How do we get the Bluetooth baby back off the ground?

Here is my starting point. As a publisher covering the Bluetooth and short-range wireless market, I am aware that things are very quiet in the Bluetooth sector. There is little or no buzz. Bit, hold on... Bluetooth is now out there in the big wide world, shouldn’t consumers everywhere be thrilling to the excitement of a cable-free existence?

As you will see below, I’m in a pretty good position to know that they’re not, as I have been speaking to real life end-users all over the world.

And what do consumers really think about Bluetooth? Do they all think it is perfect? Do they know about the broad range of Bluetooth products that are available today? Is everything working well for them? Do they think Bluetooth is cool? How could Bluetooth be improved? Why aren’t more people using more Bluetooth products?

These were all questions that I had been asking myself on a regular basis. If I’m honest, I was getting to feel that there was a growing gap between what the industry thought consumers knew/were thinking, and what was actually going on. It’s probably natural that this should happen. Bluetooth is no longer a new technology. The world has been talking about Bluetooth since the late ‘Nineties, and it has been possible to buy Bluetooth-enabled products since the early ‘Noughties.

After a huge amount of hype in the early years, and an almost unprecedented, cross-industry effort to build awareness of Bluetooth, the technology has matured, and – understandably – the amount of effort by consumer electronics companies to promote their support for Bluetooth has tailed off. That doesn’t mean that Bluetooth buy-in from the industry has reduced. No, on the contrary, Bluetooth implementation continues to increase, and Bluetooth is to be found in more, and more diverse devices.

But ... I suspected that public levels of awareness weren’t growing any longer. And I also suspected that not as many people were using Bluetooth as had been the case at one time. This was not a popular concept with people in the industry, and there was some reluctance to accept that this might be true.


The BiteBack vehicle

There was only one thing to do. I needed to get out there and talk to some consumers, and to ask them a selection of the questions at the top of this article. And maybe, along the way, I would find some of the answers to the question that people have been quietly asking, namely, what is needed to kick-start Bluetooth? I’ll deal with that rather huge question at the end of this piece.

I created a corny-named concept called BiteBack. Yes, another play on the ‘tooth thing. During October last year, I took the Incisor cameras out and set myself up in a live music venue in the UK. I then dragged consumers in front of the cameras and asked them to tell me about their Bluetooth experiences. Afterwards, I edited the resulting interviews into what I called the BiteBack UK movie, which was published to Incisor’s readers all over the world.

You can see the movie that we made, and the conclusions that we came to, by reading the full version of the latest issue of Incisor, which you can download by clicking the link here.

Watching the movie is the best way to judge people’s opinions. And a lot of people did (watch the movie). So much so that shortly after BiteBack UK went public, the Bluetooth SIG invited IncisorTV to re-stage BiteBack in Seattle, which we did. This was a great opportunity to gauge the opinions of consumers on the other side of the Atlantic. At this point, the BiteBack programme also gained the support of two very consumer-facing Bluetooth companies, Jabra and Parrot. These two companies have developed broad ranges of Bluetooth-enabled products, and this was a great opportunity for both of them to not only learn more about the way the world was seeing Bluetooth, but also to use the BiteBack events as an evangelisation opportunity. At each subsequent BiteBack event, we took along some of the latest products from Jabra and Parrot, and these were shown to the audiences at all of the rest of the BiteBack events.

Following the BiteBack Seattle event, we took BiteBack to South Korea and to Sweden. All of the movies can be viewed in the April issue of Incisor.


And our conclusion is?

Well, yes, we are concluding, because the BiteBack programme in its existing format has probably run its course. We have spoken to people in the USA, the UK, Scandinavia and in Asia. This has given us a very broad view of how people across the world see Bluetooth.

This summary section is also where we run the risk of alienating ourselves from a lot of people in the industry, because we’re forcing people to confront unpleasant facts of life. So, if anybody is in any doubt, here is our base platform – WE ARE LONG, LONG TERM SUPPORTERS OF BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY AND WE ARE JUST DOING OUR BIT TO KEEP THE MUCH BIGGER, MUCH MORE POWERFUL COMPANIES THAT DRIVE THE INDUSTRY POINTING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!

The project leaves us with enough data to be able to make some recommendations to anybody in the industry that wants to listen – although we know that this won’t happen automatically! If you work in marketing it’s a lot easier to believe that your audience is as educated and well-informed as you would like them to be, and that all of the work you have put into creating your web site means that the job is done.

