, a carryable pad-type device is best (there’s the Carrypad!) and it needs to be marketed as a partner device for a mobile phone. (not a partner device for a notebook because, during the later stages of the mass market, you can repackage the ultra mobile PC to be a modular laptop/notebook and thus pull in some of the conservative buyers.) Leave out the HSDPA module from the ultra mobile PC (consumers don’t want two mobile phone contracts) and make it easy to use near-field Bluetooth pairing (BT2.1 standard I believe) and sell a small HSDPA mobile phone and 5″ UMPC/PMP as part of a mobile phone/Internet package. (This is my three device strategy, mentioned here, of small mobile phone, ultra mobile PC and desktop PC.) For business users, Windows is a must which means a 1024×600 screen is a must, which means a 7″ screen is a must. Keyboards too! As far as feature-sets go, it totally depends on what niche customers you’re marketing too. My opinion at the moment is that the car could be a good place to introduce the UMPC. It would require car manufacturers to do this in a stylish way but when you can pop that navigation ultra mobile PC out and take it with you as your presentation device, its going to bring some nice efficiencies to the traveling businessman. And when you take your customer out, its going to be a talking point. And when your partner starts to watch movies on it on the way to the in-laws and when the kids want a piece of the action too, there’s quite a few pins to be knocked down there. A lot of niche but related markets.

Pricing. I’m really wondering about pricing. I think pricing is a late mass-market tool that shouldn’t be used heavily in the first few years of the mass-market UMPC. Its a tool that will be used by some but it could be a bad tactic at this stage. Reduced price may attract a good set of early adopters but it may not be a good tactic for pragmatic buyers that won’t buy a disruptive device, whatever the cost. Pricing is a tool that can be used to attract some of the late-adopters. These are the people that really care about pricing and so, when the competition for the early adopters gets going, we might see some manufacturers reaching out to the late adopters through low pricing.

Docks and modules. I was wondering whether docking stations and modular notebook PCs might be a way to leverage the ultra mobile PC into the mainstream market. Its certainly a possibility (I’m writing this on a Samsung Q1 in extended desktop mode) but I think this is a trick that might be best left for the later part of the market. It can be used as a final carrot for the near-laggards that finally have to replace their notebook or desktop PC. Its a shame because my ideal ultra mobile PC would be one that docked into a desktop cradle, a TV-top cradle and a hard keyboard case with extended battery but as you’ll read below, that’s my pragmatic side shining through.

Operating system and software. Software touches the user. Not the platform. Its critical and to be honest, the current operating system for UMPCs is bad. Its totally over the top and too widely (un)focused. Its not going to excite a consumer in any niche way. Not only is it a do-it all system that has components that just don’t work or are useless on UMPCs (DVD making software, video editing, Single-protocol messaging, File sharing and extended networking functionality) but it has things that the mass-market audience just don’t want to see. Defender, Prefetching, Phishing, Indexing, De-fragmenting, Bi-weekly software updates, Rebooting. These features can not be a visible part of a mobile operating system. It will scare mainstream customers. It scares me! Even the two most important applications for the consumer mass market, the browser and media player, are over-complicated and not small-screen or finger-touch optimised. This OS really has to be simplified or componentised for a mass market audience and if Microsoft wants to be leading a consumer-focused mainstream ultra mobile PC ecosystem then a new mobile-focused x86-based OS needs to be available within 2years. I guess that Microsoft know this but I doubt they can get it out in two years. Linux have a huge, huge opportunity here for the consumer market as long as they get the backing of hardware manufacturers, content partners and don’t lose focus.

So there’s a few short thoughts relating to some of the disruptive elements of UMPCs. There’s a million and one more things that could be talked about and I’m sure there are marketing teams around the world that have many rolled-up sheets of A1 paper crammed full of brainstorming notes from chalk-board meetings. The wheels are already in motion and as a researcher/analyst who doesn’t have a great deal of inside information about ultra mobile PC marketing teams around the world, I don’t have enough information yet to know where the wheels pointing. The only company that appears to have focus and control at the moment is Intel. It looks like Intel will aim for multiple niche consumer markets by creating, with their ecosystem partners, platforms, product designs, accessories and software solutions that will be sold into target markets. But that’s just what we hear on the Internet. I wonder how much info really gets out and more importantly, how much information is correctly interpreted and presented to us via the Internet. Are geeky online publications something that the leaders of the ultra mobile PC space are even interested in giving information to or are they (we!) there just to serve the early adopter market?

