Treo: “Too complex”?

Very early on in the brief history of “Consumed,” I wrote about the Treo, I think it was the Treo 600 back then. The other day there was an interesting Q&A in the WSJ with Ed Collligan, CEO of the company that makes the Treo. Here’s the bit I liked:

WSJ: How are consumers actually using their mobile devices?
Mr. Colligan: The only thing that surprises me consistently is how little they use the devices. There is so much capability that 90% of people don’t discover. They say, “It would be really cool if you had a MP3 player in here.” We do.

Many people use the Treo as a phone. People come to me all the time and say, “I love this thing, it has changed my life. I just run my whole life with it.” I’ll get their device and I’ll go into it. They have 12 addresses in it and a few appointments. … Essentially, the devices are almost too complex for a lot of people. And it is one of our challenges.

We hear so much about the demanding and super-savvy consumer, it always makes me chuckle to hear the actual reports from the front lines of commerce that, in fact, people aren’t even mastering the devices they already own. I don’t know how much more blatantly that can be expressed than in the form of consumers asking for functionality that already exists.

And yet: Does it matter? I suspect people want the most awesomely functional device even if something simpler (and cheaper) would actually do the trick. Maybe 12 addresses and a few appointments are all that some of us need to keep track of, Colligan’s exasperation notwithstanding. But there’s still something appealing in the idea of owning all that hyper-functionality: “conspicuous utility” is the phrase I used in “Consumed.” Or maybe some people are attracted by one bit of the functionality, don’t care about the rest, and would rather just spring for the well-known device and keep alive the vague hope that some day they’ll exploit its full powers, rather than spend a lot of time and effort researching the optimum choice.

Either way, maybe Colligan shouldn’t be annoyed or bummed out that consumers aren’t as clever as they could be. Maybe, considering that they’re buying his device anyway, he should be really, really happy.

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