See What I Mean About the Phone?

It just looks industrial, compared to the design of the rest of the unit.

Verizon One, Competition Zero

Verizon is rolling out an all-in-one voice, data, and video center for the home riding on top of Verizon's FiOS service, though it looks like the first generation of the device will not have the planned Ethernet and Wi-Fi capabilities Verizon wants to add. The Verizon One makes VoIP phone calls, supports email access, limited Web searches, calendar functions and streaming audio as well as preview of digital camera images. "Limited" Web access means specific Verizon-approved content in the news, weather and movie listings areas are available.

The cordless phone available as part of the unit is a bit clunky looking, but will support Verizon's VoiceWing VoIP service, slated to be added to the FiOS bundle later this year. The Verizon One also runs Media Manager, the FiOS application that manages and routes all of a user's multmedia content to networked TVs, set-top boxes, and PCs. Hence the importance of Wi-Fi and Ethernet capabilities. The base unit apparently supports as many as five total handsets.

Presumably when the Ethernet capable units are available, users will be able to access any content on the Web. Multiple USB ports will be added to accommodate the peripheral devices. Verizon One can be located any place in the customer's home where there is access to a phone jack and an electrical outlet.

It's an interesting approach to creating a next-generation "phone" device. Some people won't like the look and feel of the cordless phone. And one would hope the walled garden content experience was intended as a way to simplify experience of the unit, not extract money from content suppliers. That said, Verizon will be climbing a wall of resistance for the device, since every other attempt to put a PC-style screen into "kitchen" areas in the home has flopped. I don't recall a combined "phone plus Web" unit, however. And we really won't know what demand might be until the full Ethernet and Wi-Fi version of the device is available.

Still, credit to Verizon for trying something new. The device might be attractive for quick searches as one is running out the door and doesn't have time to boot up a PC to grab information from the Web. In these "greener" days many users are powering down their machines when not in active use to cut carbon, so quick and simple information searches might be attractive. That at least has always been the theory about how a simple Internet access device could fit into a user's lifestyle.

But Nokia Says No...

The problem with market research is that findings can vary wildly from study to study. Nokia, for example, provides smartphone usage data that flatly contradicts other study findings. According to Nokia, messagng and voice drive the actual usage, not audio and video.

Audio, Video Drive Smartphone Use

Not email access, at least according to this data from ICM Research of users in seven countries.

Watch Wikipedia

Here's a trend you might not have expected. Wikipedia is one of the four most popular social networking sites, even though it is not of the "hang out with your friends or community" sort. In fact, you probably are among the users (including this one) that has come to expect and rely on the quality of most of the information available on Wikipedia, as well as the timeliness of the updating. If you had asked me whether so many human beings would help create a service so useful and so good, just because they wanted to help, I'd have said "no way." At least some times, what Web 2.0 proponents claim is true, is true. So in chatting with David Beckemeyer, PhoneGnome CEO, why would it not be able to create some sort of user research outfit (one hesitates to use the word "company") that essentially is a wiki, perhaps a private wiki for some purposes, and a public wiki for others? My point is that if IP-enabled applications and services are changing everything in communications and media, and changing many things in the learning and playing arenas, why is there not reason to believe it can change market research and analysis as well?

Fiber To Home Forecast

18 million homes by 2011, say researchers at Parks Associates. Normally I am more skeptical to the downside when evaluating nearly any sort of market forecast. This one, though, seems too cautious to me. We shall see.

Feature Creep: We're Doing Something Wrong

Anybody familiar with the vast array of features available on a Class 5 switch or a private branch exchange can tell you that most buyers of such platforms never deploy most of the features. Of the features deployed, most end users never use them. The same appears to be true even of the more restricted features available on mobile phones. Most cell phone customers don't use the camera, email, or gaming options offered by their wireless providers, according a survey by JD Power and Associates. Most are satisfied when they can simply place a call efficiently.

Survey respondents said they use the speakerphone option more than any other, but only 26 per cent of respondents said they used this function. Only 19 per cent of people say they use the camera on their mobile and a mere 16 per cent opt to play games. True, behavior is changing. But after decades of exposure, most end users use but a handful of features available from their advanced phone switches. There's a lesson there.