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To: David Lawrence who wrote (30345)	4/28/1999 11:11:00 AM
From: Techplayer	Respond to of 45548

David, I thought that this was still being battled by CSCO et al. I also believe that the window is until 2001. Brian

To: David Lawrence who wrote (30345)	4/28/1999 2:04:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

Xircom Eyeing New Markets With Handheld PCs: Bloomberg Forum New York, April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Xircom Inc., the No. 2 maker of connector cards that link PCs to corporate networks, has moved into the consumer market and is eyeing the fast-growing market for handheld PCs, said Chairman Dirk Gates. ''There are two big opportunities for us,'' he told the Bloomberg Forum. One is getting its RealPort cards designed into notebook PCs, which could account for as many as 5 million units a year. The other is a market of even smaller handheld computers. To date, Xircom's RealPort cards have mainly linked business PCs to local-area networks or the Internet. Gates said the company's partnership with Intel Corp., which owns 11 percent of the company's equity, ''has really opened a door.'' Xircom already sells about 20 percent of its cards, priced from $150 to about $300, to major PC makers, including Compaq Computer Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Hewlett- Packard Co. and Toshiba Corp. Now, as prices decline and a technological standard has been established for consumer-market notebooks, the Thousand Oaks, California-based company Gates founded 11 years ago senses a bigger opportunity. ''There will be significant revenue'' by late 1999 or early 2000 from lower-end products, he said. Meanwhile, Xircom has just started to ship RealPort devices designed to be slipped into handheld computers, such as H-P's Jornada or 3Com Corp.'s PalmPilot, he said. ''We see the handheld side becoming a huge opportunity for us over the next few years,'' he added, citing a study by International Data Corp. that predicted by 2002, the market for handhelds will approach that for notebooks. 3Com, the largest maker of connector cards, as well as one of the top makers of networking equipment, is Xircom's bigger rival, Gates said. ''Smaller, low-power, Ethernet, wireless and modem connections for handheld PCs -- that's the direction the market is moving,'' he said. Connectivity The chairman said Xircom's financial performance will remain strong because of growing demand for connectivity products for all kinds of PCs. ''There is nothing that can stop it,'' he said. Last week, the company said fiscal second-quarter net income tripled to $10.8 million, or 42 cents a share, beating the average estimate of 41 cents of five analysts surveyed by First Call Corp. It earned $3.3 million, or 14 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 52 percent to $97.7 million from $64.1 million. Gates attributed the improvement to demand for RealPort cards, which now account for 53 percent of revenue and should account for as much as 70 percent in the second half. The cards were introduced early in 1998. o~~~ O