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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TTOSBT who wrote (49812)	9/25/2000 9:39:40 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Microsoft's Ballmer Talks Up Pocket PC with Fujitsu President September 25, 2000 (TOKYO) -- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp. president and CEO, appealed the Pocket PC, Microsoft's operating system for personal digital assistants (PDAs) to Naoyuki Akikusa, president and CEO of Fujitsu Ltd. Microsoft's CEO Ballmer and Fujitsu's CEO Akikusa The demonstration took place Sept. 21, during their joint announcement of collaboration plans. So far, Fujitsu has maintained silence on its PDA strategy. Now, with Ballmer's promotion pitch, there is a possibility that Fujitsu might adopt the Pocket PC. The gist of the Sept. 21 announcement is that Microsoft and Fujitsu will cooperate on using Windows 2000 for enterprise systems. The press conference began with Akikusa and Ballmer giving opening remarks. Next, Tadayasu Sugita, executive vice president of Fujitsu, give an explanation of the corporate alliance. It was at this point that Ballmer made his move. Taking a PDA from his pocket, Ballmer turned to Akikusa sitting beside him, and began showing him the PDA. Using a stylus, Ballmer demonstrated handwriting input, talking all the while to his neighbor. Smiling and nodding, Akikusa looked intently at Ballmer's PDA. It was unusual to see two top executives engaged in a discussion over a PDA in the middle of a press conference. Normally, top executives appearing at such a gatherings just sit and wait for the question-and-answer session once they finish their opening duties. At the end of the conference, Nikkei Computer learned from Ballmer that the PDA was an iPaq from Compaq Computer Corp. The operating system is, of course, the Microsoft Pocket PC. Ballmer was likely angling to get Fujitsu to adopt the Pocket PC. To date, Fujitsu has made no announcement about its PDA strategy. Hewlett-Packard Japan Ltd. and Casio Computer Co., Ltd. have developed and released handheld devices that run the Pocket PC. IBM Japan Ltd. and Sony Corp., on the other hand, are now shipping Palm OS-based PDAs. Fujitsu has been preparing for PDAs for nearly a decade. Ten years ago, the company had an equity stake in a U.S. venture called Pocket, and it developed and released a compact word processor that incorporated Pocket's technology. However, Pocket went bankrupt. Oddly enough, it was Sugita who was in charge of negotiations with Pocket a decade ago. But it wasn't clear, as he gave his presentation to the journalists in Tokyo, whether he noticed the two CEOs engrossed, not in the topic of enterprise systems, but in a PDA. (Nobuyuki Yajima, Deputy Editor, Nikkei Computer)