Hand Held computing finally shows its worth

After years of being the "Next Big Thing", hand held computing is finally of sufficient maturity to deliver hard business benefit to retailers.

Hand held computing can mean anything from data capture units and disconnected scanners to tablet PCs. This month we explore new products at the lower end of the scale from Metrologic, look closely at two different implementations of Pocket PC technologies and see where the Smartphone, tablet PC and Smartdisplay may be leading us.

Early use of hand held devices in retail was restricted to stock taking and goods receiving types of applications. This was because they ran proprietary and rudimentary operating systems and were programmed in unusual languages.

Now Pocket PC technology, with its familiar user interface, is available and even at the lower priced end of the market, a product such as the Metrologic Navigator comes with a Windows based application generator. Therefore, more sophisticated software is able to be developed more easily and cheaply, and hand held solutions are quicker to deploy in more strategic areas of the business.

One example of this is retail specialists: Axida who are piloting a solution for Entertainment UK Direct working with Woolworths. This solution runs on Pocket PCs. It was demonstrated to me on an xda, but is running on Symbol equipment in the stores.

"The solution effectively extends the catalogue in the store to the entire inventory of the central warehouse, a range of over 120,000 SKUs" claims Wayne Holgate of Axida. Wayne asked me to name the title of an obscure CD that I would like. I chose a little known Frank Zappa album and he was quickly able to show me that it was available. Less than a minute after asking me for my postcode, he informed me that it would be delivered to my house the following day. Sure enough, the postman duly delivered the package and provided some bizarre accompaniment to my Cornflakes the following morning.

Both GPRS and 802.11b wireless LAN technologies have been tried, but the wireless LAN option has proved to be an order of magnitude faster, and communication costs are cheaper.

Books are similar to CDs in that there are a lot of different ones, and it is difficult and expensive to try and stock a vast range. It is not difficult to envisage how this type of solution could revolutionise the operations of large catalogue retailers.

So why is there a sudden outburst of useful solutions based on hand held technologies? The answer to this question seems to be in a combination of hardware and software issues.

On the hardware front, there is now sufficient computing power available in palm sized devices such as the Palm Pilot, pocket PC and Smartphone to allow sophisticated applications to be run, but also the necessary retail peripherals are now small enough to fit comfortably into hand held devices. One case in point is the new, miniature microQuest single-line, laser scan engine from Metrologic.

Additionally. these technologies are consumer technologies, and so benefit from the downward price pressures associated with commodity items.

The Smartphone does not have a huge screen, and so complex applications are limited, but there is sufficient space to allow filed employees to receive pushed alerts and will give them limited access to their office based information systems. At the other end of the hand held scale, the Tablet PC frees shop based assistants to bring full computing power on to the store floor in order to interact with the customer.

In software terms, the Windows CE platform has long promised much, but only now, with the advent of Visual Studio .NET version 1.1, has application development become as easy as PC software development.

Adrian Morrish, Retail Industry Manager for Microsoft UK predicts "the Smartphone, Smartdisplay and Tablet PC will empower a paradigm shift in the way that the customer interacts with the retailer. The current round of EPoS replacements will be the last of the traditional point of sale refreshes". Adrian sees a future where the customer will interact in the store using his own device. He foresees that it will not be the technology that holds up this advancement, but rather the cultural change that will be necessary, and this will be a shock to both the customer and the retailer.