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Where PPC developers might look for
the next big opportunity.
The four days I spent in Philadelphia
attending the recent Pocket PC Summit were a little like
a roller coaster ride. Although overall a very upbeat event,
peaks of optimism were countered by the valleys of pessimism
in ways that I have not experienced in conferences past.
Perhaps recent events in the stock market and the troubles
in the economy have brought out the more conservative side
of those in our industry or perhaps it is a reflection of
the social and psychological changes brought on by the numerous
major events during the last year.
As a developer and business person excited
about the potential of opportunities in the Pocket PC space,
one of the primary missions I set for myself on this trek
to the summit was to better understand the direction of
the market. I was in search of answers that would help me
plan the approach my company would take in the next two
or three years as this market comes of age. Many corporations
have not yet started to spend money in this space, but the
bet is that they eventually will. My goal for this conference
was to find information that would help clarify the direction
and preparation needed to successfully partake in the Pocket
PC industry or perhaps reasons not to.
Short of a presenter cancellation
and a later starting time on the last day of the conference,
I found the schedule full of interesting and engaging sessions.
HP/Compaq had a one-day developer event going on in parallel
that I fully intended to participate in as well, but never
found the time. As a matter of fact, I probably wouldn't
have had time to visit a number of booths on the exhibit
floor if it were not for the unexpected free time on the
last day of the event.
I found the session content in the main
summit event light on developer/technical presentations
and more focused on big picture and directional issues which
is exactly what I was after this time. There were a few
sessions with technical content, for example Ed Kaim (a
Microsoft Product Manager) filled in for Paul Yao to give
the Building .NET Compact Framework Pocket PC Applications
talk. It was interesting to note that the development team
has the Compact Framework down to under 1.5 MB uncompressed
and that when compressed in the CE file system, the CF takes
up just 1 MB of your RAM, ROM or FLASH memory. Besides that,
I didn't notice too much else in that session that wasn't
either overview or review from the sessions at last fall's
PDC event.
GarTnered no respect
Probably the most controversial talk
of the week was given by Todd Kort of Gartner. He came prepared
with a colorful array of slides showing graphs and pie charts,
however, his talk and the audience response proved to be
far more colorful than any one of his PowerPoint graphs.
The Gartner research presented in this
talk included stats like:
- 13 Million PDA's shipped in
2001 with over 50% being sold in North America
- forecast of an 18+ % compounded growth
rate in pda unit sales over the next five years
- forecast of more than 30 million
units shipping in 2006. Extrapolating from Todd's graphs
a total projected forecast of approximately 70 million
Pocket PC devices will be sold by 2006 (specifically excluding
smartphone type devices).
One of his slides showed the current
shipments of PDA OS's and Gartner's projected five-year
numbers. The data on the slide clearly showed the Palm OS
loosing significant ground and the Windows CE OS moving
from less than 20% of the market to almost 50%. Most of
the Gartner data presented (perhaps all) was based on strictly
PDA type devices and ignored the smartphone market. Other
presenters during the week built strong cases that the convergence
of devices like the phone and Pocket PC where in fact one
of the more important future trends.
Somewhere about half way through his
slide deck, Todd mentioned "Palm" for about the
400th time and show organizers stepped in and asked Mr.
Kort to try and focus on the session topic as stated in
the program: "Anatomy of The Pocket PC Industry".
I must agree, the talk was definitely shaping up to be more
about the internals of the Palm PDA industry with occasional
mention going to the Pocket PC and the summiteers were all
gathered to hear specific details about the Pocket PC market.
From that point on Todd struggled unsuccessfully to hide
his negativity. The audience started to protest vehemently
on numerous occasions, taking exception to his claims for
example that the battery life of the new smartphones and
phone edition Pocket PC's were not going to be satisfactory.
Numerous members of the audience had had prerelease versions
of the Phone edition Pocket PC for a number of weeks prior
to this conference and several of them stood up and challenged
him on his claims.
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