Well, actually it isn’t. The utterly overwhelming fact is that consumers all over the world know much less about Bluetooth than we would like them to. Had we talked less to young people, and more to middle aged and older people, there is no doubt that this would be even more the case.

And people are using an extremely narrow selection of Bluetooth-enabled devices. Usage is almost completely limited to cellphones, mono headsets and computers. Note that we are restricting ourselves here to the vast consumer market. It may well be the case that some traction is being gained in markets such as sports and healthcare, but as yet these are tiny markets. Why aren’t people using stereo Bluetooth headsets, Bluetooth speaker systems, photo frames, in-car Bluetooth and any of the other clever Bluetooth gadgets that keep popping up? Why are consumer facing companies like Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Parrot, Jabra etc all finding it hard to gain acceptance for the great products that they have brought to market?

And, crucially, why are people now using Bluetooth less than they were a couple of years ago?

In my own view, the simplest answer is the fact that the impetus, the industry-wide ‘push’ that was driving Bluetooth forward ran out of steam probably 18 – 24 months ago. Following the timeline, vendors had put several years into getting Bluetooth into their CE devices, had suffered the slings and arrows of consumer disillusionment resulting from poor user experiences from early generation Bluetooth silicon, then did what they needed to, which was to put later Bluetooth silicon (V2.0 and later) into their products and then ....

Well, it’s not necessarily the case that they had lost interest in Bluetooth, but it was no longer the latest thing. And consumers only ever want the latest thing, don’t they? Well, yes, but they also want the technology they once got excited about to fulfil its promise. The irony is that the products on retail shelves today generally do work as they should do, and will make consumers love Bluetooth again. The trouble is, by this time the vendors have lost the enthusiasm for putting another major push behind Bluetooth. They are probably wary that the audience will say ‘tried it once, it didn’t work, don’t want to try it again’. Building a market for a new technology is enough of a challenge. Trying to make a new market for a technology that has disappointed customers once is another matter altogether. And why take on that challenge when there are lots of shiny new technology bandwagons that you need to be seen to be on?


The media view

Publishing Incisor I can see all sorts of evidence to support this main view. Before looking at the various indicators that my job puts in front of me, it would be foolish not to reference the small matter of a global economic recession, which has hit sales of handsets and other CE devices. Cellphone companies have been hurting, badly, and haven’t been developing the accessories that they once were.

But then there are the other telltales. The bottom fell out of the Bluetooth industry event market more than 2 years ago for example. Various event companies have tried and failed to stage successful events around Bluetooth. Then consider that while the industry is uncertain as to know what to do with Bluetooth, marketing of the technology has dropped off. Most of our interviewees told us that they never see any marketing of Bluetooth technology. We all know that without marketing, it’s going to take some sort of miracle to get consumers swarming to buy a technology. The extent of the marketing fall-off extends beyond consumer marketing. Courtesy of both the downturn in the economy and Bluetooth fatigue, companies in the Bluetooth industry aren’t marketing to each other either. As a publication servicing the SRW industry, Incisor knows that not only has advertising virtually stopped, but companies aren’t even putting any energy into PR either. The number of Bluetooth-related press releases that are issued each month is now tiny in comparison to previous times.

Even the market research companies seem to have lost interest. Incisor is aware of only one that seems to retain significant interest in the Bluetooth market, and even that company seems to be wavering over its continuing commitment. They know who they are .....


And yet, life goes on

The irony of all of this is that the companies operating in the Bluetooth industry haven’t ceased to exist. Most are still out there and are looking to carry on doing business, often to each other, selling semiconductors, protocol stacks, testing and certification services etc. Though with the almost total lack of marketing and PR activity, how the heck anybody is supposed to know what anybody else is doing is very hard to tell! There’s a real danger of the ‘self-fulfilling prophesy’ factor coming into play here.

Throughout all of this the Bluetooth SIG continues to plug away at keeping Bluetooth’s profile up, and making sure that the technology continues to provide the functions that the market needs. It has always done a good job of this – it’s generally recognised that the SIG has done a better job than any wireless industry associations. The problem is that for a long time, the SIG’s hard work was boosted by the co-operation, support and resources of the huge, powerful companies that make up its principal membership. Take this level of energy away, and the SIG is left somewhat exposed, and with a huge global challenge ahead of it.


But, hang on a minute ...

