Tech to Spec

In the past several weeks I have seen a bit of news about a new cellular handset maker, Modu. This startup is trying to create a whole new spin on the cell phone.

Their product which shares the same name as the company, Modu, is an extremely small cell phone with limited functionality.  This, however, is not the new and impressive part of the story.  This phone is can be inserted into a “jacket” and a whole new look, feel, form, and function is born.

What this gives you is the ability to have different cell phones with standard settings, phone number, and storage.  Ideas presented by the company is putting Modu into a GPS jacket for use in the car, putting it into a touch screen mp3 player, and putting it into a computer for mobile internet connectivity.

I am not yet sold on this idea as a great candidate for mass adoption in the cell phone industry.  I think this is great for the gadget lover as it may save a small amount of money by not having a cell phone radio in all your devices.  Over all I don’t see this a savings in money but as a way to let devices remain specialized at being  great at one thing.  Other devices like the iphone are trying to have a good interface for many different functionalities.  This as you may know is very difficult and that I believe is exactly why it has seen the success it has.

The punchline to this whole article and why I chose to share it with you is that this seems fairly similar with another device that has come and gone in the market.  Not so hard to guess since I put it in the title, yes the similarity lies with Handspring.  This company made devices that used the palm OS and were extremely similar in look, feel, and functionality to the palm HW at the time.  Their product however could add other components to add functionality.  A couple of examples that I remember was a phone, GPS, dictionary, and games.

While the pricing is not yet available I think this would be interesting to see how Modu and its “jackets” fair in the market.  This example could very easily fit in with the precedent that Apple started with the iphone in that handset manufacturers can begin to make money from the customer and not need the middleman of the providers.  I think the providers may like it because Modu itself ought to be relatively cheap and could be provided to everyone.

Only time will tell.  Read more:

• here and here