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Last week I attended DemoMobile 99 (http://www.demo.com) in San Diego, and visited briefly Spring Voice on the Net in Las Vegas and Spring Internet World in LA. I am still somewhat new as a journalist and I try to learn to be brief - it did not work out this time… but I think you will find plenty of useful leads down there.

Key findings from DemoMobile 99

We missed something. - DemoMobile 99 was a successful event with some 400 participants, tens of new product announcements and the key IT industry press participating. In order to be selected as an exhibitor you have to “launch a product which fulfills a clear need”, according to producer Jim Forbes who used to be the Senior Tech Editor for Windows Magazine. He claims only ten percent get selected. They have a target for 25-40 % enterprise audience and a promotional effect of one million impressions in media. 3Com gave away free 100 Palm VIIs (retail $800) for beta-testing, that tells you something about the level of this show!

The notebook and handheld market trends (Dataquest, IDC). - Handheld market grows fast, 44% last year, 39% this year. Market segments are large corporations (LCs), SMEs, government and consumers. SMEs are early adopters, this is a current focus segment. Consumers are next, lots of hype around Handspring (Jeff Hawkins was keynoting) to come and ignite the consumer market. LCs are fighting with Y2K and deployment plus TCO issues. The Dataquest “star analyst” Martin Reynolds was one of the many people who lifted the potential of Bluetooth to the highest level with an interesting notion: “The biggest potential of Bluetooth is in e-commerce.”

AirFlash is claiming top position as a mobile portal. - AirFlash (http://www.airflash.com) is building a location-based mobile portal service with a proprietary search technology as a unique selling point. “Every media evolution created a brand new leader - radio brought in NBC, TV created ABC, web Yahoo and the mobile leader will be AirFlash.” Their experience is 10 years of delivering mobile content. The service to be launched Q3 1999 will cost under $5 per month (basic service). Negotiations with carriers are underway to resell the service. The Founder and CEO is the former VP of Business Development of PacBell Wireless.

An update on 3Com/Palm strategy. - Palm has now sold a whopping 4 million units worldwide. Increasingly strong developer network, 15,000 active developers, 2/3 of them working to develop enterprise solutions, they are signing 650 new developers per week. Clones of Palm devices will be supported and licensing agreements will be annouced in the next 6 to 9 months, said Ms Robin Abrams, CEO of the Palm Division of 3Com. In the future there will be a strong focus on development tools, administration, server syncronization, security and wireless implementations (clearly Plam is trying to attack large corporate accounts). The independent “Palm portal” http://www.palmgear.com is getting over 5 million page views per day and they are launching 15-25 new retail titles per day. According to Ms Abrams, e-commerce will be the next big thing (Fidelity is working with them towards and “instant broker” solution).

General Magic announces voice agent technology. - General Magic announced Kenya, an XML-based voice agent technology integrated with MagicTalk voice user interface. It enables 3rd party developers to design applications. The target application categories mentioned were personal finance, travel notification, email  notification, e-commerce (auctions, tickets). (shipping 3Q 1999) http://www.generalmagic.com

Motorola announces portal synchronization deal with Excite. - Philippe Kahn from Starfish/Motorola announced a deal whereby the calendar service of Excite uses Truesync to sync with the StarTac Snap-On Organizer and later even other devices. This announcement is very important for two reasons: 1) The person from Excite stated that they want to be early out to test technologies which create a loyal user base and then stick to the winner (any chances for a latecomer Ericsson sync solution?) and 2) Excite is owned by @Home which is part of AT&T strategy for seamless connectivity over IP networks. So this was in essence an AT&T Wireless announcement… The guys from AirFlash were in active talks with Philippe after his presentation. (shipping 2Q 1999) http://www.starfish.com -

SpanWorks is a sensational example of the potential of BlueTooth. - SpanWorks announced a product in an area they call “conversational computing”. The company is a joint venture with Toshiba and they have developed a software product which enables realtime interactive datasharing over a spontaneous full-mesh topology. This means for example that a person can walk into a meeting and start using the video projector without touching cables. Or meeting participants can use their own laptops to do joint editing of a document. (shipping December 1999) http://www.spanworks.com

Nokia was there. - Nokia was showing their newly acquired WLAN product from InTalk, enhanced with IP security. Not a very sexy presentation but it certainly served its purpose to introduce Nokia as a player in mobile computing. No Finns were present at the show, this was a low-profile “tester” from Nokia.