Well, yes, hang on a minute. The Bluetooth market is still huge. There is still a lot of money to be made. And, bearing in mind the latent potential that there must be – consider the lack of business success achieved so far by any Bluetooth product that isn’t a handset, mono headset or Bluetooth-enabled computer - there really is a market worth shooting for. And if consumers can only be persuaded to try out the latest generations of Bluetooth product, they are likely to be happy bunnies and motivated to extend their Bluetooth usage.

So, what is it going to take to tip Bluetooth off the edge of the very high slope it is been sitting patiently at for 2-3 years now, and to open the sales floodgates? Well, let’s not pretend that it isn’t going to be a big job. A challenge that is so big that I wouldn’t pretend for one minute to have all of the ‘what you must do is...’ pointers.

But I can make some observations, based on 5 months of talking to consumers about Bluetooth. I’m going to limit myself to just a small number of suggestions.

• Do not for one minute reduce the effort that is being made to continue to improve the Bluetooth user experience. Without ease of use and a good UE, you might as well pack up and go home. PCs in particular need to be more Bluetooth friendly. In the PC ecosystem there’s nothing approaching the degree of uniform (-ish!) Bluetooth config that consumers have been starting to get used to in the rest of the market.
• Focus on making people want to use Bluetooth. Time after time it was made obvious that people want to have fun – e.g. they’ll give their Bluetooth device a name like ‘sausage’! For heaven’s sake have the courage to get out there and try some marketing, and make it something that consumers will like – fun, viral, cheeky,
• Listen to the fact that people are feeling hugely reluctant to wear Bluetooth headsets for fear of looking stupid. What’s the answer? I don’t know, but ignoring this factor, and continuing to churn out more ‘me-too’ headsets certainly isn’t it.
• Be realistic about Bluetooth pricing - £100 for a Bluetooth headset is just crazy. You may have invested millions in developing your headset range, but just because your latest product has noise-cancelling and a DSP in it, t doesn’t mean that a consumer will feel motivated to pay a lot of money for your little piece of plastic
• Conquer the ‘tried it, it didn’t work’ stigma. Current generation Bluetooth products need to be experienced by consumers. Some of the braver CE companies need to find ways of doing this. Roadshows, dedicated events and exhibitions are costly. Use your web sites and create good content that shows real people using and enjoying your product. I hate to be an Apple groupie, but the company does this sort of thing very well. And don’t be too proud to copy the technique. After all, why agonise, when you can plagiarise?
• If you thought the Bluetooth evangelisation phase was over, well, it’s not!

Most of all, the players within the Bluetooth industry should try to see if there are ways that they can co-operate in the way that they used to. It was pretty unprecedented, I know, but it worked. Maybe a new, pan-industry, consumer-facing marketing initiative can be devised – a game, a celebrity endorsement campaign, a competition, a charitable project – there are many possibilities. The Bluetooth SIG can be the axis around which it revolves, and can perhaps host the core activity at its web site. The end result could be a great deal of positive publicity for Bluetooth and the Bluetooth community. And by combining resource and effort, this doesn’t need to be too taxing for any one company. Maybe we will get the opportunity to talk about this at the SIG’s All Hands Meeting in Seattle later this month. ‘Seems like a good opportunity.

The IncisorTV BiteBack programme may be pretty unprecedented in that it has provided a video-based market research resource for companies that have a real interest in knowing what consumers really think about Bluetooth. But, I believe that this has been a truly valuable exercise, and I know that there are people out there that have genuinely appreciated the insight that BiteBack has provided.

What comes next? Something equally innovative and valuable.

Was WiMedia UWB ever right for Bluetooth?

Recent murmurings have suggested that despite losing it's place as Bluetooth's high speed data channel of choice, Ultra-wideband technology (UWB) may not be dead after all.

What is puzzling is that the most strident support for UWB is coming not from the WiMedia Alliance companies, but from proponents of the alternative version of UWB technology, the companies that were once linked as the DS-UWB Forum. And, the suggestion seems to be that by going with WiMedia's solution, the Bluetooth SIG had backed the wrong horse.

Here's our point - at Incisor we don't know whether the Bluetooth SIG made the right decision, or not. We're not clever enough to be able to analyse the technical proficiency and fitness for purpose of the two erstwhile UWB combatants. Which was/is best for Bluetooth? We don't know. Fortunately, we are well connected with a lot of people that are better qualified than we are, and we are happy to provide this forum for discussion.

