Ron, I have to agree with you. Orange blatantly know a hell of a lot less than they need to in order to provide a 'support' service for this handset. And no doubt this will be an ongoing problem with any future handsets they introduce. I think it just hasn't dawned on them that the gap between a bog standard nokia and a 'smart'phone is so huge.

Its a shame really.


As a business tool.... the phone can be a liablity.. in fact it has too many irritating bugs which seem to be ever so slightly different on each individual users handsets which makes life really infuriating if you're trying to help someone (i don't work for orange).

They need to realise that these handsets are only ever really going to be taken up by eary adopters and techies - The people who already have more information about the handset then the support teams... I for one spent ages researching the SPV before I got one and made sure I had all the hacks and the applications before I bothered getting it. The average Joe doesn't stand a chance....

Poor show Orange.

One thing that Orange (predictably!) overlooked with the smartphone - and doubtless the other carriers will do no better - is that the SPV is a lot more than a phone. It's a computer too. Their online support is geared to supporting the 99% of customers who simply want to TALK to other phones. Smartphone users often want to do other things besides, and the techies frequently have neither the training - nor the background - to help with these non-voice-call related issues. Orange's "solution" has largely been to ignore these "other areas" - if your problem ISN'T call-related, they don't support it, and you're on your own. Microsoft aren't much interested in helping either, if you call THEM. The SPV's initial take up was by anoraks - who in the circumstances formed "self-help groups" and shared information and provided support to each other. The biggest of these is Modaco - more than 10% of SPV owners worldwide are members! That in turn has its danger, because Orange has ZERO control over the kind of information that they share - which includes handy tutorials on how to unlock the SIM and how to decertify the phone so that it can load ANY appropriate software. On the other hand, Orange aren't paying to provide this parallel (and in my view both superior and better informed) service. BUT - and it's a BIG but - Modaco and the like are very much geared to people who already have a high level of technical competence and can sort the "easy" stuff themselves. Repositioning the phone in the market as a "business" tool means selling it to people who are unlikely either to have the same level of technical ability, or are likely to find their own way to this "grey" support area. And THAT means a substantial gap in support, while at the same time deliberately putting the most complicated phone in the range in the hands of the people least able to deal with comparatively complicated technology.

If the phone's going to be repositioned as a business tool, then Orange (and the others) have to bite the bullet and accept that it's going to require a lot MORE, and a lot BETTER technical support. Problem is... they haven't anyone capable of delivering it. I took a straw poll of Orange Tech Support workers in Jaunuary - asked how many owned PCs and were connected to the internet at home. The result was "Around 10%". That means that if you stop ten people at random on the street, they're roughly FIVE TIMES more likely to be clued up about the web than the techies who are supposed to be advising them! It might be irrelevant for supporting voice calls, but it's a disaster waiting to happen if you hope to support a phone whose main claim to fame is that you can "browse the internet" with it.

Edited by author 06-13-2003 07:23 PM
Yes, Guy.... but if you look closer, you'll see that they ALSO ask if you have a Bluetooth PDA, do you use your phone as a modem to connect your PDA to the internet... In other words, does your current set up cosnsist of several different devices that are connected together - possibly by Bluetooth. My reading of that questionnaire is "are you someone who is ALREADY using the kind of services that we can sell you as a single Smartphone package in the form of a Tanager?" The SPV's big failing is that while for the first six months users got a heavily subsidized GPRS access pack (£6 PCM for 10 megabytes) that's now (June) run out, and initial Anorak-wearing takers-up of the phone are resentful at now having to make the choice between buying beer or buying GPRS. Obvious alternative customers are ones who don't pay the monthly bill themselves!

Orange's plan to reposition the SPV away from the anoraks and into the boardroom (and getting the anoraks to sell-back their SPV's and get Tanagers) is hardly a secret, and has been a topic of discussion since the Tanger was launched offering few advantages over the SPV: the improved screen seems to be the main substantive difference. People started asking "if there's so little difference... what's the Tanager FOR?" The answer seems to be "watching WMV files that you've downloaded to the smartcard while travelling on the tube!" The cosmetic changes to the casing also help differentiate it from the "exclusive to Orange" Mk 1 SPV. Having supported the SPV, my reaction is that it's a NOT phone for people without some technical competence, and the inevitable high-usage of Orange's free "156" support is likely to wipe out any profitability - and leave a bad taste in the mouths of customers who find it "just too bloody complicated". The SPV is like a dog walking on its hind legs... a curiosity because it does something at all - not because it does it well, or easily, or cheaply. If I was running an IT department, and was asked what phone (WITH email capability) to provide the technophobic chairman, my reaction would probably be "a Handspring Treo 270, or a Palm Tungsten... and for God's SAKE keep him away from the SPV, or he'll be in here asking how to make it do something he's heard it can do every five minutes!" The Treo features things like a (tiny) QWERTY keyboard. reducing the number of illegible mails to the board.

And just to make it more fun: Julian Hope's email bounces with an "out of office" response..

...he says he won't be back for ten days! - on the 23rd, to be precise.

Edited by author 06-13-2003 06:14 PM
I wonder whether this new phone really is the Tanager? It may well be - but Orange is asking for people to try out the new SPV - and one of the questions they are asking is: "Do you have a Bluetooth headset?"

The Tanger can't work with Bluetooth. Hm...

Stop Press... sources within Orange UK state that they'll "have stocks by Mid July". Just in time for the sale to be blocked by Sendo's injunction?

Maybe the reason the SPV has gone out of stock is that it is now one of the cheapest handsets you can get on Orange, free on many tarriffs?

In an exclusive interview with "The Enquirer" (sorry, Guy, they seem to have got there first!) Sendo made "semi-off-the record" claims to have re-written some of the Stinker/Canary O/S as well, due to Microsoft's seeming inability to deliver a working version. One has to wonder if the code too was handed over to HTC.
The key to this issue seems to be the TIMING. If Microsoft had just WAITED, Sendo might indeed have gone bust, and while a few eyebrows might have been raised (and thinking about it, didn't Ray Noorda bring suit against Microsoft under almost exactly those circumstances?) but otherwise no big deal - Microsoft's "Tontine" contract with Sendo handed all IP rights to whoever lived longest. What smells like rotten fish here is that MS seem to have handed that IP to HTC months ahead of schedule, when Sendo wasn't even considering insolvency. It would be like my taking out a life policy on Guy's life, booking a world cruise (which I can't afford) in January - the cruise to take place in August, and Guy conveniently dropping down dead (which heaven forbid!) in July. The question arises... how could I have KNOWN with such unerring accuracy that I'd be coming into money just in time to pay the bill? Some amazing psychic ability? Or murder? I think the smart money would be on "murder".

In the last 48 hours the SPV has got to "Out of stock" on the Orange website and I can't believe that's down to demand. I've got one on trial from Orange and once we've used up the free airtime showing it off to geeks it's going back as it's so unreliable and hard to use it's a liability to a business user.

Edited by author 06-05-2003 12:25 PM
A shock development today: Sendo has extended its lawsuit against Microsoft by suing Orange, too.

We have an exclusive interview with Hugh Brogan, revealing that more lawsuits may follow, too.

That will hurt Redmond. Microsoft will not have lost too much sleep over Sendo's suit. It will reckon that it can delay, or stall, even, for some time; and anyway, it can afford to cope with any losses arising.

But what it can't cope with is the loss of its slender foothold in the market; and if Orange is vulnerable to lawsuits then so is T-Mobile... and who else?