Xerox forms a new division: Xerox mobile Computing. - …and announces a product called Satchel which provides ad hoc document access and management through mobile devices. As a client-server software application, Satchel supports the most prevalent away-from-the-desk tasks such as exchanging, emailing and faxing of documents. (shipping September 1999) http://www.xerox.com

Key findings from Voice on the Net

I flew briefly to Las Vegas to arrange a presentation of iPulse (former LINK) to a customer. I think VOIP has come to a crossroads and it shows in the slight decline of   the Pulver event: Internet telephony has to develop new, unique applications and scale them up to carrier-class in order to retain its momentum. Currently the industry is focussed on the core VOIP technology but it will not help grow the market nor differentiate the players.

Met there with my friend from France Telecom. Interestingly, France has its own “free-PC initiative”. Infonie, an ISP is selling multimedia PCs for less than USD 150 a piece with a 18-24 month ISP service obligation. France Telecom is selling a V.90 modem for less than USD 50 with a 6 months ISP service obligation. “As a consequence, the plans to deploy screen phones as the upgrade of the Minitel are just vapor. People say they don’t want the screen phones, they want a PC”, said my friend.

Key findings from Spring Internet World

On my way back from Las Vegas I stopped for three hours at the Spring Internet World. That show is degrading as well but there was still enough to see for a short visit, we are talking about a large expo.

Ricochet2 (128 kbps metropolitan wireless access) beta is up and running in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Palo Alto, San Francisco should be covered by the end of the year. You can sign up for the beta at http://www.metricom.com. - Alcatel participated the show with a big stand (datacom products) but it was quite empty. - Rsdi was a small startup launching open-source based e-commerce platform featuring Jini, agents, etc. They said open source would be cheaper and also allow cheaper implementation due to open standard approach. They are worth checking out at http://www.rsdi.com - Other links I would quickly check out are http://www.rockettalk.com (unified messaging), http://www.placeware.com (conferencing), http://www.intervu.com (live Internet commercials), http://www.internap.com (a Cisco-powered “controlled” network access solution for better QoS for websites).

