More on the Ultramobile Personal Computer

Today’s Joy of Tech rifs on the Origami thingy from Microsoft (I wrote about this yesterday).

I just did some quick googling, and can’t find anybody excited about this… thing.

This article by Om Malik is typical:

With details swathed in secrecy and buzz created by a mysterious website, Microsoft’s Origami handheld debuted Thursday at the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, to great expectations.

But analysts were quick to point out that Origami’s lack of focus made it an implausible competitor to Apple’s iPod or Sony’s (Research) PlayStation Portable.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research who tracks the digital device industry, says that Origami UMPCs will excite early adopters. Gartenberg sees the geek set carrying them around as “reference devices” used to quickly check e-mail or look up documents.

But the UMPC faces several hurdles on the road to mass adoption. The biggest shortcoming is its three-hour battery life, which is a quarter of Apple’s (Research) iPod, which can also play video, and much less than that of a high-end smartphone, which can check e-mail and display office documents.

“This is yet another failed attempt to jam everything into one device,” says Pip Coburn, technology strategist with Coburn Ventures, a New York-based investment advisory firm. “The way I see it, they don’t really know what they want it to be.”

Coburn believes Microsoft needs to simplify Origami devices and bring more focus to their form and function, just as they did with the XBox 360 game console. “It would be great if they did a PlayStation Portable competitor,” says Coburn.

Ashok Kumar, an analyst with brokerage firm Raymond James, says that the new devices need to have cellular connectivity, not just Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Carriers like Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel (Research), and Cingular already subsidize expensive smartphones in the hopes of getting customers to sign up for pricey data plans. Adding support for high-speed wireless connections could win similar subsidies for UMPCs, bringing the price down to a more attractive level for consumers. “At $999, consumers are not going to bite,” says Kumar.

Cynthia Brumfield, president of Emerging Media Dynamics, a consulting group, agrees that the UMPC is too expensive for consumers.

“If the price stays at the $600 to $1,000 range, Microsoft will have a tough time distinguishing [Origami] from low-end laptops or notebooks,” says Brumfield. “However, if the manufacturers can get the price down, and Microsoft positions it as a truly portable multimedia device that also comes equipped with all these office productivity applications, then [Origami] is, I think, a winner. I don’t think this is a video iPod killer — Microsoft is just not….cool. But the enterprise market is ready for a portable media device with a big screen that can serve as a computer.”

In other words, don’t expect an iPod-like gold rush for Microsoft. At least not yet.

Om Malik is also blogging and has some good questions:

What none of the folks who are writing about the device today address is the bigger issue: since it is an ultra portable PC based on Windows XP, how secure is it? What is the “re-boot” time? How much resources it would need and how long is the battery life. Of course the price point is even more worrisome: at $599 to $999, it is still too expensive for an occasional use device. So here is a question: will equipment makers sacrifice the margins on their thin-and-light notebooks, for Origami? After all, from the video you learn, that Origami does it all, and well, a $600 desktop at home should do the trick in tandem with Origami.