Kazimierz "Kai" Siwiak, the CEO of wireless consulting company TimeDerivative Inc., for example, has recently commented that the combination of WiMedia's OFDM-based UWB was never the right choice for the high speed version of Bluetooth - known as Bluetooth 3.0. His comments follow:

A while ago, the Bluetooth SIG made a tentative selection of the WiMedia variant of UWB as a candidate for a high speed option in Bluetooth. The choice is not surprising, since the key players in WiMedia and the key players in the Bluetooth SIG tend to overlap; it is thus natural that they should try to seek common ground.

However, that choice might be considered a very weak choice. The WiMedia variant of UWB is actually an OFDM system in which the 500+ MHz wide OFDM symbols can be hopped every symbol among channels that are 512 MHz apart. It is "UWB" as a consequence of occupying more than 500 MHz bandwidith by transmitting OFDM symbols comprised of about 120 sine-wave carriers spaced about 4.13 MHz apart. Efficient base band processing of this OFDM system, and in particular symbol-rate-frequency-hopping of this OFDM signal, has proven to be a very difficult problem to solve. This is especially true from the power drain point of view. In that regard, it is indeed a poor fit for Bluetooth, or for any solution which seeks to address high speed data needs in the hand-held battery powered market.

Run off from current consideration, but nonetheless much more technically and market-wise appropriate, are solutions that obtain their UWB bandwidth as a consequence of their short pulse duration. These systems tend to scale their battery power requirements in proportion to data rate, in contrast to the OFDM approach which always requires significant processing effort. The pulse-based systems can be built with power drain economies that are a good fit for high speed Bluetooth. In fact, the needed technology is already well defined and described in the IEEE 802.15.4a-2007 standard for wireless personal area networks, where low power drain is a key necessity. Perhaps that body of work might provide a viable source of technology that can be adapted to fit high speed Bluetooth needs.

These are controversial views, but are they correct? Is this just sour grapes?

Incisor invites parties from the Bluetooth community, WiMedia companies and those siding with Kai (perhaps members of what was the DS-UWB Forum), to comment here.

Sleepless in Seattle has been done. How about wireless?

The 'Can Bluetooth be cool?' campaign has been running for more than a month now. The original blog sparked off a great deal of dialogue.

Then the movie we created at the UK BiteBack event gave us unparalleled insight into the way real consumers are using Bluetooth, and their views on whether this is a cool technology, or not. Who would have thought that file-sharing was the golden application for Bluetooth, not handset to headset?

Taking the views of just one group in one geographical location is not a good idea, so I'm tremendously pleased that the Bluetooth SIG has invited us to re-stage BiteBack in Seattle. This is happening at a Halloween-themed night on Friday the 30th of October at the SEE Sound Lounge in Belltown, on Seattle's downtown waterfront. Once again, we will be taking the IncisorTV cameras to a busy music venue and talking to the people that actually buy and use the tech stuff that we spend every day trying to promote. And making a movie that will be available to view here at the www.incisor.tv site.

But it's time to move the project on. It really isn't my goal to simply learn about what people think about Bluetooth today. I want to start the process of improving awareness of Bluetooth's capabilities, and maybe even starting to make people think that wireless technology, and Bluetooth specifically at the moment, CAN be cool. So I'm talking to consumer electronics device companies such as Jabra, Sony Ericsson, Parrot, Plantronics etc, to see which of them is brave enough to get out there with me and start tackling the challenge. To sit with the people in Seattle and talk to them about why they should be doing more with Bluetooth than just sharing music tracks.

Following the first BiteBack event/movie, people at these companies are readily acknowledging that boosting Bluetooth so that everybody makes it a 'must have' feature is what they need to do. But it is like the elephant in the room - you can't ignore the fact that it is there, but do you want to try to shift it? Over the next couple of weeks, I'll find out how many visionaries there are left out there. The Bluetooth SIG has stepped up to the plate and is supporting BiteBack Seattle. Who else will be there, with Mike Foley and myself, telling the Bluetooth story to Seattle's young and beautiful?

This is going to be one interesting event! And one which any reader of this blog is more than welcome to come along to.

Can Bluetooth ever be cool?

That is a question that must be troubling technology marketeers across the world, including the makers of headsets and other Bluetooth-enabled devices, and the organisation that manages Bluetooth technology – the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG).

Bluetooth has been around since 1998, and actual Bluetooth devices started appearing a couple of years later. The very first commercially available Bluetooth product was from Ericsson, as reported in Incisor in November 1999.

