WIRELESS HANDHELDS
Treo 600 Launch in NYC, "Mission: Possible"
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President and COO, Ed Colligan presents the features of the Treo. Behind him is a converted bank vault with the Treos on display. |
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Third party players for Enterprise apps. |
Greg Shirai, Director of Product Marketing, demonstrates the new Treo. |
Today, the first launch party for the Treo 600 in the US was held at the Vine Restaurant here in NYC. The major focus was the use of the Treo 600 as the optimal converged handheld for wireless cell access to Enterprise applications.
Ed Colligan, President and COO of Handspring, mentioned his company's interest in medical vertical markets. He said that 2/3's of physicians who use handhelds are using the Palm platform. As examples of current applications, he mentioned ePocrates and its wireless sync'ing capabilities via AvantGo, and prescription writing software that he said was under development.
This event provided an opportunity to speak with the lead design and technical people (who are often difficult to contact within most tech companies), who enthusiastically talked about the features and future development of the Treo family.
I also had the chance to speak with reps from Sprint, Seven and Good about their security solutions for Enterprise solutions in light of the HIPAA regulations.
It's unfortunate that for the most part when the word "wireless" is mentioned in regard to medical apps, most automatically assume you're talking about wi-fi. Cetainly, at this time, 802.11b is being widely discussed in the media, but CDMA 1xRTT networks such as Sprint's and the promise of a true 3G network in the US, provide the ubiquity and increasing bandwidth that make these cell data technologies attractive for clinical support, as well as providing a "one-device" solution, that you can grab and shoove into your pocket as you run out of door every morning.
"Convergent Evolution"
"Convergent evolution refers to the process whereby unrelated or distantly related species become very similar in looks and habits through adapting to similar environments or requirements."
This is the definition of the biological term. But in a sense it applies to the design evolution of handhelds. In this case, I'm referring to the quest to come up with the optimal design of a "converged" device. You see in this side-by-side comparison with a Pocket PC implementation by HP, and I would guess the other manufacturers as well, will realize that the thumbboard with a portrait screen will evolve to this configuration.
You have to give credit to Hawkins, et. al. at Handspring for coming up with the design that would eventually become accepted as the optimum for "one-device" handhelds.
8:48:21 PM 
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