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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Tuesday, October 08, 2002Dell aiming for $199 Pocket PC?
CNET is reporting that Dell's Pocket PCs will start at $199. Pocket PC Thoughts says "Dell isn't firing a shot across HP's bow. They are aiming their cannon right at the hull." Robert Scoble suggests that Palm is dead.
I'm also reminded that I neglected to blog Viewsonic's planned $299 device and HP's $200-$400 iPaq.
If the pricing rumour is true, I'm with Scoble: Dell is aiming at Palm, not HP. My reasoning is two-fold:
- Declining component prices aren't enough to achieve such low pricing; it implies very favorable licensing terms from Microsoft. The other licensees have been targetting $299 as the low-end.
- Microsoft would only be likely to grant favorable terms if they believe the result would be to expand the Pocket PC market, as opposed to poaching sales from other licensees (ie: HP).
Dell is a selling machine, I don't have any trouble believing that they can ship 2 million Pocket PCs next year at either of the rumoured price-points. If the $199-$299 pricing is true, Dell could probably out-sell Palm.
Pocket PC End-User Update 2 for Maestro
Audiovox has finally released EUU2 for the Maestro. Get it while it's hot!
Why you should wait for Dell's handhelds
David Berlind writes:
Unless you need a handheld device tomorrow, my advice to those who are looking for a PDA is to wait and see what Dell comes up with. While scant details are available, Dell officials have indeed confirmed that the company is about to dive into that market and that units could appear in time for the holiday buying season. [via ZDNet]
I'm with David. Whether or not you choose a Pocket PC from Dell, you stand to gain from waiting because Dell's entry will create downward pricing pressure. Personally, I expect to buy from Dell if they hit the rumoured pricing levels ($300 and $500 models) and come through with the planned peripherals. I've never liked the iPaq line because it doesn't offer built-in Compact Flash, and I hesitate to buy another Pocket PC from lower-volume manufacturers (Audiovox, Toshiba, NEC) because of the lack of peripherals.
If there were a thumb keyboard available for the Maestro, I would use it a lot more...
I've been wondering if this will prompt another round of companies pulling their products from Dell's distribution channel. Currently Dell offers a variety of handhelds from NEC, Casio, Sharp, Palm, Sony, Handspring, and HandEra. Interestingly enough, they aren't offering iPaqs and the only Jornada model listed has been discontinued. Did HP pull their PDAs, or has Dell never offered them?
Fiorina said HP's $4.3 billion research-and-development budget this year will help fend off Dell. "Dell is a channel of distribution, not an R&D company. I say to Michael Dell, come on in, the water is fine," she said. "To produce the next level of printing technology is a $900 million investment for us. Dell made an announcement to be a channel of distribution for someone else's product. Interesting strategy. The fact that Dell makes an announcement doesn't send us shaking in our boots." [via CNET]
Something else to laugh at today. If you aren't scared, why pull your products from Dell? If I were a shareholder in any of the companies that have recently pulled their products from Dell's catalog, I would be pissed.
Spam: It's more than bulk e-mail
CNET has an article about the misuse of the Spam label:
A preliminary study of results collected in the months since the product launched shows that recipients on permission-based lists frequently identify such e-mail as spam, Cloudmark CEO Karl Jacob said.
This is the downside to collaborative spam filtering: I say tomato, you say processed pork product. For me, every message that SpamNet has mis-identified as spam has been a legitimate mass mailing from a company that I had a pre-existing business relationship with. The primary victims have been Microsoft's Beta Place and Classmates.com.
From an SJ Merc editorial on the latest Wall Street controversy, access to IPOs:
The notion that New Economy companies were more egalitarian or ethical than those of an earlier era has been shattered.
I briefly worked for company that "Rode the Netscape IPO wave" -- the COO's words, not mine. He was proud that the company had gone public at a vastly inflated valuation, and it wasn't particularly bothersome that 75% of that value had been erased less than a year later.
The "New Economy" was littered with similar companies. Those that didn't suffer from declining stock prices used their stock as currency, buying other companies at similarly inflated prices to get some revenue on the books and bump up their stock price some more.
I don't think there was anything ethical about that. I swore never again to work for a company without a history of revenue growth, actual profits, and low debt. You know, the types of companies that a rational person might want to invest in. Naturally, the company I landed at got snatched up by another over-valued, debt-ladden public company with ridiculously low revenue and no hope of ever turning a profit...
Some lessons:
- As a bubble grows, the value of ethical behavior steadily declines.
- When the bubble bursts, ethics will suddenly become very important.
- It is always bad to be the one left standing when the music stops.
Isn't it interesting that, just a few years ago, nobody really cared about executives walking away with millions while their companies suffered or collapsed?
The other day Ian Hickson dropped by and added a comment to my post calling for a Pingback Retrieval API. My response is that the Radio community loved Pingback, but I still don't see any implementations for Radio users.
Having a Pingback Retrieval API, and encouraging the creation of stand-alone Pingback servers supporting that API, would accomplish several things:
- Random CMS can integrate with Random Pingback server. The end-user is empowered to choose whichever Pingback server best suits their environment (Perl, ASP, Cobol).
- Provides a clear path for certain classes of CMS, especially client-based tools like Radio, to integrate Pingback. The CMS folks can focus on integrating pings with the CMS instead of having to re-invent the wheel by creating yet another Pingback server.
- Third-parties would be able to provide Pingback services to end-users.
The Pingback Retrieval API doesn't require many methods: Register, List, and Clear would be enough. Everything else is an implementation detail that can be left to the developer. Better implementations might provide a web interface for managing pings and offer additional services, like ping-forwarding via email/RSS/Trackback.
If you build it, they will come...
I'll put my money where my mouth is: Add a Pingback Retrieval API to the official spec and I will commit to building a reference implementation and hosting it until such time as it can no longer be supported by my web host.