From that day forth, promoters of Bluetooth have hoped that there would be a global wave of enthusiasm for the technology from consumers. But it just hasn’t happened. Despite the fact that legislation in a number of countries forces us to use Bluetooth headsets if we want to talk on a cellphone in our cars, Bluetooth daily usage is apparently going down, not up. Research company Strategy Analytics says by as much as 40% in the USA over the last year.

Here at Incisor we think that a big part of the problem is that nobody, but nobody has managed to make wearing a Bluetooth headset cool. Instead, the words ‘Bluetooth’ and ‘naff’ are heard together on far too often a basis. Only taxicab drivers and people who wear leisure suits made from synthetic materials (ok, they are often the same people) seem to think it is OK to be seen walking around wearing a Bluetooth headset.

The web is loaded with anti-Bluetooth humour, including this. Bluetooth-mocking movies are even being used as a device by companies marketing products. Check this commercial out for Keystone Light Beer. Even the vendors of Bluetooth equipment are doing it – thanks, Philips, for this one.

Some claim to be working to try to make Bluetooth cool, and have been using the old chestnut of celebrity endorsement. Courtesy of Plantronics’ marketing machine, we learn that P Diddy, Eva Longoria and Brooke Shields apparently all use Plantronics headsets. Bluetooth headsets have even made their way into music videos – Motorola product placement is at work as we watch this one for Fergie’s Big girls don’t cry. This is one of the better ones – check out that car, that girl, that track, and the headset is OK too.

But it is not working! Or else, why are all of those iPod users still walking around with their tacky white plastic headsets? Why would we want to use wired headsets when there is a huge range of wireless headsets on the market now for similar money? Heck, its a problem when even the world's coolest company can't make Bluetooth cool!

And surely this must be holding back the more widespread deployment of Bluetooth technology in other consumer electronics devices?

With some justification, the Bluetooth SIG and big-name consumer electronics (CE) companies that are supporting Bluetooth will point to the fact that billions of Bluetooth chips have been shipped, and have been built into many products that are in the hands of consumers all over the world. That is true, but it doesn’t mean that these people are using Bluetooth, or that massive chip sales means that Bluetooth has become aspirational (like, dare we say it, an iPod) or, to use the word again, cool.

So, what is the problem, and is it too late? Can Bluetooth regain the momentum it had in the early years, when people actually criticised the Bluetooth trailblazers for creating too much publicity and too much pent-up demand and hype (‘bet they’d like some of that back now!)? What would it take?

We have theories, but we want to hear from the big wide world. This blog will be promoted via all of Incisor’s channels, and that includes Twitter, Facebook and business networking sites such as LinkedIn.

And we will take it a stage further. On the 26th of September Incisor is staging a public event called Bite-Back (Bluetooth/Incisor – Bite-Back – geddit?) at a venue in the UK where there will be live music and – the main point – lots of young people. We will have the IncisorTV cameras there, a bunch of Bluetooth products and we will interview people and ask them for their views – it could be a bit painful for the Bluetooth faithful, but who knows, something really good could come.

We will make a short movie from the event and this will be promoted in the next issue of Incisor, as will a follow-up feature that will report some of the views that we hear.

It should be exciting. And maybe we will even learn what it will take to make Bluetooth cool.

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Why does Bluetooth still not work the way it should?

Anybody who knows me knows that I have been a supporter and promoter of Bluetooth technology since it first started to poke its head above the parapet, way back in 1998. But there is an elephant in my room, and its tusks are blue! Despite all the good work that the Bluetooth SIG and all its responsible member companies have done, it is still the case that Bluetooth phones, headsets etc sometimes don't work the way they should.

Example - I use a Nokia N96 with a Jabra JX20 headset - both high-end products from respected companies. The two are paired and work OK on first connection. But, if I go out of range, or switch the headset off for some reason, they then will not reconnect. I have to switch the headset off and re-boot the phone. In a given day this can happen several times. Most frustrating.

After 11 years of Bluetooth development, and with two products from a couple of the most respected manufacturers, this really shouldn't be happening. And this isn't isolated. A lot of kit passes through our hands, and similar things happen all the time. I'm in the industry, so I keep using this kit, but what will consumers be thinking?

I've put the question to the wireless community, and Peter Hauser, CEO of The Quality Factory came back with these observations?

I'm surprised nobody is willing to comment here!

