Wireless Hookup's Popularity May Help Equipment-Makers' Shares
--From AOL.--
San Jose, California, April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Wireless hookups to the Internet can't come soon enough for Jim Laurin. The labor consultant, who logs about 400,000 air miles a year and spends a lot of time in California's San Jose International Airport, has had long waits to use the only Internet access- equipped computer at his airline club.
Now, Laurin has an alternative: He can sit almost anywhere in the terminal, plug a card into his laptop and surf at office- network speeds without any wires.
``I don't have to wait in line,' said Laurin, 56, of Temecula, California. ``And that's a nice thing.'
So-called wireless local area networks are making Laurin's life easier and the future brighter for the more than 100 companies that make equipment for them. They include Lucent Technologies Inc., No. 1 Internet-equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. and Intel Corp., as well as smaller players such as Proxim Inc.
Worldwide sales of wireless LAN gear are projected to rise to $1.3 billion in 2003 from $598.8 million this year and $409.5 million in 1999, according to market researcher Frost & Sullivan.
The so-called killer apps -- speedy wireless Internet links and access to corporate networks -- are relatively new twists in the 15-year-old wireless LAN industry. Analysts and the companies involved say the price is right and the technology better than ever -- elements that will spur revenue growth in the next few years.
Killer Apps
``It's going to change the way that people work,' said Craig Mathias, a principal with consulting firm Farpoint Group in Ashland, Massachusetts, which specializes in wireless technology.
Similar in concept to the cells that power mobile telephones, wireless LANs work off ``access point' devices that resemble a modem with an antenna.
The devices are connected via cable to the Internet on one end and use radio waves to send data to laptop computers, equipped with appropriate cards, on the other. The technology eliminates the need for the computer user to plug into a phone line and connect via modem to the Internet; he or she can ``hook up' within 100 to 2,000 feet of any access point.
Access points made by Proxim, an industry veteran, were installed at the San Jose airport a few months ago. And Cisco Systems, which recently acquired Aironet Wireless Communications Inc., is installing similar access points in the American Airlines club there.
Shares of Sunnyvale, California-based Proxim have more than doubled to 69 11/16 on Friday from 26 11/16 on Dec. 31, 1998, and the company's 1999 revenue of $69.1 million was up 39 percent from the previous year.
Roots
Shares of Aironet Wireless had risen more than sevenfold since its July 30, 1999, initial public offering before Cisco bought it in March.
Apple Computer Inc. and Lucent also offer a wireless LAN product -- the AirPort system for Apple's iBook and other personal computers. A $99 card plugs into the iBook, sending and receiving signals from the $299 flying-saucer-like base station, which links to a modem or other Internet connection. Apple declined to disclose sales figures.
The wireless LAN industry got its start in 1985, when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission opened up unlicensed parts of the radio-wave spectrum. The first companies to jump in included Proxim; Lucent's WaveLAN division, then part of NCR Corp.; and the forerunner to Cisco's Aironet division.
Early cards and access points were expensive and slow and had nothing to do with Internet access. A wireless LAN adapter card cost $1,200 to $1,400, while an access point device to transmit data from the wired computer network to the cards cost well above $2,000, said Farpoint Group's Mathias.
Challenges
Attempts to market the gear as a replacement for the wired office network were unsuccessful. The companies struck gold, though, with a version of the equipment in the form of handheld devices that let users input product codes and prices.
Those devices caught on with retail chains and warehouses that found them indispensable for tracking inventory and changing prices on the fly, beating the old way of waiting until the end of each day to upload data to a mainframe.
Other wireless LAN devices let hospital workers update computerized patient records from any room. At the Pacific Stock Exchange in San Francisco, traders tap out transactions with a stylus on handheld computers that beam the data to access points scattered across the ceiling.
Still, the wireless LAN industry faces challenges both within and outside its ranks.
Wireless Internet and e-mail access is becoming available on everything from cell phones to electronic organizers to pagers. Metricom Inc. offers a similar service for laptops that covers entire metropolitan areas, yet is slower than wireless LANs. Qualcomm Inc., which developed cell-phone technology used by 50 million people, says it has technology that could, within a few years, give phone and laptop PC users fast Internet access on large wireless-phone networks.
Wireless LAN companies, meantime, haven't been able to agree on a single standard for how the radio waves are transmitted. There are more than 1,500 companies, led by Intel and International Business Machines Corp., developing products using a low-power wireless technology called Bluetooth that lets cell phones trade information with computers, for example.
Bluetooth signals could interfere with those used by the current generation of wireless LANs because they operate on the same frequency, causing slowdowns.
``It will lead to some degree of consumer confusion at some point,' said Karuna Uppal, an analyst at Yankee Group. ``One of those technologies will have to win out.'
Apr/22/2000 10:04 |
