PDA Essentials No More
While not the most challenging of reads, PDA Essentials was a pretty good stab at a UK PDA/Smartphone magazine. It helps that I knew one of the writers (Steve Litchfield) and had a few articles published in their pages. But with Highbury House, the publishers, now going under, looks like PDAE and 29 other titles won’t be back on the shelves. The problem with magazines like this is you can;t appeal to the alpha geeks, because they’re going to lap up websites like All About Symbian, and the casual smartphone user isn’t really interested in doing more – so a tiny band of potential audineces that are less than power users, but more than the general public is all you have to play with. That’s a tough market to sell to.
Update: Sounds like the staff at PDA Essentials are going to try and keep it running in the hops of finding a Buyer.
Ironically I’ve been buying PDA E since I got my PDA in August. Like you say, not a challeging read, but a decent one. It’s a shame because it taught me quite a bit, and I know of a least one other PDA owner (www.mediarypics.co.uk) who bought the mag.