Tim, another long post to match yours:-)
Here's some comments on your PP analysis:
>>Price will limit audience for this device to business users located in cities and travelers who frequent these cities. The unit price hopefully comes in significantly lower than the $800 proposed. With cell phone prices (as a comparison) at $200, this price level is high. The service price could also be high depending on usage.<<
True, price is admittedly (by 3Com) high, but it will go down
quick. The first users are people who don't care about price.
These are businessmen that have the capability to tap into
ORACLE databases on wireless. 3Com is not immediately even
thinking about making this popular to the public. They
are just trying to catch attention and get the software
developers making good applications. The businessmen using
this thing will not care about price because they are getting
a worthwhile service that they can't get elsewhere. That's the
start to get the ball rolling. So, don't try to evaluate it
on just this small (but very powerful) start.
>>At 8K, this is horribly slow. I realize this is only text data but this very slow compared to other wireless technologies.<<
Well, this is not a desktop. It's a small screen of text. The
most somebody will be downloading is an article from the WSJ.
At 8K, that still isn't a big deal. (I don't think)
>>I don't understand why they would not have just used the existing
Wireless IP infrastructure. There are nationwide providers like
AT&T.<<
How do you know this won't happen in the future?
>> But it does not leverage other companies' efforts
here very well. It starts as a closed network operated by Palm.<<
I disagree. First the Operating System is OPEN SOFTWARE. It's
available to whoever wants to use it. There are 10,000 programmers
out there, creating great uses for this thing. This is like
a min-MSFT doing the work for nothing. Is this leverage
or what??
Secondly, it's not developing the internet. The internet is
already developed!! Everybody wants it. Giving it to them
in an easier fashion is a stroke of genius. Having a monopoly
on this for a while is "a miracle". Why do you think there
are already a dozen major companies that want to put "their
product" through the Palm Pilot?
>>Hopefully this is a short-term strategy until
there is a critical mass of users.<<
But, whatever happens, there will be that critical mass of users
(it's almost there now for heavens sake) before we know it.
This is a no-lose proposition here. The only thing to worry
about is competition, but that may be a good thing actually.
>>While the PALM 7 may support the app, I
wouldn't be happy with 8K performance.<<
Man, you are one picky guy:-) Ok, let's say you wouldn't. That's
not important. It's whether there are a lot of other people that
would. The answer is yes. Getting scores to sports games,
weather information, UPS tracking, email messaging on a wireless
basis, newspaper articles on a wireless basis. You wouldn't do
this, but there are a ton of people that would for a reasonable
price. (I wouldn't, but so what.)
>> It will be great for field automation apps, data
collection, communication to field reps in corporations. <<
I agree, and they will be the most important initial users. These
people don't care about price, and want the service yesterday.
And, when the developer's put into place super software, it will
be these user's dream come true.
>>This is not a general-purpose application
platform until the network bandwidth is increased<<
you're too hung up on bandwidth, I think. The OS is it's
biggest asset. Also, the PP will speed up the wireless
network bandwidth problem.
>>With network overhead it may take 10K to do one stock
order. Granted this can be reduced but there will be re-design need for this to be effective by all the on-line brokers.<<
A stock order is better than no stock order in many cases. Plus,
as you said, modifications can be made. That's the theme
of the PP. Applications will morph into the PP sphere, not
the other way around. And because of the Palm OS, this is
a much more doable possibility.
>>So it may or may not work if I take an hour drive to go play golf while I'm on my sales trip in Arizona. <<
You want a Cadillac when we haven't yet built the volkswagon.
Give it a chance and it will come your way sooner than you think.
>>The PALM OS is not deep OS with a broad API. It is fairly simple and thin. Of course this leaves the general-purpose apps (spreadsheet, rich browser, Word processor, e-money, Java runtime engine etc) to other platforms - there lies the danger.<<
Tim, it's ahead of the curve and great for the present. It
will improve markedly in the future. It may spawn off it's own
version of middleware software, etc. The opportunities are
endless. Again, it's just in it's infancy.
>>Someday these handhelds will have much more computing power.
CE is much more suited to that type of environment than Palm OS. It can offer more functionality and more features.<<
It remains to be seen if the CE is good for anything. It's problem
is not just that it takes up too much computing power. It's a
design problem from what I understand. It's trying to be a
desktop on a Palm. WRONG!!
>>MS CE could win if one device can meet all 3 needs but it has to start building some critical mass to do this.<<
MS CE is so far behind the curve, a betting person wouldn't give
it a chance. After the last couple of days, it's chances are
even less. IMO, we will start seeing different kinds of OSs
coming out to try and control the device and Palm worlds.
There are probably computer science grad students working on this
right now for free.
OK, admittedly, I may be BSing here a bit. But the main point,
IMO, is that you're focusing on the negative stuff way too
early. The positive outweighs the negative by at least a factor
of 10. 10,000 programmers don't just start developing for
it just for entertainment.
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