Wireless Knowledge>
Wireless knowledge is seen as telecom's newest wunderkind
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February 14, 1999
David Coursey, often acknowlegded as the arbiter of what's cool in the hot world of hightech, invited Wirelessknowledge to his prestigious Showcase '99 trade show last month for one simple reason:
"Everybody's heard about Wirelessknowledge," Coursey said, while lounging Caesar-like on a leather couch. "But nobody knows what they do."
Wirelessknowledge, for those who don't know, is the San Diego-based creation of Microsoft and Qualcomm -- an offspring of giants born to deploy e-mail, contact lists, calendars and even Web content to wireless phones, pagers, laptop computers and all species of mobile devices.
Wirelessknowledge is just 5 months old, and its sole service offering isn't expected to hit the market until April, at the earliest.
Observers are already predicting that, if successful, the nascent company could change the way society conceives of phones -- devices not just for talking to other people, but as tools to communicate with other computing devices.
If Wirelessknowledge fails -- and the landscape is replete with still-born offerings and the walking corpses of other attempts -- some say it could jeopardize the entire wireless data industry.
So new is the company that it hasn't found permanent offices, and it still is trying to figure out how it wants its name to appear in print. Is it two words? One? Should the "W" be upper case?
Wirelessknowledge shares much in common with both of its parents, which have similar laid-back, flannel-shirts-and-jeans cultures and a certain entrepreneurial zeal. In fact, early hires at Wirelessknowledge came mostly from Qualcomm's Eudora division, the unit that makes e-mail software.
Wirelessknowledge, which has since cooled its hiring frenzy and may cap payroll at about 100 this year, has signed a non-compete agreement with Qualcomm, which prohibits the youngster from poaching employees.
So how could such a young company already have such penetrating influence?
The company represents the sum of its two parts: Microsoft and Qualcomm, which have each pumped $25 million into the venture. With the cache of these marquee benefactors comes the expectation of performance.
"If Wirelessknowledge doesn't deliver on its intent, it could set back wireless data industry-wide," says Bob Egan, research director at Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn. "If they can't get it done, who do you trust that can?"
John Major, a former Qualcomm executive and chief executive at Wirelessknowledge, sounds as if he's up to the challenge.
"We can give you direct access to your information from anyone of these (mobile) devices," Major says. "We would like to finish this year with tens of thousands of subscribers and next year with hundreds of thousands of subscribers."
In controlled trials, at least, the technology works. Customers can use digital wireless phones, for instance, to access e-mail and other information housed on their office PCs, edit the information, then tell the phone to call the person who just sent the e-mail.
Last month, Wirelessknowledge unveiled Revolv, its first service application for business travelers.
The service, to be offered through Sprint PCS, AirTouch Communications and seven other partner carriers, is important because it would offer a way for people on the go to remotely access and edit information housed at their company's central computer and have all those changes synchronized on other mobile devices they may be using.
GTE Wireless is testing the system in Tampa now, with possible deployment in June, says Lindsey Burroughs, the company's San Diego-area president.
While Burroughs and other carrier representatives say they're excited about Revolv, skeptics contend that Wirelessknowledge's real purpose in life is to advance Windows NT into the corporate market and give Qualcomm another entree to sell its successful brand of ASICs semiconductor chips, the brains used in many mobile phones.
With software increasingly distributed by and run on central computer servers -- hubs that house data accessed by a company's fleet of desktop computers -- Microsoft makes no secret that it is trying to dominate server software as it already has in the consumer PC market.
Surveys show that wireless phone sales will eclipse PC sales in the next few years. There are about 2.2 million wireless data users today with 1998 revenue estimated at $1.1 billion, according to The Yankee Group, a research group that expects 12 million wireless data users to generate $5.6 billion in revenue by 2002.
Microsoft is eager to exploit that. The next Windows CE version, code-named Cedar, will include components that manufacturers can use to create a true Windows CE-based cellular phone operating system.
"Phones are now computers, so they're on a Moore's Law," says Thomas Clarkson, vice president of marketing at Wirelessknowledge. Thomas was referring to the phenomenon describing how computing power roughly doubles every 18 months or so.
The next generation of phones will come equipped with "micro-browsers" better able to digest and display larger data payloads. Microsoft, Qualcomm and Wirelessknowledge want to be a part of this brave and lucrative wireless world.
"There's a hidden agenda, and that's to advance Microsoft Exchange and put Qualcomm's ASICs in Windows CE devices," says Jane Zweig, executive vice president of Herschel Shosteck Associates, a telecommunications research firm in Washington, D.C.
To a person, those at Wirelessknowledge deny the accusation and in the process have added another phrase to the techno-lexicon. "We're technologically agnostic," Clarkson says.
As evidence, he and other officials say the company will develop services for rival Microsoft servers such as Lotus Domino, perhaps as early as this year, and that the company's service will be deployed on carriers using technology other than Qualcomm's version of code division multiple access or CDMA.
Indeed, AT&T, a time division multiple access, or TDMA, network is one of Wirelessknowledge's nine partners.
None of that has silenced skeptics, however.
"Given the investments of Microsoft (into Wirelessknowledge), why would they accommodate other servers?" asks Egan of the Gartner Group. Even a spokesman at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's primary public relations organ, states that "clearly, (Wirelessknowledge) was designed to advance (Windows) NT."
The world may not care if Wirelessknowledge pushes the technology of its wealthy masters. Besides, the company expects to cut its strings in a couple of years, when CEO Major hopes to take the company public.
But the world does care about success.
The wireless data market has a history of false starts and missteps by major telecommunications carriers such as AT&T, Ameritech and GTE, which have focused more resources on competing for voice rather than data service.
The Cellular Digital Packet Data, or CDPD, initiative offered through Ameritech, AT&T Wireless and Bell Atlantic Mobile, for instance, largely flopped because the carriers did a poor job of marketing wireless data and had a problem handling the enormous technical support such networks require, say Egan and others.
Egan likens the CDPD endeavor and others like it to the work of inept outdoorsmen. "They got wet wood and scattered it around in a 10-foot circle and said, 'Let's get warm.' "
But with the coming of more advanced phones, capable of handling a variety of computing tasks now common on laptop PCs, carriers are shifting focus to data networks. Sprint PCS, for instance, is putting the finishing touches on its nationwide data network, which should be operational by July.
The wireless data market is poised for growth, and Wirelessknowledge not only has a stake in the game, it also has competitors.
Research in Motion of Canada has introduced BlackBerry, a wearable, two-way wireless messaging device. Last week, IBM introduced its Mobile Connect, a technology that links handheld devices and wireless phones with direct access to corporate networks.
Perhaps more formidable is Symbian, a joint venture of Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola, which together control 70 percent of the global wireless handset market. The three have teamed with Philips Communications and Psion PLC, with an overall mission to "develop a global standard in operating systems and to evangelize the wireless information device industry."
In other words, compete with Microsoft-based products and Wirelessknowledge.
If Symbian flounders, the world may shrug, Egan says. After all, none of those companies has developed an operating system that enjoys the ubiquity of Microsoft's Windows.
However, the world may shudder, Egan argues, if the newborn company from San Diego falters.
"Wirelessknowledge is a great idea with big names behind it," he says. "But with that size comes responsibility to deliver."
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Copyright 1999 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. |
