Palm is to release a mobile Internet kit in Europe by mid-November.
Palm is at last bringing all its handheld devices into the wireless world. For a small fee, owners can buy a CD that will enable any handheld Palm product to connect to the Internet through a mobile phone. The Internet kit includes email packages and a web browser that includes clipping software to strip all the graphic content from web pages and display them in an easy-to-navigate format on the small screen.
Palm has already made wireless connectivity available in the New York area for its Palm 7. This move now makes European Palm devices ready for the wireless web. The European interactive PDA market is expected to grow massively from around one million users currently to 30 million by 2005, so Palm has chosen its market well. The cost of the kit is low and most owners of Palm devices and a mobile phone will want to combine the two. Surfing the web using the larger device’s screen will be far less frustrating, despite the clipping technology, than WAP on a mobile phone. The Palm kit also allows users to access WAP sites as well as normal HTML pages.
This is also Palm’s response to Microsoft PocketPC, launched at the beginning of the year. The PocketPC system has full Internet browsing capabilities, allowing users to view complete web pages including graphics. But despite its enhanced web experience, it is unlikely that PocketPC will be able to steal much of Palm’s market share, especially with the release of this Internet kit. PocketPC devices tend to be more expensive and it is unlikely consumers will justify the extra expense for web graphics.
Palm already dominates the handheld market and this new functionality will only reinforce its dominance. In fact, it may increase the company’s user base. As mobile phone users become frustrated with the inadequacies of WAP, they may resort to the more enhanced capabilities of Palm’s wireless PDAs.
