SmartTime -- I finally dug up some information on E@syMail and PalmNet. in ULTR's 3Q98, the company reported that it had transferred software, etc. from its settlement with Intelidata, to SmartTime (a privately owned Virginia corporation) in exchange for a $400,000 promisary note. in addition, ULTR loaned SmartTime $150,000.
i tried to track down SmartTime through Intelidata, but they basically just jettisoned the the SmartTime Network. finally, i found a january press report on SmartTime Network from the CES. it had a contact name,
so i gave them a call. the good news is SmartTime communications, AG (their full name) is a serious company with approximately 35 employees (25 engineers). they've been around for at least a decade doing telecommunications and internet software development. so it looks like even if SmartTime Network is a bust, we should be able to collect on the $550,000 in loans to them.
apparently, the company made a strategic decision to get into the networking business, so the must be serious about this enterprise. the guy i spoke with seemed pretty confident that the E@syMail/PalmNet product would be out in '99. the network is not up and running currently (there arn't any customers yet), but they are
working for two clients ULTR and some one else, which should have products this year, and the network should be up and running to serve customers when ULTR gets its product to market. (ULTR doesn't seem to
be saying much about its product, so one wonders whether they're really planning to focus on it this year.) it seems to me that you would need a pretty solid customer base, in order to justify running the network.
the idea is fairly simple. you would have an e-mail address with SmartTime and could also designate certain information you're interested in (news, weather, stock quotes, etc.). you dial in from anywhere in the country, and then the systems downloads the e-mail to your handheld. if you have a different e-mail address (for example, your work e-mail address), you would need to use your own system's software to forward that e-mail to your smarttime address. apparently, a lot of e-mail packages (like Groupwise) have features where you set them to forward e-mail.
the concept seems like a good one, but ULTR is going to be pretty late to market. there are already a couple of such products on the market, and PalmPilot already has a 70-80% market share. in addition, the current trend is moving towards wireless downloading (over the telephone, but you don't have to plug in). so there will likely need to be a new generation product on the heels of the first one. i read an article on PalmPilot which suggested (i think correctly) that once people buy a handheld organizer, they tend to stick with the same brand (you don't have to learn how to use it all over again). given PalmPilot's market share, it seems like an uphill battle for a small company like ULTR. on the other hand, there might be some way of linking up with PalmPilot with the networking concept. my understanding is that the current PalmPilot's connect up with your own network, which limits your flexibility (but i could be wrong on that).
i suppose it's hard to not be skeptical about E@syMail, given that it's already one year late. but there appears to be some hope. |
