Comdex 2000/Palm Discussion:
Forbes.com
Understanding Comdex 2000
By John C. Dvorak
Comdex is the trade show you love to hate, and upward of 200,000 visitors love to hate it. Even Las Vegas loves to hate Comdex as cabbies, waiters and others complain that the computer show attendees are cheap. They don't gamble and they don't tip. On the other hand, Comdex is the show that made Las Vegas what it is today. Comdex forced Vegas to change its business model. Instead of rooms that had included free food and a bag of nickels for $40 per night, the hotel casinos can now charge $300 per night and always fill to capacity. Comdex is the show that drove this change into thinking. And that's what this show does for the industry too. It drives a change into thinking.
I have gone to Comdex every year since its inception in 1979, and my thoughts on the industry change based upon what I see at each show. A theme always emerges. This year's Comdex was no exception. Most pundits have said that this year focused on wireless connectivity. And the show was indeed filled with wireless products, many of them based on the 802.11b standard, which is the dominant standard for wireless networking that allows an 11-Mbps connection. One reporter claimed there were over 300 companies showing wireless devices of one sort or another. Many of these ``devices'' were, in fact, systems that allowed existing wireless devices to collect information remotely.
The overall wireless scene encompasses four emerging trends: Wireless tablets, cell phones that link to the Internet, wireless connections for PDAs and wireless home and office networking. Let's look at them.
Wireless Networking: Simple wireless networking is the most boring and the least-talked about, but it is a genuine and hot trend. To see where it's heading, go to Wayport and get a free account, which will allow you to connect your laptop to a wireless Internet connection at many airports. You can sit and surf the Web and get your e-mail while waiting for your flight. The service is currently free. All you need is a properly configured 802.11b PCMCIA card in your laptop computer.
Wireless Tablets: These tablets have been looming on the horizon for years and stem from the defunct pen-based computing fad from a decade ago. With this iteration, its use has changed from pen-based computing for those who can't type, to Web surfing on the run for those who can't sit at their desk. Everyone is extremely upbeat about these things, but unless the devices can be sold for less than $199, I do not see any real market for them. This scene could be a big disappointment.
Wireless PDAs: These include the Palm VII (Nasdaq: PALM - news), Blackberry from Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM - news), wireless add-ons for the Handspring (Nasdaq: HAND - news) and Pocket PCs. The show was filled with companies selling radio receivers, odd software packages and service contracts that allowed you to move data over the wireless networks. People who use these devices can only account for two unique uses for the things: up-to-the-minute stock market quotes and e-mail alerts. Any other function can be available through a pager or standard, unconnected PDA. But users of these devices swear by them, which is a good sign for their potential. Their competition is the Web-enabled phone.
Web-Enabled Phone: This product is a telephone that has the ability to communicate over the Internet. Everything that you can do with a Palm VII or Blackberry, can also be done with these phones. Furthermore, if they can figure out how to make it work conveniently, it's possible to surf the Web using newer versions of these phones. The clever new devices from Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY - news), which incorporate a flip-open style that reveals a larger screen, seem to be the rage. Ericsson has some excellent discussions about the future of these phones on its Web site.
From my perspective, there is no doubt that the wireless PDA and the all-purpose Web-enabled phone will soon merge into one device. Handspring has already offered a cell phone add-in which turns the device into a phone. This merger of technology should take place over the next few years.
The odd man out in all of this is the wireless Web pad. It's a technology that is nifty, but expendable. Any high-technology devices that have been reintroduced with new functions can only succeed if a pent-up demand exists. Nobody really depends upon these devices. Few early adopters who will buy anything that's new, can ignite an early market for the pads, but then the market will fade as reality sets in.
One more thing worth noting: Bluetooth, the unusually slow-speed networking scheme that allows different devices to talk to each other. There was once a low-level buzz about Bluetooth and it even received an award from PC Magazine for Technical Excellence. Compaq Computers (NYSE: CPQ - news) showed me an interesting laptop with a design feature that allowed you to switch various wireless devices off the lid of the laptop. Bluetooth was one of the modules. This would allow you to walk into a room with a Bluetooth laptop and your desktop computer, or even the office network, would see the laptop and automatically connect to it without intervention. It could then be synchronized with the stationary system. What's unique about this is that it can link to multiple networks at once. But until I see real-world applications like Wayport for Bluetooth, it remains on the backburner.
Addendum: For an in-depth look at mobile messaging and Internet access, walk yourself though this excellent PowerPoint presentation by the Tolly Group, a test lab for companies such as IBM (NYSE: IBM - news) and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO - news). |
