THE END AT HAND

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ 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

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