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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Savant who wrote (6679)	7/23/1999 8:36:00 AM
From: Tinroad	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18366

An interesting article from ISN: (Anyone seen anything on the Casio HHD mentioned below?) Part II: Tomes versus Tunes David Thor, Research Director, Cognosco Publishing Interviewed by Lauren Keyson As we continued our phone conversation, David Thor told me he finished his medium mocha latté in South Natick, Mass. while I cracked open another Diet Coke in downtown New York City. Our topic shifted from Internet content providers to how users like to receive their information. I wondered if Cognosco Publishing (www.cognosco.com) had done any research on the preferences of users of hand-held devices, and how they preferred to receive their data. Do they favor audio, video or text coming from them? [LAUREN KEYSON] Will people ever get used to reading books on a flat-panel screen? [DAVID THOR] We've done some work in the space of electronic books. Unfortunately we've discovered that the early buyers of devices are going to be the people that are more mobile – not the people who are going to go casually on a vacation and sit in a lounge chair. They're not going to bring a $500 electronic device to the beach. The trouble is that most of the existing devices are not practical solutions for a lot of reasons. The screen size is only a five-inch diagonal in a lot of them, which is not really an appropriate way to deal with text. Even the bigger devices that might have a nine-inch diagonal screen aren't oriented toward a page. They're more of a horizontal spread than a page layout. Also, they really don't have the resolution that a printed page has, and that makes it harder for your eyes to deal with. But there are two products, the Ebook by Franklin Electronic Publishers and the Rocket Book by Nouveau Media, which are high resolution screens on a tablet-sized device that look like a big piece of paper. They are also made to feel like a book. [LK] So it's not going to be a consumer-type item? [DT] Well, they were hoping it would be. The problem is, however, that when only a few hundred thousand a year are going to be sold, they're going to be priced like business items. But the business person is already carrying a notebook, a pager, a cell phone and everything else you can think of. The last thing he or she wants to carry is another device. So that's what we found – that people basically said, 'Until you can find a way for me to read a book on my notebook, don't talk to me, because I can't deal with that. I would much prefer to just buy a paperback book at the airport and throw it away when I am done.' [LK] What about audio, particularly devices from companies like AUDIBLE (ADBL), which enable you to download books and newspapers? Does the "mobile set" prefer to read things or listen to things? DT] They want to hear music, but they do not want to hear someone talking to them. MP3 and other audio-like devices are becoming hugely successful. To be able to go and download music to whatever is your favorite device is almost more important than wireless data itself – because it has such mass market appeal. CASIO COMPUTER (Tokyo Stock Exchange - 6952) is one of the few companies that make a business device that is hand-held and enables you to download music. It's doing phenomenally well, but it doesn't make any sense to follow this device from an investing point of view, because it's only a minute part of the organization. [LK] Does a device like this make sense for an investor in general? [DT] Let's say I'm going on the road. I want my address book, I want to be able to access the Internet wirelessly, and I want to be able to listen to music when I am not at my primary listening location. Basically, I want to pick from a catalog of music across different genres. I don't want to have to buy CD's. This gets back to the whole commerce thing, because you're going to be buying these things at only 30 cents each. The music business is doing what MULTEX.COM (MLTX) is doing. They're saying, I want to take every discrete report and offer them as a one-off purchase rather than a CD. I offer tracks, and each track is going to be sold like a research report. That method is very successful, and the market is taking off so fast that no one can even monitor it. [LK] Wouldn't it be great if there were one device in which you could download music, get the latest news, and also use it as a calculator and a cell phone? [DT] I can guarantee you that there are no less than 10 companies right now trying to figure out how to do just that. It's interesting – if you had asked this sort of question three years ago, all you would have wanted is something that kept your calendar and address book, allowed you to take notes, access e-mail, and talk on the phone – all with one device. That was the big deal, and companies are still trying to do that the right way. But once you start adding the ability to listen to music, and a few other things, you're going to pop heads. That's because when you put voice and data together, it gets really messy. Still, if you want a company in this area that we thought the world of long before it had this skyrocket recently, it's QUALCOMM (QCOM). They have gone with 3COM (COMS) to build a device that is basically a Palm Pilot and a voice telephone in one. But it's an awkward size, and unfortunately, the first generation looks like a brick. I'm not sure carrying around a brick and talking into it will work out that well.