Secondary findings of the week

The other DemoMobile 99 announcements. - Lotus announced wireless access from microbrowsers to the Notes and Domino products with syncronized collaborative applications (shipping 2/3Q 1999). They work with Symbian as well! http://www.lotus.com/mobile. - HyperOffice.com launched an outsource-based product and service for group collaboration targetting SMEs. This browser-based office suite is built around communities and it features rentable software. Planning to ship also a corporate server product. (shipping April 11, 1999). http://www.hyperoffice.com - Plusfactor Software  is introducing a multicalendar synching product, an ad-supported service which supports Palm VII and beaming between devices. This could be an interesting GPRS application. (shipping 2Q 1999) http://www.wesync.com -  Upshot Corporation introduced a browser-based offline solution force sales force automation (targetted for SME market). (shipping April 1999) http://www.upshot.com - Aether Techologies International launched Enterprise Wireless Data Center with the announcement to launch several vertical enterprise wireless applications in the coming months. Aether has extensive systems integration capabilities and the company is a well-established player in the wireless industry. They have strong relations to Palm (3Com is an investor in the company). Allstate Insurance (who seem to be one of the most active early adopters) is their reference customer. (shipping April 19, 1999) http://www.aethertech.com - Fujitsu Personal Systems launched PenCentra, a CE-based Jupiter-class device which is aiming at vertical markets, supporting one of the core strategies of CE to build market position through vertical products. Not so impressive. (shipping 3Q 1999) http://www.fpsi.fujitsu.com - BidCom launched an Internet outsourced service for the construction industry. The solution is Palm-based and other partners include Oracle and Puma. The focus is on managing the workflow and integrating mobile access into the solution. Watch out, this is a $3.3 trillion industry worldwide! Due to the extensive use of designs and other hi-res graphics, this might be a good vertical for GeoPortal. (shipping 3Q 1999 mobile version) http:///www.bidcom.com - Synchronologic announced a device-independent enterprise synchronization server as well as RealSync for Palm which will support multiple connections. The server is shipping today, the Palm product will ship 2Q 1999. The CEO expressed interest to talk to our smartphone people. http://www.synchrologic.com - Lernout & Hauspie announced Voice Express Mobile, a dictation technology as well as a speech-enabled HP 620 with text to speech conversion much better than e.g. that of Portico’s. (shipping 3Q 1999) http://www.lhs.com - Don’t forget to download the preview of Symantec’s Mobile Essentials on http://www.symantec.com, great stuff! (available on May 15) - Elastic Networks announced an Yesware “access server” for plug and play connectivity in public places like hotels, featuring system management and billing. This could greatly facilitate VPN access from hotel rooms. The solution offers even the possibility for the hotel toprovide the users with push services and advertising. (shipping April 23, 1999) http://www.elastic.com   - Secure Computing Corp. announced a credit card -size authentication device which combines the functionality of a smartcard chip and a keypad chip and can accommodate most smartcard chips. (shipping April 1999) http://www.securecomputing.com - Citrix announced MetaFrame server which enables running of Windows NT on any device over any connection. An important technology for delivering enterprise applications to mobile devices as well as setting up application rental outsource services. (shipping June 1999) http://www.citrix.com - ProxiNet is building a WAP-compliant smart delivery system and cluster computing solution to optimise web access to mobile devices. This is a competitor to Oracle’s Panama project as well as a lot in line with what WebOnAir does. The WAP development is underway. The company is in talks with several portal sites to seel their technology. ProxiNet was founded in 1997 and they have currently 30 people. Tehy are funded by SoftBANK and they have on their board an Oracle VP plus the ex-CEO of Citrix. (shipping April 15, 1999) http://www.proxinet.com - Inviso (formerly Siliscape) has changed their strategy to bring to market their micro display technology enabling viewing SVGA resolution in a handheld device. They are refinancing the company and heading for a product launch to get something conrete out to the market and to start educating the market about the concept. They seek to partner with portals and even Marc Andreessen is supposed to be interested. In my opinion this device would have some potential in location-based services for map information etc. Paul Allen is among financiers of Inviso. Talked to Founder and CEO Joy Weiss, she is even a board member of Saraide… (shipping 3Q 1999) http://www.invisosys.com - Paragon Software announced a new version of Fonesync with more features. Very impressive! The product has vCard/LDAP support and they cooperate over Internet content with for example Who Where (part of Lycos). (shipping April 1999) http://www.paragonsoftware.com - Philips launched Nino 500, a pen-based color CE device in the Palm form factor. The device comes bundled with Audible (audio books) player as well as with AvantGo. Somehow I was not impressed, this is not going to fly, even price is too high at $499. (shipping 2Q1999) http://www.nino.philips.com - Wireless Knowledge announced pager support to Revolv (shipping ?) http://www.wirelessknowledge.com -

Several potentially interesting companies for Zopps. - http://www.wesync.com, http://www.hyperoffice.com,

 

END NOTES - Pekka Viirola (an old study colleague of mine), Director from Nokia who is in charge of the integration of the Diamond Lane acquisition into Nokia, told me (ran into him at the airport) that Nokia is far from experienced in integrating acquisitions and still far behind companies like Cisco. The mindset in the company is still very technically oriented and product-dominated. - When reading some Finnish press I found out that Pekka Ala-Pietilä who was raised to the CEO position of Nokia recently, made immediately an important decision: to move himself and his family to live in Silicon Valley for three months in order to learn more about how Nokia should operate there.