The Personal Communications Industry Association announced ten new companies plan to join its Global Initiative program for help in assessing and managing m-convergence opportunities. The program provides marketing, regulatory and technical business tools through various products and services, PCIA said. “Organizations need to know what their partners, and even their competitors, are doing in the m-convergence market, because those activities will undoubtedly impact their overall brand,” explained PCIA’s Jay Kitchen, chief executive officer and president. The companies that have opted to work with PCIA are i3 Mobile, MobileAria, Mobileway, Orange, Symbian, Sybase iAnywhere Solutions, Research In Motion, Roland Berger, Unisys and Wysdom.
Wireless technologies will use their reach and low deployment costs to encroach on the dominance of wireline technology in the broadband market, according to a new Allied Business Intelligence study, “Broadband Delivery in the Local Loop: By Land and By Air.” Wireless broadband subscribers, accounting for 2 percent of all users in 2001, will constitute 15 percent of the total broadband subscriber base in 2006, the study said. Total revenues will increase from $16.8 billion this year to $59.4 billion in 2006, with wireless technologies making a leap from 9 percent of total revenues this year to 22 percent of all revenues in 2006. ABI said that although the equipment and installation costs for wireless broadband technologies are high, the costs of deploying and maintaining wireless infrastructure are considerably lower than laying new cable of digital subscriber line pipes. Also, wireless connections are unhindered by the distance limitation from the central office of cable and DSL.
Toshiba Corp. plans to launch its new Genio personal digital assistant, which will run on Microsoft Corp.’s Pocket PC operating system. The PDA will first launch in Japan and then in the United States later this year. The Genio will feature dual expansion capabilities, allowing users to run additional memory along with wireless expansion simultaneously. This marks Microsoft’s 14th Pocket PC hardware partner.
