A smartphone that is able to hook up to a keyboard and monitor and run a simple word processor and spreadsheet; and some calendar / scheduling software; and some email thing (either cloud based web client or traditional server client) - that's a smart phone that many people would buy.
Supporting it in the enterprise environment would be tricky. You don't want users loading their phones with malware and then bringing that infected phone inside the network.
And, really, I'd be happy if the phone was decoupled from the rest of it. A phone and something like Raspberry PI would do me fine.
Supporting it in the enterprise environment would be tricky. You don't want users loading their phones with malware and then bringing that infected phone inside the network.
This happens today even with corporate laptops. If they're allowed outside, they will get infected. Working in information security, I send a few form emails each month telling someone to call the helpdesk and get their computer reimaged. If the company has a good enough network team to know how to properly segment a network (and/or implement a reverse proxy) and a security team with enough resources to monitor network traffic, the risk becomes acceptable.
Basically what you describe is BYOD, and it gives me job security :) For the record, I would totally buy the same desktop on three form factors if the same apps and same data could be synced across all of them.
I don't own an tablet because it is frustratingly useless, I just can't figure out why I'd really want one regardless if they were actually worth their price or not.
But an all-in-one-solution is soo much more appealing. Now suddenly there is a reason to carry an oversized phone even if you can't call with it.
For most people in the world, their only computing device, if they have one, will be a mobile one. By requiring a desktop to develop apps and/or connectivity to the internet Google's and Apple's development ecosystems hit roadblocks in many parts of the world.
The vision of mobile devices as first class computers is, in my opinion, what sold Nokia on Windows Phone. Microsoft's approach scales to places with less money and infrastructure in a way in which their primary competitors are unwilling or struggling to match.
Killer apps can and will come out of less developed regions. It's just a matter of time.
I want an all-in-one solution in terms of the APIs that the OS provides to applications. That doesn't mean all applications should look and behave exactly the same on every device.
Eventually more powerful tasks are coming to the tablet, though, especially as people look to replace desktops with it and pads gain hybrid features (e.g. plug in a mouse, bluetooth keyboards, etc).
And in most ways they're already there. Angry Birds? Yeah, it has that. Video editing? For the consumer level, iMovie and competitors are as rich as they've ever used. 3D Games? Yeah, that's been there for a couple of years. Maybe they intended for a more intensive example?
A smartphone with enough power to run "regular" applications and a dock I can plug it into for charging, peripherals and a monitor.
Of course the current smartphone OSes are not suitable for that task, as is demonstrated by the Transformer series, among others.