Sturdy and Durable Mobile Devices

Many industries, such as Manufacturing, Utilities, Mining, Transportation and Warehousing, Retail and Wholesale Trade, and Health Care require handheld mobile computing solutions in order to complete daily tasks in a timely manner.

Most of today’s consumer-grade mobile devices, although complete with advanced operating systems and applications, WiFi and mobile broadband access, are simply not tough enough for daily use in industries which regularly expose those devices to drops, tumbles, dust and dirt, water and humidity, and extremely low or high temperatures. There are many companies, however, which manufacture rugged devices that are built to withstand these environmental extremes. Symbol Technologies, now owed by Motorola, Panasonic with its Toughbooks, Intermec and Psion Teklogix are just a few examples.

These rugged devices are often quite costly due to the amount of protection they provide. This protection may exceed the amount necessary for many job functions – a nurse might not need a highly rugged device, but a consumer-grade PDA or smartphone might not be durable enough to withstand repeated drops or other rough usage. And, the cost of a rugged device might simply be prohibitive for a hospital which might have a limited IT budget.

Some hospitals, such as St. Clair Hospital in Pennsylvania, is a good example of this dilemma. The hospital wanted to improve its accuracy when dispensing medication at patients’ bedsides. It found that consumer-grade PDAs, while at a more attractive price from a capital expenditure perspective, were in fact very costly from an operational expense point of view.

Having simply coped with this problem for a while, St. Clair recently adopted a new solution from Socket Mobile – a so-called “sturdy” device which was engineered to be less durable than a rugged device but more durable than a consumer-grade PDA. The device they chose – the SoMo 650 – was less expensive than a rugged device but slightly more expensive than a consumer-grade PDA.

This case study (found within this report) is a good illustration of the comparatively small enterprise device niche (as compared to the broader market for smartphones). In this report, iGR has organized the entire rugged device market into three categories – sturdy, durable or rugged – based on the devices’ user environment specifications, as published by the manufacturers of those devices. These specs indicate how well the device will hold up when faced with various types of trauma, including extremely low and high temperatures, drops and tumbles, as well as the types of environmental protection used to safeguard the device against various elements.

In this report, iGR also provides profiles of some of the main companies that offer sturdy and durable devices. Companies profiled include Datalogic Mobile, Intermec, LXE, Motorola, Psion Teklogix and Socket Mobile.

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