The Top 5 Semi Rugged PDA's

OK, but you’re all about the “rugged” I hear you say “whats all this semi rugged pda faff!!!” but let me try and explain this trend that is set to continue into 2012!

The semi rugged market is not about getting a rugged-ish PDA that looks and functions like a smartphone per se, giving your users the latest and greatest and prettiest looking devices. Its not about facebook integration, twitter, apps or chrome designed casings!!

It is however partly about giving users a more smartphone like ability in a device thats small enough to carry around in your pocket and it also has to do with offering a decent roadmap and life, decent support with parts availability, running Windows Mobile or android and all at a price thats under (well under) £500.

Yes rugged is needed, but as mobile is being taken up now by even the smallest customer, there is a growing drive for devices that offer the full rugged service in a semi rugged pda thats small, not expensive but capable.

I think 2012 will see a drive towards “rugged enough” for a lot of people, with less to spend but still needing rugged service, a good reseller relationship and continued trust and work as they grow.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

Rugged PDA Trends 2012 - Rugged Tablets will Breed like Rabbits!

So having looked back at 2011 and largely got it right, we thought we’d do the same for 2012.  2011 was definitely a very interesting year for the Rugged and Mobile market and we’ll see a lot of trends from last year gaining strength in 2012 as well as the emergence of some new, exciting new technology trends that are set to change and rock the markets we operate in.  The continuing recession will still affect and skew 2012 but by and large we’ll see some great stuff happening in our view here! 

We’ll do a 10 blog prediction over the next 2 weeks so that we can talk about the trends in a little more depth than we did last year but keep things light at the same time.

Are you ready for a challenging and technology infested 2012!!  Here goes our predictions for a much looked forward to year.

Trend 1 - The rise of the Rugged Tablet

Tablets are a wonderful thing.  I still use my iPad daily, bought on the day the iPad 1 was launched and still my faithful companion I trust, love and burn away hours through it and you know what, it’s great.

In business terms though the rugged tablet is driving screen size, and we heard a lot about that last year and we feel this is not so much being driven by iPads and Angry birds, but more by businesses moving into the next stage of their mobile solution culture.  We saw the same with smartphones and rugged PDA’s.  Businesses played with Smartphones firstly because they were the cheapest and least risky way to spend a small budget on “this mobile thing”  I even heard years ago companies talking about Mobile as if it were something the IT guys had to get out of their systems, but the fact remains that mobile is now the ubiquitous IT solution and we’re all now looking at else it might be able to do.

Rugged PDA’s are great at capturing data.  If you want a barcode or asset tracked and synced regularly throughout the day, then nothing does it better, but businesses are now asking, what else can we do and what opportunities are there in the field to extend our mobile capability.  Tablets allow for data to be pumped back to the users, quickly and in a far more readable way.  They allow for extended usage and data input and then create more of a 1 to many mobile culture set to go into overdrive this year.

Mobile solutions are about to get complex, far more complex than today and the tablet will be at the heart of this evolution.

Motorola got a first in here with the launch of their ET1, 7″ Android  tablet.  It’s an interesting product, I think it will evolve and we’ll also see more tablets come from other manufacturers this year as the trend materialises.

Will Android be the choice for the tablet OS?  I’m not sure, there is definitely demand for Windows Mobile or WEH and we heard a birdy tell us to watch out for WP7 too, but I think at the moment it will be a key growth area for Android.

What will the LCD size be?  Well the demand we’re seeing isn’t for 10.1″, but for smaller screens.  5, 6 and 7″ will be the winners in our mind.

Feel free to join in on the conversation, all you have to do is comment below.  We’ll continue tomorrow with trend 2.

www.ruggedandmobile.com

The original blog can be found right here.  I’m genuinely putting our necks on the line here so here goes!!

1. Reduced Big Brand Loyalty

Got that one smack on right.  Last year was seriously the rise of the Eastern brands, coupled with the recession (or reset for those Godin fans!), we definitely saw a reduction in the big brand business we did here, whilst overall our growth continued.

2. Shift to Fully Rugged

Half right, we definitely worked with customers who understood rugged more here, however the semi-rugged market grew a lot for us here and bucked that trend somewhat.  Arguably semi-rugged PDA’s whilst physically only being semi-rugged, still enjoy most of the rugged elements of service and road map so again this trend was right, but the Jury’s half out on this one in my view.

3. The Rise of Semi-Rugged

Definitely a big growth area with the Pidion Bm170 and Motorola ES400 taking up a lot of sales here.  We didn’t see fully rugged sales drop though and it was definitely the first time mobile solutions, or those who knew semi-rugged was enough through years of user experience that went semi-rugged.

4. Reseller Expertise and Brand Advocacy

After a year of blurting on about this to Manufacturers we still get made to feel we’re bonkers but this is a generally known trend now in most markets.  Despite margins being challenged in challenging times for businesses in the UK, resellers that have knowledge and expertise will get the best customers, will gain repeat business and will win out over the low margin box shifter in the end.

5. Cradle to Cradle usage of the Rugged PDA.

Not quite a 2011 thing this, but i think we’ll see this slowly develop further as people learn to not throw things away so much, we’ll see greater usage of kit for longer.  Resellers and manufactures will have to get used to this and develop new ways to keep kit running longer.

6.  Rugged PDA Health check

A lot happened in the MDM market last year.  Airwatch grew hugely, some manufacturers launched their own free MDM services and resellers definitely had to re-think the way they sold and serviced PDA’s better.  We’ll see this trend continue into 2012 and faster.

7. Smartphone and Rugged gap will widen

Well the Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile / Embedded handheld 6.5 OS split certainly di do this but then the emergence of Android has forced it back together again just a bit. 

8.  Emergence of Android

OK, OK so we knew about some of these devices a while back but we saw the official launch of 3 Android based Rugged PDA’s and 1 Tablet last year with more to come.  Android is definitely getting into the Rugged Bed.

9.  Screen Size Over Keyboard

This was yes and no really.  Screen size is definitely an area we got most requests for.  3.5″ just isn’t cutting it any longer for most people.  The Numeric keypad was also not quite as popular as we saw in previous years, with PDA and small formats growing in popularity.  Small but with a big screen is definitely a trend we saw growing.

10.  Project and Solution Rollout

We certainly dealt with more, larger rollouts last year with some big global companies who were all about good solid rollout strategies and minimising risk and downtime once running.  Maybe more of a position here than a trend though, but we did find it easier to sell the service and “up-time” concept than we did in 2010 proving that mobile is now the cornerstone and not the plaything of more and more businesses.

What we missed.

The rise of the cheap Barcode Scanner -  The £30-50 barcode scanner was certainly the area of growth with both Intermec and Motorola being forced to join in the cheaper CCD side of things too.

The rise of the Tablet – Although we’ll see more rugged tablets this year, the rise of the tablet last year was evident for all to see!

Let us know if there was anything you saw that we missed too, just add a comment and lets talk about them right here!

Tomorrow we’ll look at the trends of 2012 we’re likely to see.

www.ruggedandmobile.com