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modu Preview.
The modu device was first seen at last year's Mobile World Congress, and its stubborn failure
to appear led us to think that perhaps it would never make it to market. Well, the good
news is that modu say that their phone will launch in 2009 and they have secured a total
of $85 million funding to bring it to market.
What makes modu very different from anything else is that it takes a modular approach to
phone design. At its heart is a very tiny mobile phone with a very basic set of buttons,
2GB of RAM, a small screen with a graphical user interface and a music player. In itself,
the modu phone is probably just about enough for most daily tasks. If you need more, then
you slide the modu into a "jacket" which can do a number of things - the simplest jackets
really just add a full keypad, but some give it bigger screens and can turn the modu into
a fully featured business phone. That's not all, you can plug the modu into a car kit,
a sports jacket (for training), docking station or potentially any one of a number of adaptors
and accessories.
The exact specifications of the modu phone are not clear at present, but we understand
that the phone and a basic range of jackets are slated for release sometime this year.
There is no doubt that this is very clever indeed, and the approach could well be very
appealing to many people. After all, sometimes you really don't want to carry a bulky handset
around.. and sometimes you need a fully featured mobile. Swapping SIMs is one way to do this,
but that doesn't carry across all your contacts and settings.
So, this is a very cool device. But who will buy it? We think that there are three main
problems. Firstly, hardly anyone has ever heard of modu and getting brand recognition
will be difficult. Secondly, there's no real guarantee that the wide range of cool modu
jackets and accessories will ever turn up. Finally, what happens with future modu handsets..
will they still fit into the accessories you have bought?
If this phone was the Apple iPhone Nano then it would fly off the shelves. Obviously, this
isn't an Apple device, but it is certainly cool enough and clever enough to compete in
that sort of market. Heck, we bet that a company like Motorola would love to have come up with
something like this. But as it is, we think that modu are going to have a tough time drawing
attention to this remarkable device.. perhaps one of the bigger players might like to buy
the whole company?