Hi everybody,
I've introduced myself yesterday, so I'll jump right into my presentation:
Handhelds, or handheld organizers/computers, have become more and more popular as its function expends from electronic organizer to web data and wireless message center. There're many players in this field. Some of them develop their own operation system, like Palm division of 3Com (It has announced plan to spin off Palm, which would then be a pure play for handhelds), others like HP, Sharp and Casio use Window CE. The competition is much like early IBM vs Apple. Because the likeliness of winner takes all in consumer product market, the fight arguably will produce a gorilla in handhelds. So far, Palm has emerged as leader in handhelds with estimated 75% of market share. Its value chain is forming rapidly. For example, Prudential allows Palm users to access insurance quote and other financial data, and it plans to offer stock trading through Palm next year. More significantly, 3Com and Sony recently agreed to jointly develop next generation handhelds, which will be based on Palm's O/S and Sony's Memory Stick storage technology (BTW, that's a big setback for SanDisk's Flash memory standard).
By my assessment, the handhelds have finally crossed chasm, and are currently in the bowling alley stage. Due to its enabling technology nature, by the GG rule, one should wait for the start of tornado before investing. So, if there is enough interests, I could set up a Handhelds GG portfolio, similar to Mike Buckley's Front Office GG portfolio, and give everybody periodic updates on handhelds tornado watch.
John Zhang |
