Palmtops avoid PC-style thinking

From...

April 24, 2000
Web posted at: 1:49 p.m. EDT (1749 GMT)

by Margret Johnston

CHICAGO (IDG) -- Palm faces stiff competition from Microsoft in the market for handheld computers, but the challenge is welcome, says the company's president.

Speaking one day after Microsoft launched the Pocket PC -- competing in the market now dominated by the Palm -- Alan Kessler said that the future of such computing will develop much differently from PCs, where Microsoft has had most of its success. In a keynote address here at Spring Comdex, Kessler said the keys to success lie in the untapped market beyond middle-age businessmen who now comprise about half of Palm's 6 million users, and in vertical markets that have special application needs.

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"It ain't about broad-based horizontal applications in the handheld space," Kessler said. "It is much more focused on specific solutions, and, yes, you may want to read a Microsoft Word document and look an Excel spreadsheet, which you can do today on a Palm, but that's not what's driving the market."

The evolution of PCs was about processor speeds and the capacity of the operating system, but the handheld market will continue to be different, he said.

"Handheld computing has not, and, we will argue, does not and will not follow the PC computing model in many ways," Kessler said. "It will need to be fundamentally different to reach those tens of millions of individuals who need to be reached."

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Palm intends to go from 6 million users -- about 75 percent of the current market -- to 60 million or even 600 million users, Kessler said. And one way to do that is to develop more applications, including those designed for specialized professionals (such as real estate agents, firefighters, and doctors).

There are now about 65,000 developers working on Palm software applications, an increase of about tenfold from a year ago, Kessler said. The company envisions new applications from games to global positioning system products that Kessler said would be less like a typical PC's applications and more like a complete package that takes advantage of Palm's size and wireless functions.

Kessler also said Palm has plans to bring out new features such as a flexible screen, and would also soon broaden the development base by allowing applications in Visual Basic and Java.

The company also wants to move into the vast untapped market of people who are not the typical Palm user -- a 42-year-old male earning $80,000 a year.

"That's where we've been. Where we're headed is millions and tens of millions of users, many who haven't touched a PC, many who don't want to touch a PC," Kessler said.

The potential new customers are not unsophisticated, but are people who don't feel they need to know all the "ins and outs" of a PC, Kessler said.

"These are folks who want something to get the job done to simplify and empower their lives, and they are untapped, and that is the huge opportunity," he said.

The market for handheld computers is growing at a compound annual rate of 42 percent, with 22 percent penetration expected by 2003, Kessler said, quoting statistics from IDC.

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My PDA is better than your PDA
(Computerworld)
Will Pocket PC push Palm out of our hands?
(PC World Online)
Pocket PC moves full-steam ahead
(PC World Online)
PDAs are walking disasters
(Computerworld)
Palms hit the road
(PC World Online)
Pocket PC appears
(PC World Online)
Pocket PC is no 'Palm killer'
(Computerworld)
I wanna hold your handheld
(The Industry Standard)

Microsoft Pocket PC
Palm, Inc.

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