NY Times on pdQ
A Combined Phone-Palm Pilot Impresses the Techno-Elite
Mixing technical and political evangelism, the annual Telecosm conference, sponsored by George Gilder and his libertarian friends from Forbes magazine, is one of the highest-powered gatherings of technology experts in the nation.
But at last week's conference, held at Lake Tahoe, Calif., the most provocative moment came not on the ballroom stage but when Paul E. Jacobs, a top executive for Qualcomm Inc., conducted a private, late-night demonstration of his company's latest creation: a digital wireless phone fully integrated with a Palm Pilot hand-held computer.
Jacobs, who runs Qualcomm's consumer products group, was willing to show off the new unit because it will be formally introduced Monday -- although it will not be widely available until next year. If the new Qualcomm product, called the pdQ, lives up to Jacobs's demonstration, it could become the most popular item among the techno-elite since the Palm Pilot itself. But the potential importance of the pdQ goes beyond novelty. Digital experts these days are betting that the ultimate challenge to Microsoft's desktop dominance will not come at the desktop, but from mobile devices that blur the line between computing and communications. The pdQ could be the first to fulfill that vision.
The potential pdQ applications range from e-mail messages that will automatically dial a phone number to wireless stock trading over the Internet.
The pdQ is smaller, lighter and easier to use than the Nokia 9000 Communicator, the first integrated phone and hand-held computer. In the next week Qualcomm intends to distribute programming tools to help the thousands of enthusiastic Palm developers come up with new applications to take advantage of the integration of wireless communications features into the traditional Palm Pilot.
--SETH SCHIESEL
From nytimes.com |
