Mobile Internet Device: A new category?

03.04.2009
With Samsung's introduction of the Mondi handheld device at the International CTIA Wireless conference, the question of defining its product category, Mobile Internet Device (MID), was again timely.

One analyst for IDC, Shiv Bakhshi, gave a valiant try at defining a MID during a breakfast lecture at the conference.

Bakhshi always invokes humor in his talks, but his presentation was a serious one. After questioning, rhetorically, whether the world needs yet another device category, he gave these characteristics for a MID:

It is a "browser-centric pocketable mobile device that computes."

It is 4 to 7 inches long.

It can turn instantly on.