Your question: "Why does Bluetooth still not work the way it should?" is more a question about "Quality" than it is about "Conformance to the Bluetooth standard" and therein lies the problem...

First of-all, there will always be a struggle between innovation and conformance to a standard. Every company wants, and needs to innovate. This implies that every company seeks to use the standards in new and interesting ways, and when they do, they make "assumptions" as to how other, compatible products, will react, thus creating the first problem...

For instance, the Bluetooth standards speak little about timing tolerances for commands and responses (beyond the standard timeouts). Some devices can respond very quickly to a command, while others cannot. If, however, a device is EXPECTING a delayed response and instead receives a very rapid one, if the firmware is intolerant, it could cause the device to lock-up.

Also - the Bluetooth standards do not currently address most multi-profile scenarios. It is only recently that the common "HFP, HSP, A2DP, and AVRCP" in a single device scenario was examined more closely for integration into the specifications AND the play/pause behavior (you know, where Play means Play, and Pause means Pause) has changed between the whitepaper and the specifications.

In short, unless companies are willing to invest in clarifying and standardizing their assumptions, these types of problems will continue.

And then, there's the issue of QUALITY.

With Bluetooth technology's pull towards commoditization, this complex technology is now in the hands of implementers who don't understand its intricacies and are building products based on new assumptions. Couple that with reduced development budgets for commodity products, and you have all of the makings of a reduction in product quality.

Teams are no longer "expected" to attend such events as UPF and to conduct extensive interoperability tests. Instead, they are expected to keep development budgets as low as possible.

All the while, new platforms are opening-up APIs that enable 3rd party applications to affect the Bluetooth performance. For instance, a mobile phone may have three separate music players on it. If one of those music players interacts with the Bluetooth A2DP/AVRCP (music) stack in an unexpected fashion, it could damage otherwise solid interoperability with wireless stereo headsets.

So - I guess the answer to your very simple question is quite complex.

If companies are going to do a really good job making their solutions "work" in the real world, they need to take the time to understand the assumptions made by products that already exist in the marketplace (of which there are many), find the similarities in these assumptions, and design accordingly.

Then, they need to TEST, TEST, and TEST again.

Thanks, Peter. Other contributions on this topic are very welcome. In the meantime, I may just have to change my own gadgets on a more often basis to check whether this situation is getting better, or worse.

After all, a Nokia N96 has been around for quite a while now ....

Which smartphone would Paris Hilton use?

After all, we all like to think we are as smart and sophisticated as celebs like Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, Stephen Fry (http://www.stephenfry.com/ for the non-English out there, he is something of a local phenomenon), don't we?

You can debate that in your own time, but the fact is that it is time to change my phone. For approaching 5 years I have been a Nokia man - N81 (good, showed promise), N95 (excellent, wish I was still using it) and currently an N96 (awful - hangs all the time, terrible Bluetooth installation).

I have resisted the temptation of receiving email on my phone up until now, but I think it is time to bite the bullet. I am a sucker for phones with lots and lots of features, or smartphones as the world knows them, so the choice for me comes down to these: Nokia N97 (offers loads of promise, fantastic camera, but I really don't want another experience like the N96), a Blackberry (sooo good at mobile email and better at the other stuff too now, but do I really want to join the chino and polo shirt brigade?) or, of course, an iPhone.

Every person I know who has an iPhone LOVES IT. Everybody that has a Blackberry respects it. I don't know anybody with an N97 at the moment so this is a bit hard to gauge. I know that I will find an iPhone a joy to use, and it has good Bluetooth now, with stereo music streaming. I may well wish I had moved lock, stock and two smoking touchscreens to the Apple family years ago. But the iPhone won't play Flash content, which is a bit frustrating.

If I buy a Blackberry I will no doubt get the job done but will lose interest in the sexy gadget that I carry around me.

If the N97 is as 'hangy' as the N96, it will end up thrown against the wall.

None of the options comes without financial outlay, so the decision needs thought on many levels. What sort of a phone user do I want to appear to be? A style-driven ubercoolmonkey iPhone user? A guy who is worrying about whether his PowerPoint slides are ready for his next presentation? Or the guy picking up the shattered remains of his latest gadget acquisition?

So, let's go back to the beginning: which would Paris Hilton choose? Oh yes .... The one that is available with a pink cover and covered with more Swarovski crystals than there are barnacles on a Thames barge.

Sigh ... Maybe I will put the decision off for a while.