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THE END AT HAND
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 15:11:04 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> THE END AT HAND Posted October 4, 2002 01:01 PM Pacific Time ALTHOUGH THERE are those who would like to blame Palm for its 20 percent decline in third-quarter sales, perhaps the downturn is just a leading indicator of what's to come for the other handheld manufacturers. And I include in this dismal forecast their content providers and the infrastructure players who feed off the hope that everyone will want data on their hip. Perhaps, at least on the consumer side of the fence, handhelds have hit a brick wall, otherwise known as the saturation point. Those who would buy one have done so. I cite as historical evidence the fact that desktops never got beyond 50 percent penetration in the home. Five, six years ago, the pundits were saying that once the right price point was reached, everyone would have a PC. Didn't happen, and I guess it never will. (For purposes of this argument, never is defined as 20 years.) It probably doesn't have to be said, but I'll say it: You'll notice that everyone does have a TV, a VCR, and a CD player. And I can say with supreme confidence that everyone will have a DVD player before too long. So it's not price point, is it? It's ease of use, of course, an even more significant factor that all the players may not want to face up to. The reality is, the majority of folks like movies, music, and situation comedies more than e-mail, Internet porn, or pictures of their best friends having a good time on vacation. Now here's a bit of interesting handheld history. I spoke with Jonathan Zakin, currently chairman and CEO of Proxim. Zakin was part of the executive team that engineered the purchase of Palm when he was at U.S. Robotics. Zakin told me that the company never thought the Palm would take off as a handheld device but that instead it would become the central device for home networking. The concept was that U.S. Robotics would make various cradles, each serving a different function: a cell-phone cradle, a radio cradle, a cradle to control the television and stereo, and even a cradle for the car. Pop your Palm into a cradle, and it becomes that device. "We thought the value would be in the cradle," Zakin says. He adds that U. S. Robotics intended to manufacture the cradles, expecting that, although there might be one or two handhelds in the home, consumers would have as many as a dozen or more cradles -- three or four each of radio and cell-phone cradles, for example. Well, U.S. Robotics never got around to addressing that because the darn thing took off as a handheld. But now, maybe Palms, Pocket PCs, and even big, so-called smart phones are at the end of their consumer run. One caveat for those who do want more, not less, data on their hip: Wearable computers are here, only nobody noticed. What's the difference between a handheld with 128MB of RAM, voice and wireless access, and a plethora of useable applications, and the so-called wearables from IBM and Xybernaut? Besides the heads-up display, I don't think there is any. Contact Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz at ephraim_schwartz () infoworld com. ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- THE END AT HAND Dave Farber (Oct 10)