In a fast followup to my recent post about the craziest-PDA-of-2004, this site has gotten any exclusive interview with the CEO of Novinit, which is the (French) company behind the Jackito.
A few bits are real standouts:
[Interviewer]: What is the difference between a PDA and your TDA?
[CEO]: Current PDAs are more or less downsized PCs. In a way, the Jackito is an upgraded version of a Gameboy. They are different classes of products. You don’t need a huge manual to use our TDA.
I’m not sure what planet this guy is from (oh, right … France), but I am a loss why he would think that a “downsized PC” is a bad thing, or at least, something that his company and product shouldn’t be aping. And I honestly cannot remember the last time I even saw anyone even holding their PDA’s “huge manual”, let alone reading it.
[CEO]: The first tactile digital assistants were built for the military by Litton Industries back in 1978. At this time, this device weighed 1 kilogram, cost about $10,000 and consumed 9 watts of power. In the last 25 years, we worked with American and Asian companies to improve the technology. Now a Jackito is 20 times smaller, 20 times cheaper, and consumes 60 times less energy. And of course, it’s incredibly more powerful.
25 years of evolution and they’re still 4 years obsolete.
Sigh.
I think the key issue here is that Novinit is almost criminally unaware of what the current handheld market is looking for, i.e., improvements in battery life, screen resolution and processing power (in that order, imho). And I don’t believe “thumb-operated UI” is very high on that list of must-haves, unfortunately. On the other hand, they did say that the Jackito is a different class of product. So if they’re not aiming to rival PDAs, where are they planning on positioning themselves exactly? In the $600-calculator market?