Palm Computing Inc., an affiliate of 3Com Corp., introduced the Palm VII personal digital assistant at the Palm Computing Platform Worldwide Developer Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., featuring out-of-the-box wireless connectivity to the Internet, World Wide Web and instant two-way personal communications.
Through various partnerships with wireless data and Internet companies, the Palm VII gives users the ability to obtain Internet information such as flight schedules and news headlines, as well as conduct online transactions like stock trades and ticket purchasing.
BellSouth Wireless Data will provide the underlying wireless data network, reselling the service to Palm. The company also created the wireless subscriber management function, which allows for over-the-air service activation.
“This really brings the power of wireless data to the consumer marketplace,” said Bill Lenahan, president and chief executive officer of BellSouth Wireless Data, pointing out that the Palm series of PDAs has become an extremely popular consumer product. The new device is the same size as previous Palm models.
The Palm VII is not a pager, which can receive messages all the time. Rather, the user, by extending the antenna, activates the wireless connectivity option and essentially “logs on” to BSWD’s network to connect with the Internet. Users then may take advantage of the Web-based information services, e-commerce options and messaging abilities.
The device has a “Web clipping” feature, through which users can access only the Web content they need, as opposed to the entire site accessed by desktop browsers. Internet content providers must first develop sites accessible by the Web clipping feature and make agreements with Palm for information and e-commerce services.
To date some 22 companies have done so, including ABCNEWS.com, Bank of America, ESPN.com, E*Trade, Fodor’s, MapQuest, MasterCard, Moviefone, Ticketmaster, United Parcel Service, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition and the Weather Channel. Palm announced a developer program to attract other Web developers and Internet content providers to the Palm VII platform.
Both Palm and BellSouth heavily emphasized the out-of-the-box, over-the-air instant service activation feature, called wireless subscriber management.
“It’s a unique feature Palm is the first to use,” Lenahan said. “We always thought that to get to the consumer, you have to have an easy way to access the network.”
Most ways of accessing the Internet require the vendor to include a modem with a unique serial number that must be authenticated to determine who is using the network. With the wireless subscriber management system, the modems have a generic serial number, and the network assigns the user the special number needed to activate the device.
“For wireless Internet access to be viable on a handheld device, it first had to be made simple, fast and affordable,” said Janice Roberts, senior vice president of 3Com and acting president of Palm. “This required a number of technical advancements and an entirely new approach to moving information from the Internet to an individual.”
The iMessenger two-way Internet messaging service is made available through Netscape Communications Corp.’s Messaging Server Hosting Edition software and its Directory Server software. When customers activate service, Netscape’s server automatically creates the new user account.
Lucent Technologies Inc. said its Microelectronics Group provided the digital signal processor that provides the wireless connection in the device, one of the first times a DSP has been used in a handheld organizer. The Peace of Mind Processor 15 chip is what allows the Palm VII to communicate with BellSouth’s Mobitex network.
Key to the chip is its low power consumption, which allows the device to be powered from two AAA disposable batteries.
Other partners playing pivotal roles include Certicom, which provided its Elliptic Curve cryptography technology for wireless encryption security, and Portal Software, which is supplying the billing and subscriber management software.
There will be two pricing packages for the data service, $10 for 50 kilobits of data a month and $25 for 150 kilobits of data a month.
Palm will begin field trials in early 1999 and plans to make the Palm VII commercially available later in the year. The device will retail for about $800, the company said.
