Handheld market poses interesting industry questions

IF YOU'RE anything like me, you'll have been keeping an eagle eye on the announcements coming out of Nintendo and Sony over the past week or so. First we had Nintendo announcing that its DS device would retail for $149 and would be available in North America before Christmas. Second, Sony annouced that the its PlayStationPortable (PSP) would also ship before the end of the year into Japan, and would cost in the region of $250.

I'm a complete gadget freak. I'm one of those guys that will buy something, play with it for a month then just eBay it if I don't like it. Some stuff you just gotta have before anyone else, because it makes you hella cool. iPod Mini? Got it from the States on release, months before it was over here. Nintendo GBASP? First day of launch, and I daresay I'll check out the PSP and the DS on import too.

What's interesting about these devices is context. The PSP has an undeniable cool factor - the games you can stuff into that little thing look incredible. Mobile devices, on the whole, are pretty sexy. That's why people like me pay hand over fist to have the stuff first, for the kudos that owning the stuff brings. But take the hardware on its own - the graphics chip, the processor - and it's not particularly appealing. It's the context of the device that makes it appealing.

If you're a watcher of the portable market, you'll also have noticed an announcement by new player, Gizmondo, this week. Gizmondo is launching its Gameboy rival in the next month or so, and have lined up Nvidia to supply the graphics hardware, in the form of the GoForce 4500 chip. Take the same equation: Nvidia mobile graphics processor, not particularly sexy. Portable media device for gaming and video and music: pretty sexy.

Hardware companies like Nvidia face an interesting challenge - making their hardware appealing to the mainstream. If you want to extrapolate what I was saying above, components don't make a PC sexy, it's the PC as a whole that has to be sexy. Companies like Alienware realised this when they were setting up, and are creating computers that are, in many ways, desirable. But fundamentally, they're still just computers.

What this new brand of portable devices having going for them is that they are unique. The PSP is a law unto itself - no-one has ever done anything like it before. The specs of the hardware and the range of applications are ground-breaking. Gaming is so mainstream that enough people desire gaming hardware, and Sony are delivering it in the bucket-load. The Nintendo DS is unique because of its dual-screen, and the innovations in gaming that is expected to bring. People want it because it's new, different and cool. So, in a sense, it is unique applications, combined with cool hardware, that sells.

This is why PC hardware is such a hard-sell - it's not unique. In applications terms, a PC is a PC is a PC. There's no unique selling points, because the whole industry is built on open standards and interoperability. You can't make a PC an ultra-desirable piece of hardware, because it does nothing that is fundamentally different from your office PC. The PSP promises to revolutionise mobile media; an Alienware PC will just let you do the same things faster at a higher res. And with enthusiast PC builders now two-a-penny, even the desirability of the hardware has been reduced.

Nvidia and ATI, Intel and AMD: the rivals all do, fundamentally the same thing. The closest we've seen to unmatched innovation we've seen over the last couple of years is AMD64: but the success of that dictates that rivals follow suit. How, then, can AMD ever be more desirable, truly, than Intel? It's a tough sell.

This is why the emergence of different, competing platforms is an interesting case study. Apple have succeeded in creating ultra-desirable computers by giving end users something different, something unique. Apple sell their products as a lifestyle - the iPod, iTunes, their iLife productivity suite: these are products that are unique to that company. Their hardware is uniquely desirable, and even their slogan - 'Think Different' - is a call to individuals to see Apple as distinct from other computer hardware. Their huge brand awareness in the marketplace right now is a direct result of this selling pitch.

There is a lesson for hardware manufacturers - create something different. Nvidia have had a go with SLI, and have succeeded in causing a buzz in the industry, and have differentiated themselves from their rivals. Their 'The Way It's Meant To Be Played' campaign is the closed thing to a unique application-based approach to marketing in the industry, but they still have a long way to go. Nvidia, and other hardware companies, could do well to look at the examples of Nintendo, Sony and Apple to create brand awareness and sell their hardware to the mainstream gadget crowd.