After accomplishing the first clone of the IBM PC in 1983, and the acquisition of Tandem e Digital a few years ago, Compaq is proving not only to be a company that keeps up with the time, but also to anticipate time by being prepared when new business opportunities arise.
In fact, this seems to be the purpose of the Competence Center for Wireless Technologies. The Competence Center is a European project, even though it is financed by an American corporation, due to Europe being the innovative leader in this field. Presently, Europe is 18 months ahead of the United States, said The Economist magazine quoted by Kasper Rorsted, Vice President of Compaq Emea (Europe, Middle East & Africa).
The United States does not wait in a corner; but at least in the beginning, they will follow European advice based on a successful experience. Expectations are amazing: analysts foresee one billion people connected to Internet wireless services by 2005; they also predict that data traffic will exceed voice traffic, through the cellular phone networks now existing and those that will launch in the near future. It's also foreseen that "mobile commerce", or m-Commerce business will reach 150 billion dollars in the United States. It's a gigantic amount of money but Compaq' s investments in this field are also large. The company will invest 60 billion dollars in Europe in 2001 alone.
Europe is ahead in this field, not only because cell phone use is widespread and future technologies (for example, GPRS and UMTS) will be available very soon; But, because these devices and technologies are prevalent among the whole population in various ways. Therefore, there exists a platform ready to support new services and applications that will bring well known technologies, now tied to the net wire, to new devices such as palm PCs and cell phones.
Compaq's Wireless Competence Center's purpose is to prove that solutions available today, even if still experimental, are effective, and to persuade other companies of their potentiality. Compaq then encourages interaction between developers and client companies. And companies, if persuaded, will create the right solutions for the final user.
In the end, this means more sales and income for Compaq. Yet, at the same time, this project will boost a market that is about to take off but is not flying. Wap is only a dim example. It can be fun to have the latest soccer or stock exchange news on one's cell phone, at the same time; however, this does not increase the utility value.
The capability to create a personal Wap server and connect it to a company's information, such as a delayed meeting or a client who needs a document to be sent immediately, is more interesting. It's even easier with palm PCs(Compaq obviously suggests iPaq in this field). These devices can already perform tasks such as e-mail or document editing. Although, if they are completely connected with the telephone through local wireless nets or other devices by Bluetooth technology, their potentiality increases enormously to the point that they become desktop PC substitutes when out of the office. This occurs thanks to the compact versions of many well known applications: Citrix, Siebel, Microsoft and Oracle are only a few of the business partner that were there, not to mention AvantGo, that has provided a very good on-line and off-line browser for palm PCs for several years now.
More general applications, -for the rest of us", are still a ways off and the market is in the hands of the big companies, that now are Compaq clients. Hopefully, other companies will suggest similar initiatives in order to invent every possible new application.
The simplest the synthesis the more effective, and this is the thought behind what Werner Koepf, Compaq Emea Chairman and CEO states: "solutions are available today, not tomorrow. We only need to carry them out".
We, as the users, will choose those that are really useful.
