so far, so slow....
"January 4, 2001
Sprint Shakes Hands With Palm
The companies would release cobranded services that link Palm phones to Sprint's wireless service, a move that would further Sprint's drive to add Web features to its network.
By Lydia Lee
Sprint (PCS) , the U.S.'s fourth-biggest
wireless carrier announced Thursday that it
would combine marketing and technology
efforts with Palm to create cobranded
services. Sprint has been the most
aggressive carrier to date in launching
Internet-based services on its network,
and the Palm partnership further signals
the company's sense of initiative.
Sprint and Palm would sell cobranded
services that link Palms and Palm OS-based
phones to the specialized portal Palm.Net,
as well as Sprint's wireless Web sites, via
Sprint's wireless network.
To date, Palm's official offering in wireless
has been the Palm VII, the top-of-the-line
Palm with an integrated Palm.Net service.
Palm.Net, which has a monthly subscription
fee, offers a carefully culled subset of the
Web. Many have disdained the service for
its "walled garden" approach and the slow
connection speed (Palm.Net uses the Bell
South's Mobitext packet-data network,
which provides a rate of about 8Kbps)
So far, so slow. As of last quarter, Palm
reported 149,000 subscribers to Palm.Net.
Outside of Palm, OmniSky and GoAmerica
offer connectivity through AT&T (AWE)
Wireless and other carriers to Palms and
other handhelds, accounting for roughly
another 60,000 subscribers.
While these kinds of numbers don't sound
impressive, some 4 million mobile users
have accessed the Web from their phones
at the end of 2000, according to research
firm Ovum, despite the limitations of speed
and screen. The speeds Sprint offers
initially won't be much faster, but as Sprint
builds out its 3G network, it is thinking
about the kinds of devices that people will
want to access data at rates up to 2Mbps.
By hooking up with Palm, Sprint is
anticipating a world where the pocket
communications device may look more like
a Palm than like a phone.
Among the initial products available from
Sprint will be an adapter to connect
existing Palms with Sprint phones, available
early this year. The company also
announced that it would offer phone-Palm
combos by the first half of 2001. Samsung
recently showed a early version of a mobile
phone that combines a Palm, and Sprint
already distributes Samsung's Uproar, a
phone with a built-in MP3 player. Whether
Sprint offers that vendor's phone or
another, it would be a substantial step in taking Palm-phones from a
technical proof-of-concept to a mass market.
Handspring (HAND) , Palm's competitor for handheld market, recently
made its own stride toward wireless, announcing the acquisition of
the software developer Bluelark Systems. Bluelark makes Web
browser and server software, which squeezes content designed for
the big Web down to Palm size. Handspring has said that this year it
will start bundling the browser with its VisorPhone, which is designed
to enable people to make phone calls from their PDAs, and it also has
a modem for wireless Internet access."
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