modu Preview
Discontinued 12th February
2009
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?
We have other pictures of the modu and
its jackets in our gallery,
or you can have a look at the full range of proposed
modu components and learn more from their web
site.
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