Dow Jones Article
POINT OF VIEW: On Wearing A Personal
Computer At Work, Play
By Mark Yost
A Dow Jones Newswires Column
FAIRFAX, Va. (Dow Jones)--I have seen the future and it's pretty scary.
The International Conference on Wearable Computers came to town this
week and I was there, getting acquainted with a handful of little high-tech
startup companies and the visionaries who run them. Their euphoria was
almost contagious, but my Luddite genes are highly resistant.
Wearable computers are - you guessed it - little PCs compact and light
enough to wear on your belt. Some have little armband keyboards. Others
use the latest in voice recognition technology so you can tell the PC what to
do, leaving your hands free. Instead of gazing at a screen, you peer into an
eyepiece which, some seers here said, soon could be replaced by a pair of
ordinary-looking eyeglasses.
The folks here in the forefront of this fledgling industry-to-be say the
floodgates are about to burst, bringing wearable computers into the
mainstream of military, industry and consumer PC use.
I'm having trouble gauging the market potential for wearable computers. I
listened to the testimonial of the hiker who walked the length of the
Appalachian Trail wearing one. With it, he could pinpoint his location
practically every step of the way, uplink to his web site and even e-mail a
doctor when he got sick on the trail. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer
to do my land navigation with a map and compass.
Early this week, hardly any analysts - or anyone else besides those at the
conference - seemed to know anything about wearable computers. That
may have changed since the stock of Xybernaut Corp. (XYBR), which
hosted the conference, almost tripled Thursday on news that it had
formalized a manufacturing agreement with Sony Corp. (SNE). And on
Friday shares of Teltronics Inc. (TELT) doubled on wearable-computer
news.
Xybernaut's co-chairman, Steven A. Newman, told me several analysts
had introduced themselves to him at the conference and said they would
begin following the stock.
But nobody at the conference even wanted to guess about the potential
market for wearable computers. Newman and his brother Ed, who's
chairman of Xybernaut, pegged the "initial" market at about 20 million
users.
There's no denying that wearable computers have caught the fancy of some
Pentagon procurement officers and are making inroads in some industries.
A walk through the company booths at the conference convinced me of
that.
Point Research Corp., a privately held Santa Ana, Calif., firm, showed its
Dead Reckoning Module navigation. The Army has selected the product
for evaluation in its 21st-Century Land Warrior program, which aims to
develop a $50,000 high-tech infantry backpack that will integrate digital
maps, navigation systems, voice and data links, thermal weapon sights and
chemical and biological agent sensors. It won't, however, make a good cup
of coffee.
Data-Disk Technology Inc. of Sterling, Va., showed off its 20MB-capacity
Medi-Tag. They envision it as a $25 electronic replacement for dog tags
that will revolutionize battlefield medicine. It seemed like a product that
could have potential for hospitals, nursing homes and consumers, too.
It makes sense that the military would be the biggest market for wearable
computers. After all that's where they got their start. And the military
applications are obvious. A soldier could call up a map while patrolling an
unfamiliar area. But industry is starting to see the advantages as well.
Utilities and heavy industry firms seemed to have the biggest presence here.
One Xybernaut demonstration showed how a maintenance worker -
repairing, say, a remote utility relay station or section of pipeline - could use
voice commands to access a company database through the computer's
cellular port and pull up the schematic to a piece of equipment that needs
repair. While looking at the directions through the eyepiece, the worker's
hands would be free to fix the unit.
Manufacturers and other industries seem to be waking up to the advantages
of wearable computers, too. Daimler-Benz AG (DAI) and General Motors
Corp. (GM) are using wearable computers in their plants. And airlines
routinely use optical scanners worn by maintenance workers to check for
cracks in the airframe.
Indeed, the industrial potential for wearable computers seems to be
everything the company shills make it out to be. One could even argue that
the doubling of Xybernaut's stock on word of the Sony manufacturing deal
is evidence of that.
Then there's the consumer applications that are being hailed by industry
executives. Despite the Marilyn Monroe and Elvis lookalikes strolling the
aisles here touting the advantages of wearable computers, some big
questions remain.
The biggest is probably safety. Edward Newman, chairman of Xybernaut,
told me that in five years I won't be using a laptop anymore, and neither will
other reporters. We'll be wearing our PCs, Newman said.
"Everyone will have them," he said.
And what will they do with them? According to Newman, instead of
placing a call on your cell phone as you drive down the highway, you'll
make the call giving voice commands to a wearable computer.
Newman said paging services, cell phones, e-mail and Internet access will
all operate through wearable computers. Given some of the things people
already do on the highway, is having access to the Internet through a
wearable eyepiece really a good idea? Do the words "www.porno.com"
and "multicar pileup" occur to anyone?
All kidding aside, the advocates who say there's a big consumer market for
wearable computers sound like the same folks who said the U.S. was
switching to the metric system and that the Internet would change the way
we shop and bank. The Internet is having an impact on consumer behavior,
but not as quickly or as widespread as some had predicted.
It will take something akin to the development of the Internet - which is
really what ignited the explosion in the PC market - to significantly expand
the consumer market for wearable computers. Right now, that obvious
something isn't out there.
But given the obvious industrial applications, which clearly are catching on,
and the interest among investors in finding undiscovered and undervalued
stocks, wearable computers is a market worth watching.
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