Coming Soon – Your Phone + Your Monitor
January 26th, 2010 | by LaSean Smith
Many big innovations are the combination of a bunch of smaller innovations bundled together. The digerati and fan boys yawn when many of these smaller innovations make improvements. They’ve seen some form of it before and the interactive improvement doesn’t get them excited. They want the new thing!
Still, I remain excited about these small innovations. The Zune AV Kit was one of those yawner products. But it was still impressive. People have questioned why you want 720p HD video on a portable media player. The screen isn’t big enough. Right? This is true until you think about connecting your portable media player to your friend’s 61″ flat screen, hotel room television, or mini-van. But while this is interesting to me – it’s really just an edge case. However, this all changes when you add a powerful smart phone to the mix. And not just HD video out, but also keyboard and mouse input.
This is called AV Tethering. The concept is simple. You take your phone and connect it to a bigger screen and keyboard. KVM 2.0? Maybe. A number of small players like Celio have been commercializing products based on this concept over the past few years. The biggest flaws I’ve seen with these new products are that they’re 1) too expensive, 2) have a broken UX, and/or 3) work on a phone you don’t want.
That’s why the NexusOne dock looks interesting. If their product team gets it right it is going to force OEMs take this type of accessory seriously. The scenario? You connect your phone to a dock and it’s powering your 24″ monitor and working with a full size keyboard and mouse. All while charging the phone itself. You pop open the browser and use the phone’s 3G connection to get on the Internet. This could also work for a tablet. This wouldn’t be the end of the PC. I think they’ll coexist (e.g. oven + microwave) and we’ll be more mobile than ever before.
Bottom Line: AV tethering is going to catch on. And when it does it’s going to transform personal computing.
Update: The Nexus One Desktop Dock doesn’t do AV Tethering. Boo. Oh well. Someone else will have to start the trend.
