Palm chief calls '3g' systems costly, 'overhyped'
By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 2/23/2001
EWTON - The head of Palm Inc., whose handheld Palm Pilot organizers increasingly sport wireless Internet connections, yesterday joined naysayers blasting planned ''third-generation'' wireless systems as overhyped and overpriced.
Speaking to the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council here, Palm chief executive Carl Yankowski also said his company will offer systems by year's end that allow people to use wireless Palms to connect to their office e-mail systems as if they were sitting at their desktop.
While ''3G'' networks for broadband-speed wireless Internet connections and videoconferencing from cellphones are generating huge publicity and billions of dollars in planned investments globally, Yankowski declared flatly: ''3G is overhyped.''
Yankowski compared 3G to high-definition television - a new technology few customers are clamoring for that would require phone companies to invest billions of dollars and consumers to pay thousands of dollars for new devices. Much cheaper incremental upgrades in both TV and wireless would make far more sense for both businesses and consumers, he said.
Instead of pouring money into 3G systems delivering 384 to 2000 kilobits per second of wireless access, Yankowski said upgrades of existing 14-kilobit wireless data systems to 250 kilobits would be ample to provide improved e-mail and Web-surfing, at a sensible cost for phone companies and on devices consumers already own.
''I don't think we have to wait for 3G,'' said Yankowski, who became chief executive in December 1999 of 1,400-person Palm, which is now on track to grossing $2 billion annually and controls two-thirds of the handheld computer market.
''At 250 kbps, there's a sweet spot that can be leveraged,'' he said.
Now that many wireless companies have sunk tens of billions of dollars into European 3G airwave licenses and the Wall Street wireless mania has cooled, some industry officials are questioning whether they should still be racing into costly 3G upgrades, including US ''spectrum'' purchases.
In other comments, Yankowski, a former chief executive of Reebok Unlimited and president of Sony Electronics, said Palm is moving quickly to respond to the market challenge from the popular Blackberry handheld device and others that let people connect ''through the firewall'' to get their corporate e-mail.
Yankowski said Palm has not estimated how much it might cost a company to give wireless Palm access to employees for e-mail when the service is available in the second half of this year. He added that one option may be to use a Palm ''wireless service bureau'' to add the necessary system upgrades.
Yankowski said with new devices hitting the market that merge voice calling capabilities into Palms, the company envisions soon adding new identification and ''electronic wallet'' systems that would let people use their Palm Pilot to buy things at stores by ''beaming'' data to a cash register outfitted with a $20 receiving device.
Peter J. Howe can be reached by
e-mail at howe@globe.com.
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