One of the things missing from the book is any mention of blogging and Internet journalism (it was last updated in 2002 when blogging, RSS and social networking wasn’t what it is today) and I’ve been trying to think about how it might change the thoughts of Mr Moore in relation to the ultra mobile PC chasm. Will it help or hinder the ultra mobile PC getting into the mass market? On one hand, bloggers are a fairly geeky bunch of people. Many of these people would be prepared to make changes in their life in order to gain the advantage of a new technology which, if Mr Moore is right, means that these people are early adopters and the pragmatists in the mass market probably won’t take much notice of them. On the other hand, pragmatists do like to do research and comparisons and Google is becoming their friend. Google doesn’t differentiate well between technologists, early adopters or even pragmatic authors. Online research is market segment blind and I’m now of the opinion that online marketing blurs the harsh distinction between early adopters and the mass market and actually reduces the size of the chasm. As more and more online brands are becoming trusted by mass market purchasers so the problem of early adopters preaching to pragmatists goes away. The Internet helps mass market customers trust early adopters. I am helping!

Personally though, I’m a pragmatist. I’m not a technologist (although I’ve been deeply interested in computers for 25 years and have been using the Internet since , well, a Google Groups search for me will bring up questions I made about making music on an Amiga in 1989.) I don’t own a flat screen TV . I don’t own a dedicated MP3 player of any sort (there is one one my mobile phone which is a far more sensible choice.) I’ve never owned a laptop/notebook PC, I have no smartphone and on Saturday night, I finally downloaded iTunes to buy my first downloaded track although even that was after a couple of beers! I’m not a geek or even early adopter. I’m someone that understands the technology and can analyse it down to its unique features and then apply that to a future scenario or a future customer. It sounds very grandiose but I guess I’m more the visionary type and what I envisage in this case really excites me. What excites me the most about the future of UMPCs is that I only wanted a ultra mobile PC because I’m a pragmatic person. The ultra mobile PC is not a must-have bit of tech for me – its something that fills multiple roles and turns out to be a very very sensible choice for me. The Carrypad ultra mobile PC I envisaged is a solution to my problem of not wanting a ton of electronics in my bag or in my office. It was a solution to not wanting to buy a notebook PC and it was a lovely way to keep my office and data clutter-free. OK, my requirements have somewhat changed since I first wrote about the Carrypad concept because I now find myself trying to educate the masses myself – I need to know a lot more about different types of ultra mobile PC now but that original process of going through all the options, making a list and writing down the pro’s and con’s of all the device types and then deciding that the best device was the ultra mobile PC that didn’t even exist yet makes me very confident that crossing the chasm isn’t going to be too difficult for UMPCs.

Now its time to stop the marketing talk before I get in too deep! I’m also going to stop plugging myself and plug the book instead. If you’ve got anything to do with the marketing of UMPCs, you’ve probably already read this book. It would be silly not to to be honest. But even if you’re not in marketing its a good read. If you’re in ultra mobile PC sales, support, if you’re a VAR or a mobile computing consultant. If you’re thinking of starting an online store or maybe even a ultra mobile PC portal. You might even be a pragmatic customer waiting for your perfect UMPC! Its a book that will give you a lot of clues and thoughts about where the ultra mobile PC is in its lifeline and how it might get further. Its really worth buying so here’s a link to Amazon. Yes, its an affiliate link so I might get some pennies for my words here but rest assured, its all going back into research, reports and promotion which I think, will help UMPCs across the chasm into the hands of the happy customer.

If you have any comments, both negative and positive, please please don’t hesitate to register, login and write something below. I’m eager to hear as many views and opinions as possible so that I can further distill my thoughts. Don’t forget to order that book first though!