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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Verve who wrote (5954)	1/6/2001 2:25:31 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196760

The Verve: 3G apps will be there by the time 3G will be ready. Let us see what wireless apps. exist currently. Many of the killer apps on the internet are already available on wireless devices. For example: Email, stock quotes, auctions, address books, bulletin boards, calendars, instant messaging, etc. are already available. User satisfaction has not been great but that is more due to issues of pricing and physical constraints of devices and not due to the data transfer rates. New devices are coming ... For example see the latest announcement of Palm with Sprint PCS. If PDAs can be connected to the internet and can display webpages in color, then we are halfway there. We know that consumers are in love with their cell phones and some are in love with their PDAs. With the high penetration of cell phones out there, hundreds of millions of individuals are already carrying a device in their pocket (and not really companing about it). And this is in addition to accessories such as a wallet, a purse, a walkman, an appointment book, a camera, a calculator, a laptop, a game player(gamesboy), a map, or a GPS unit. Obviously, it is going to very difficult to incorporate all the features in one device (Handspring is trying with add ons). Let us look at the pillars that support the success of PCs and the PC applications. One - processing power. Two - storage. Three - Connectivity. Four - Standard Operating System. Five - Cost. Six - Good Input/Output devices. Not necessarily in the order of importance. Wireless applications will need similar support (in addition to small device size and low battery consumption). Let us see what is available: Operating systems - At least two decent OSs. Palm and Windows CE (and Java Virtual Machine??). Palm has a large enough installed base (almost the size of Apple computers) for serious developers to build applications for. Processing power - The processors behind the PDAs are reasonably powerful to play MPs files, display pictures etc. And it is only going to get better. Connectivity: We are in an early stage of connectivity. Modem connectivity with laptops and PDA is a given. Bluetooth and ethernet connectivity (??)is supportable by various chips, some made by Qualcomm. PDAs come with limited infrared connectivity. Input/Output devices - Cell phone's display is tolerable but input is horrible. PDAs display and input are superior to the cell phone's. However, true PC like experience can be felt only if one is using a laptop (obviously). There is a room for a device that has a footprint between a notebook and a PDA. Some kind of ebook or web-tablet. The operating system choices for such a device will still be a shrunken Windows or Linux or an expanded Palm OS. Storage: Not a significant issue. Additional storage devices like flash-cards and memory sticks are available. Of course if reasonable priced connectivity is available, storage is available through bluetooth or LAN in the immediate vicinity or else on a remote server throght your wireless provider. Ultimately, people will favor one converged device for getting some compromised functionality. Ideally, the device should at least work as a phone,a PDA,and have a bluetooth connection. As the processing power of the PDA increases, it can handle more and more of the processing-intensive applications (graphics, video, mps player) that people access from the internet. As the connectivity speeds increase, ASP applications become more useful - download a song you need on demand, do voice-over-IP to call foreign countries at a lower price, take a picture and immediately send it to a remote server for storage (in business case scan and email/fax), download a map, get stock charts, etc. For heavy users of the internet, high speeds need no new apps. Time is money. I am happy accessing web-pages with an always on fast connection on my modem. I want to move from page to page quickly. I want to download my email in less than half a minute. Of course, in the end, it all comes down to price. Arun