"Why aren't more PDAs wireless? "
by David Essex
(IDG) -- The large number of
wireless data transmitters for
personal digital assistants
exhibited at last month's PC
Expo in New York suggests
that a new era of portability has
arrived. But long-standing
technical and market hurdles
remain that are likely to make ubiquitous computing and Web
access a dream slightly deferred, according to analysts and
vendors.
Before last month's debut of 3Com's Palm VII wireless PDA,
few manufacturers managed to squeeze cellular phone
circuitry and antennas into normal-size PDAs. Most
"wireless" PDA devices require a physical link to an actual
cell phone for transmission -- even the Socket
Communications Digital Phone Card for Windows CE
devices, which garnered much of the attention at PC Expo.
But that should change in the next 18 months as phone
vendors such as Nokia and Qualcomm introduce cell phones
on a chip, says Bruce Kasrel, senior analyst at Forrester
Research.
Most wireless networks have their own proprietary standards,
and no single network covers enough geographic areas to
dominate. What's more, radio circuitry in the device will
usually work only with one cellular standard, such as CDPD
or GSM. So PDA makers typically pick one or two networks
to support, then form partnerships with vendors of removable
-- and thus interchangeable -- PC Card cellular modems, or
with the network carriers themselves. It all adds up to a
piecemeal setup that most consumers find cumbersome.
Knowing this, 3Com wanted to make the Palm VII
networkable right out of the box, so it joined with Bell
South's Intelligent Wireless Network, a decade-old radio (not
cellular) network available in most U.S. metro areas, to create
Palm.Net. The new network will have special servers and
other infrastructure designed expressly to store and download
personal and public information to the PDA.
"We designed the device and the
service to be network independent,"
says Tammy Medanich, a 3Com
product marketing manager; the
company plans to support other
cellular and wireless standards, she
says. 3Com's strategy may point the
way to an eventual solution to the
wireless PDA puzzle.
"The network shouldn't have to
make much difference," says Kasrel,
pointing out that a so-called 3G (for
third generation) standard is likely to
unify cell-phone networks anyway
by around 2002. The real challenge
for PDA vendors and major wireless
networks is to build the additional
Palm.Net-like infrastructure to
deliver content that people want to
read on their PDAs. "It's going to
happen," Kasrel says, thanks to
proven demand for such services
and the need of cellular carriers to
sell new products and services.
Technical difficulties --
Please stand by
Vendor efforts to provide wireless
connectivity for personal digital
assistants are hobbled both by
technical hurdles and by the usual standardization struggles
and tenuous "coopetition" that are typical of the electronics
industry. Analysts say better network performance and
PDA-size formatting of Web content are the goals of a Who's
Who of communication vendors. But success is still two to
three years away -- in part because of disagreement on the
best ways to solve both challenges.
"It's really the networks that are the bottleneck at this point,"
says Ross Rubin, vice president at Jupiter Communications,
a market-research firm. The problem: Cellular phone
networks are just now getting the ability to transmit the
packets of data that go over the Internet. One of the most
promising, CDPD, which overlays packet transmission on
top of standard analog networks, has been a slow-growth
market for many years, Rubin says, adding "the digital
networks are not really built up yet."
CDPD's lack of widespread coverage also makes it too
expensive for most users, says Randy Giusto, an analyst at
International Data Corp. The promising digital cellular
standard, GSM, is ubiquitous in Europe but just getting
started in the United States. "There's not one overwhelming
standard, and GSM is not optimal for large data packets,"
Giusto says.
"We don't have the infrastructure in place to give us the
speed we need," says J. Gerry Purdy, president of Mobile
Insights. Purdy says the best speed that CDPD networks
have been able to demonstrate is around 14 kilobits per
second, less than half the throughput of the typical desktop
PC modem and probably too slow to keep wireless PDAs
filled with timely and useful information. Purdy predicts,
however, that adequate wireless PDA throughputs between 28
and 128 kbps will arrive in two to three years.
Almost everyone agrees that wireless-enabled Web servers
will be the main repositories of both public and personal data,
but techniques and standards for displaying and updating the
data remain unsettled. Even the most-hyped standard,
Wireless Application Protocol, which is expected to show up
in "smart" phones and some handhelds within a year, "tends
to assume a very low level of functionality on the device,"
Rubin says. "It's really designed for a four-line phone."
WAP requires regular Web content to be reformatted into a
wireless markup language (WML) and could yet lose out to
other formats promulgated by individual vendors. One
example: the "Web clipping" format 3Com developed
in-house to show information on its newly available Palm VII
wireless PDA.
One size does not fit all
The generation of wireless personal digital assistants just
emerging is also diverging onto two hardware platforms:
"traditional" PDAs with added wireless transmitters, and
cellular "smart phones" with PDA functions built in.
Both will be useless without a healthy industry of software
companies and service providers dedicated to customizing
Web data specifically for smaller screen sizes and getting it
onto wireless networks.
Two of the new smart phones have explicit links to PDAs.
Qualcomm's long-awaited pdQ puts an actual version of
3Com's popular Palm PDA interface right on the phone's
oversize screen. The phone started shipping in late spring but
has been criticized by several analysts for being too big and
heavy at 6.2-by-2.6 inches and 10 ounces.
"Cell phones are very, very form-factor conscious," says
Bruce Kasrel, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "But this
thing's a boat."
Of much more modest size is the 5.5-inch, 6.4-ounce
NeoPoint 1000 from Integrated Global Solution. Expected to
sell for under $300 when it ships later this summer, the
NeoPoint 1000 has a built-in PDA, pager, and wireless
Internet e-mail. The screen interface was developed by
Phone.Com (formerly Unwired Planet) the leading purveyor
of so-called "microbrowsers" and the supporting Web server
technology needed to reformat and transmit Web content to
phones.
Among PDAs, 3Com's newly released Palm VII is regarded
as something of a watershed in wireless, thanks to its small
size, all-in-one setup, and the supporting Palm.Net radio
network, which beams news, financial data, and flight
information to the device.
Microsoft and Socket Communications have also announced
a PC Card wireless modem for Windows CE-based
handhelds, and Motorola says it will soon roll out its i1000
cell-phone/pager/radio hybrid, which also has built-in PDA
functions.
Content for the PDAs may come from yet another quarter.
Web portals such as Yahoo and Lycos now offer online
calendars and personal information management software that
stores PDA data on central servers. These sites, as well as
standalone Web PIMs such as Visto Briefcase and
Day-Timer Digital, already offer synchronization with 3Com
Palm and Windows CE handhelds. Briefcase recently added
wireless links to the Palm VII.
cnn.com
Mang |
