Conglomerate Inc – New PDA 1 Introduction
Conglomerate Inc., a major U.S. wireless carrier, has teamed up with a PC manufacturer to form a joint venture, Netlink, to develop, produce and market a hybrid product integrating a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with a “smart” cellular phone. Its first product is tentatively called ConneCtor. ConneCtor directly transmits and receives both data and voice. It is lightweight but heavier than a cell phone whose shape it emulates. It comes with a backlit grayscale LCD screen of moderate resolution. Its operating system is the PalmOS, which is common in PDAs. Thus, ConneCtor allows the user, among other things, to access the standard tools of Personal Information Management (PIM) and also performs …show more content…

Another major group of users is the mobile professional. Since this group frequently needs access to e-mail and the Internet while away from the office, it is also driving progress on the wireless front. A recent study by the University of California at Berkeley indicated that nearly half of the users had a technical job dealing with computers, and the overwhelming majority of the respondents rated hemselves as technically sophisticated. To attract more mainstream buyers in 2001, companies were working on increasing the usability of the PDA and its general appeal to non business users. For example, the new Claudia Schiffer Palm (sold via her Web site) is supposed to give Palm a sexier image, and Handspring’s Visor line comes in many colors. Palm’s affordable M series ($150) targets college students and other nonprofessional consumers. It is expected that such efforts will eventually open up the largely untapped young consumer and female markets. However in 2001, it appeared unlikely that the bulk of the mainstream population would enthusiastically embrace the PDA. A PDA was still relatively pricey and fairly limited. Handwriting recognition was slow and lacked quality, and keyboard facilities were either non-existent, too big to carry or too small to use. The display screen was too small for most applications other than text display. Internet connections were generally both slow and expensive. In addition, the