January 25, 2001
World Economic Forum
U.S. High-Tech Companies Use
Opportunity to Flaunt New Gizmos
By DAVID PRINGLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Europe has long led the U.S. in mobile-phone technology, but a group of
American companies aims to show off Yankee ingenuity at this year's
annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
All 2,200 of the high-powered delegates descending on the Swiss ski
resort of Davos Thursday for the meeting will be supplied a hand-held
computer worth about 600 euros ($562). Assuming there are no technical
glitches, they will be able to use the gizmo to zip each other e-mail
messages and download video clips of the conference sessions over a
high-speed wireless network.
The color screen iPaq hand-held computers, supplied by Compaq
Computer Corp. of Houston, resemble Palm Inc.'s electronic organizers.
When a delegate enters the Congress Center in Davos, a transmitter in the
iPaq will hook up to a wireless LAN, or local area network, and the event
information contained on the organizer will be regularly updated by
software supplied by AvantGo Inc. of San Mateo, California.
For Compaq, AvantGo and Microsoft Corp., the Redmond,
Washington-based software giant that supplies the operating system used
in the iPaq, Davos presents an ideal opportunity to raise their profile in
Europe, a hotbed of the global wireless industry. "Europe is much further
advanced [than the U.S.] in terms of wireless Internet development," said
Johannes Ditterich, business consultant manager for AvantGo Germany, "It
is no coincidence that we are doing it here in Europe."
Rob Walker, chief operating officer of Compaq for Europe, the Middle
East and Africa, said the Davos delegates are free to keep the devices.
AvantGo is hoping the wireless LAN at Davos will allow data to be
downloaded at speeds of up to 11 megabits per second, which is almost
200 times faster than a connection over a standard telephone wire. The
company cautions, however, that the speed will depend on the number of
users logged on at one time. Computers typically have to remain within 30
to 40 meters of the nearest wireless LAN terminal to stay online, but Mr.
Ditterich said there are enough terminals to cover the entirety of the
Congress Center.
Although companies have been using these kinds of networks to link up
computers in offices for several years, Michael Wall, an analyst with
market research firm Frost & Sullivan in London said installations of that
size are quite rare. The largest wireless LAN installation Mr. Wall said he
is aware of is at the New York Stock Exchange, with about 1,600 users.
Besides office applications, this technology could be used in hotels,
airports and shopping malls as an alternative to the third-generation mobile
phone networks being built by European operators at great expense.
Write to David Pringle at david.pringle@wsj.com |
