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Just six months ago, handheld computers like Palm organizers and Windows CE devices were largely consumer gadgets. They were useful for organizing your life and sending a couple of e-mail messages, but not much more.
Then came the advent of wireless trading, and suddenly the prospects started looking up for handhelds as an extension of the enterprise. After all, if they could handle the transactions, security and data exchange required for wireless trading, the little devices could handle the demands of interacting with corporate databases.
Essentially, the handheld computer as an enterprise device seems to have appeared from out of nowhere. "Mobile computing is moving so fast; it's a very exciting time that feels a bit like the early days of the Internet," says Juliette Sultan, vice president of customer relationship management (CRM) strategies for database vendor Oracle.
What's driving companies to cut their data down to size so they can run handhelds across the enterprise? Convergence. Not of different media types, but of market saturation, demand and technology.
On the market side, handheld computers have reached critical mass. Market researcher NPD Intellect reports 1.4 million personal digital assistants were sold in 1999, an 80.1 percent increase over 1998's total unit sales of roughly 750,000. The average price of a PDA dropped as well, falling from 1998's average price of $364 to $324 in 1999.
Still, it takes more than just volume to drive technology from the consumer realm into a business application. Until the tail end of 1999, handheld computers made their way into the enterprise only through stealth, and they didn't win any widespread support from IT. What's changing that and making handheld computers an essential part of the IT enterprise strategy is demand and improvements in technology.
Part of the demand comes from unprecedented growth in the sheer number of mobile workers. Meta Group reports there are more than 32 million mobile workers in the U.S. today.
What these workers want is freedom, prompting greater demand for handheld devices and apps every bit as robust as their old notebook...