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San Jose - No one knows what shape wireless connectivity will eventually take, but it has become a Holy Grail for chip suppliers rapidly rolling out solutions for everything from the converged handheld all-in-one communications appliance to an Internet thermos.
At the Embedded Systems Conference here and the PCIA Global XChange show in Chicago last week, several chip companies said they are developing devices to address high-bandwidth Internet, voice, data, and related services for wireless handheld appliances.
Some observers, like Hans Geyer, vice president of Intel Corp.'s Cellular Communications Division in Folsom, Calif., expect little delineation between a cellular handset and a PDA within two or three years, but others debated how quickly and completely the convergence will occur.
"Do consumers really want to make phone calls on their PDA?" asked Jeff Beir of Berkeley Design Research, Berkeley, Calif. "The converged cell phone and PDA has been tried before, and it wasn't successful. It's not clear that is really the way things need to go."
However, Jack Quinn, an analyst at MicroLogic Research in Phoenix, expects the market to readily accept the converged communication device. "I think it will be a tremendous market," he said.
"Given a fold-out keyboard, and with the understanding of the restraints of the display size, there is no reason that in a year or two, a PDA won't be able to do what a laptop computer does today."
This "what or when?" debate hasn't deterred chip makers.
Texas Instruments Inc., which has earned a commanding presence with its DSP/ARM-based solution in cellular handsets, revealed that it will develop a 3G wireless product for Handspring Corp.'s line of Visor PDAs.
The announcement was a potential blow to Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS), whose Dragonball processors are used in most PDAs, including the Visor and 3Com Corp.'s Palm PDAs.
Officials at 3Com have said they are evaluating the ARM-processor architecture for future Palm devices, and speculation has been rampant that 3Com may turn to Intel's recently announced XScale, a second-generation version of the Strong-ARM processor.
"Dragonball has dominance in the market, and can be found in 70% to 80% of all PDAs," said Kyle Harper, business manager of emerging markets at the Wireless Communications...