04/03/2010

Psion today announced “Open Source Mobility” (OSM), a substantial evolution of its business model, with the objective of dramatically reducing customers total cost of ownership, creating the best possible fit with customer requirements, creating new business opportunities for developers, resellers and partners, and enhancing Psion’s ability to grow and develop its business.

John Conoley, Chief Executive, Psion, said: “OSM is a significant evolution of our business model and has the potential to completely change the industrial mobile computing market. Open Source Mobility is inspired by many facets of leading business thinking, especially Open Innovation and Open Source. Firstly, we take inspiration from the Open Source phenomenon directly, because of its foundation in a non-proprietary, standards-based core which developers and customers leverage and evolve for mutual benefit.

“Secondly, we also take further inspiration, confirmation and substantiation, from the work on Open Innovation lead by Dr. Henry Chesbrough at University of California, Berkeley. Our open business model is designed specifically to better meet customer expectations by leveraging the collective ingenuity of Psion, its resellers, partners, developers and customers, globally. By adopting this approach, we create valuable opportunities to substantially increase, and accelerate, research and development resources to better meeting customers’ specific requirements.”

Modularity has been a core component of Psion’s products for many years, especially in Psion’s well known Workabout Pro™ product family. However, the difference that OSM creates is that in future developments of its modular product platform, Psion will fully extend the modular approach to customers and partners. Because it will use open, standards-based interfaces, Psion will be able to extend the useful life of products in the field, by replacing defective or obsolescent modules, rather than by replacing the whole product. The benefits to customers, developers and partners will be second to none in terms of value creation, differentiation, competitive advantage and total cost of ownership (TCO).

When applied to its core industrial mobile computing market, OSM will offer by far the best lifetime TCO, potentially 30 per cent to 50 per cent better than our competitors over a five to ten year period. It will also demonstrate the lowest obsolescence risk, with unique customer choice and flexibility. By swapping functional modules, instead of replacing the whole device, benefits are achieved in repurposing devices, reduced repair downtime and optimising device configuration.

The key enabler of OSM is a new, open and online community, called Ingenuity Working which has been created to bring developers, partners and customers closer together in support of three new initiatives to:
1. By living our values, our highs and our lows in full view to become more trusted than any comparable company or competitor
2. Leverage Psion’s significant IP portfolio with a wide range of vendors and component suppliers
3. Accelerate a fuller, and uniquely open, dialogue with its global customers & resellers

The new community is found at www.ingenuityworking.com and is a place where Psion, its partners, developers and customers can meet, discuss, share, develop and co-create. It will enable them to cater to the explosion of micro-niches in the market, which recognises that customers all have different and individual needs.

Ron Caines, President Worldwide Sales & Service at Psion, said: “This will create opportunities for our partners to grow profitably by increasing the services they can offer to their customers. We will be able to reach market segments that were previously beyond our collective scope, either because they were deemed to be too small, or because we were previously unable to compete effectively with larger market participants.”

Ron Caines, President Worldwide Sales & Service at Psion, said: “This will create opportunities for our partners to grow profitably by increasing the services they can offer to their customers. We will be able to reach market segments that were previously beyond our collective scope, either because they were deemed to be too small, or because we were previously unable to compete effectively with larger market participants.”