One company bubbling over with enthusiasm for its product at The Which Computer? Show was Poqet Computer Corp which was jostling for space on the Fujitsu stand. Fujitsu took a 38% stake in Poqet last year to enable the company to bring the Poqet PC from the development stage to actual production. Fujitsu is subcontracted to manufacture the product for the world market and is currently producing about 1,000 per month. However, production is being ramped up to 6,000 units per month and by year-end 10,000 Poqet PCs will be hitting distribution channels each month. The product is the size of the standard (DL – ask your secretary) business envelope measuring 8.75 by 4.3 by 9.25 in dimensions. It weighs 1 lb including the two AA alkaline batteries which it requires for up to 100 hours of use. According to the sales chat this is the same amount of energy as a single Christmas tree twinkle light. In the UK the Poqet PC costs UKP1,350. The alliance with Fujitsu includes a cooperative technology agreement and non-exclusive sourcing assurances for Poqet. Fujitsu is developing a derivative product for the Japanese market which will have a different CPU. MS-DOS software programs can be loaded into the Poqet from desktop computers via the Poqet’s expansion port. Alternatively, users can install software by slotting in credit-card sized ROM cards which are already supported by Lotus, Microsoft and WordPerfect. These memory cards are touted as being virus-proof and cannot be accidentally erased. They conform to a 68-pin physical format which has been adopted by the Japanese Electronic Industry Design Association as a standard for integrated circuit memory devices. Meanwhile in the US this card format has a pressure group all to itself called the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association lobbying to get it adopted as an industry standard. If the 68-pin format is adopted as a standard then Poqet believes its market dominance is assured for portable personal hardware in the short term. As for the future Poqet has unbounded plans to further enhance the product. These include providing an attachable modem so that the Poqet PC can transmit data, and putting paging capability on a chip so that the product can receive and store data all the time it is not being used. Another development being considered is having dedicated software resident on board.
