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Technology Stocks : Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KevRupert who wrote (503)	11/7/2000 7:26:32 PM
From: xtahce	Respond to of 817

"Am I the only one who is disappointed that an upgraded Palm device has not been offered in the past year?" I'm sure Palm will and for the sake of saving some time you might want to read what I responded to on another msg board: pablothebull22: "Some thoughts. PDA's will become as prevalent as PCs one day. PDA's are where PC's were a decade and a half ago. Buying into a company that makes them will be like buying Dell at an early stage. The market will support as many PDA makers as it does PC makers." Thank you for your kind & generous words. I appreciate your thoughts and that of the future of PDAs. The definition of 'Personal Digital Assistant' is more of what defines Palm's business or their 'Reason to Exist'. They developed a form factor that would allow people to access information, that they entered themselves, and deleted the need to carry around a daytimer etc. With no competition, Palm became the defacto standard (such as 'Kleenex' is to facial tissue 'Palm' is to PDA). There is a 'grey area' with any new emerging business/product and RIM's devices should really be more defined as 'Wireless Data/Communication Handheld' (WDCH?). RIM's 'Reason to Exist' was the business of wireless 2-way communication of data, "Users can now move from one-way to fully two-way interactive communications - they can receive, respond to, AND initiate messages from a small easy to use device. They are always on, always connected.". They have added more (PUMA) features of a PDA simply for the benefit of the user, not in order to change and operate on the basis of becoming a PDA (Note: in 1996 the original 900 allowed users to store names, email addresses, phone/fax numbers in a simpler manner). They are starting to be pulled away from the PDA's definition, but there still is confusion where it is easier to lump RIM into the PDA market. RIM is starting to obtain an 'Acceptance of Standard' in the markets and that is observed when you hear more people refer to them as a 'BlackBerry' (although still wrong, but I'll take it over PDA). Thus we have two very different businesses each with their own 'Reasons to Exist'. Palm's PDA and RIM's WDCH are completely different. To say they are the same is like saying two ships found travelling on an Ocean are the same, although similar in appearance one is in the business of transporting people to a specific final destination and the other is in the business of entertaining it's occupants while cruising. Remember at one time that ships were specifically built to transport people/goods and the cruise ships came into existence because of competition from the airlines. Someone here posted a piece of an article that stated the PDA was stalling out and that might be very true. Palm is in the midst of building up and off their original platform as they see that the next big area of opportunity is the wireless 2-way communication/data, an area that RIM has been in for years (founded in 1984, the original wireless device was available in 1996). I am not faulting Palm here, as I give them credit because they waited to see if the market would be open to this form of communication. It should be noted though that they are building this from something that was originally meant to be used in a simpler form and it will take time, not doubting their ability, to advance to a position that RIM already has. This is where my only frustration comes to mind when RIM doesn't offer more specific guidelines as to the development of future products, all we get is tiny hints regarding vehicle telemetry etc. and comments like "You will see some very exciting things from Research In Motion as the Europe initiative gets underway"(May 2000). I agree that preannouncing products, prior to proving a working solution, is dangerous if a company fails to bring to market what & when they said they would, but RIM's competition creates the better buzz and if it doesn't come to be people usually forget about what was promised. RIM also needs to keep their advances close to their chest if only to keep the competition from knowing and as an investor I need to honour their secrecy.... still frustrating though. Thus competition is once again proving to be the vehicle for the advancement of technology and we will see a faster adoption in the field of technology compared to any other sector. People can and have the right to dream of what the future will bring and are willing participants in adopting new technologies. messages.yahoo.com messages.yahoo.com And no, 2lbs isn't for general use and I don't recall them have email abilities either. X