From the perspective of any modern corporation, Steve Jobs was a misfit and never should have made it to the top of the world’s largest technology company.  Compared to his peers at AT&T, RIM, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Samsung, LG, Lucent, Nokia, and even Google, one of these things is not like the others.  These people, while they are for the most part talented managers and/or innovators, are not brave and unconventional visionaries questioning — and challenging — the status quo.  The template of a contemporary CEO simply does not apply to Jobs.. yet it is safe to say that he created more shareholder value during his split tenure at the helm of Apple than all of these combined.

Jobs doesn’t fit as CEO material because, as I wrote a few years ago, the design of corporations systemically weeds out and ultimately purges people like Steve Jobs, tending to favour evolution over revolution; hedgehogs over foxes.  Insodoing these institutions prefer making incremental steps toward that which can be known and quantified versus embracing risk and opportunity to make great leaps forward.  HP or Microsoft would never have brought us the iPod.  Certainly not the iPhone.  And the efforts of Apple’s competitors in the tablet space?  Hmph.

The lesson with the greatest gravitas from Steve Jobs’ famous 2005 Commencement Address is in my opinion the following:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

So what made Steve special is that, having ascended to the top of the technology industry ecosystem, he was seemingly a fluke.  Those dots — The iPod led to the iTunes Music Store and to a flattening of media distribution and to the iPhone and iPad and beyond — all connected back to a single leap where a computer company decided to sell some portable music devices and see what happened.  Jobs made big bets all the way along and knew that the dots would somehow connect down the road, and staked his personal and corporate reputation on quality in every regard.  No focus group or market research could have supported the decision to place these bets, and so no other CEO did.

Many of us think that we have the courage to make big bets.  Far fewer among us are given the resources and leeway to execute these broadly.  Still fewer among those are actually successful in both ideation and execution.  Steve Jobs danced on that razor’s edge and always came away unscathed, teaching us all that it can be done and that the rewards for success await.

Steve Jobs created new markets and made us crave things we didn’t know we would need; he helped us consume information and ideas in ways we never knew we could; he literally tore apart the media business and set forth reshaping it to be more consumer-friendly.  All the while he dazzled us with things which are ‘insanely great’ like a magician entertaining a crowd of transfixed six-year-olds.

The saddest aspect of Steve Jobs’ passing is simply that without him it will be a long time before a similar revolutionary will ascend the treacherous climes of corporataucracy to lead another hugely successful company to create things which dazzle and inspire us.  If ever.

Here’s hoping there’s another Steve in the wings somewhere.  Until then, we’ll likely have to make do with a whole lot less magic in our world.

SMS costs in Canada are already disproportionately high versus the unrealistically high costs for SMS across the entire wireless industry. This article suggests that SMS costs are, in the aggregate, 4x higher than getting data from the Hubble space telescope. Global SMS revenues are larger than the Hollywood movie, music and video game industries combined.

The quote from the Telus spokesperson is hilarious:

“The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal,” wrote Telus spokeswoman Anne-Julie Gratton in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, “This volume places tremendous demands on our network and we can’t afford to provide this service for free any more.”

The same article refers to the latest statistics from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association that pegs the number of text messages sent in Canada at more than 45.3 million per day. According to recent reports from IEMR the number of wireless subscribers in Canada was 20.4 million in 2007, and wireless subscribers in the UK (which has roughly double the population of Canada) for the same year numbered 71.7 million. Sweden, with a third of the population of Canada’s has better than half as many subscribers. Canada is trending remarkably behind nearly every comparable western nation.

These stats are great, in that they illustrate the problem with subscriber growth that shareholders and analysts are presently appreciating. There’s clearly something wrong with the wireless business in Canada, and it’s not something that the recent spectrum auctions are likely to quickly address.

Allow me to translate Ms. Gratton’s TelecomSpeak in a way that more accurately reflects what went down in the boardroom:

“The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Telus’ Business Development Manager, “This is an unprecedented opportunity to exact greater revenue from the customer base without spending a penny on service development!”

The Canadian wireless market has been infantilised by the greed and short-sightedness of our wireless carriers and the mismanagement of our asleep-at-the-wheel regulators. Whereas (according to Wikipedia) the average user in the Philippines sends 10-12 text messages a day, doing some quick math from the stats above reveals that the average Canadian use of text messaging is far lower at 2-3 messages per day.

Still, this 45.3 million SMS messages per month business must be creating a stress on the Telus service network, you’d think. Right?

Well, if you send 45.3 million SMS messages all at the maximum size of 140 characters, you’ll get almost 6 Gigabytes in total storage volume – or, roughly the size of the hard drive I had on my IBM Thinkpad in 1999. That’s a lot of data to store (in 1972, that is). At the end of the day, this means that the entire Canadian SMS relay network has to be able to sustain about 144Kb/s of data transfer (thanks to Gersham for helping me with the math). My Mac Mini has a 1GB/s ethernet interface and is ultimately connected to a (for Canada anyway) smokin’ 30MB/s internet pipe this means that I could personally store-and-forward all of Canada’s SMS traffic myself via my Novus broadband in Yaletown, and it would have limited impact on my BitTorrenting.

SMS uses the signaling overlay path of wireless carrier networks, and from the wireless perspective SMS messages ride in the carrier byte packet. As such it costs the network exactly nothing and uses no bandwidth that isn’t already in use — traffic load is the same on the network even if no SMS messages are being transferred. The networks themselves need to invest in this infrastructure anyway, so there is perhaps an added provisioning and data processing impact created by SMS for wireless carrier network planners, but it is not substantial.

For TELUS to suggest that this traffic is in any way meaningfully impactful to their operating costs suggests that either they’re lying, or perhaps they should go back to operating mechanical switches.

This is a cash grab. Pure and simple. But then, you knew that…

Apparently, the NHL is recruiting “celebrities” (and I think we need to stop ascribing this title to everyone who has a TV show, given that these days practically everyone does have a TV show) to blog about the NHL during the playoffs.

I guess, in some boardroom somewhere, this seemed like a grand idea. Among the celebrities teeing up to blog are Lauren Conrad (only known to MTV fans), Jason Reitman (who has directed one noteworthy movie), Kevin Smith (who brought is “Gigli”) and .. uh .. well, a list of people I honestly can’t be bothered to look up.

This is the same year when the NHL, which tries to centralize everything, unilaterally declared that all the teams had to abandon web properties they’d spent years evolving, and have their web sites and services consolidated and templated under a single umbrella– built and maintained by IBM and Cisco because of some sponsorship program. Many teams were angered by this decision. MSG Entertainment sued the NHL because of it.

In this “blogging” strategy, the philosophy of Centralization appears to be the recurrent problem. These Celebloggers (most of them) already have their own blogs, on their own web sites, where they have aggregated their own audiences and are driving readers every day. In their wisdom, however, the NHL is forcing these bloggers to post messages … uh … on the NHL web site, nested behind half-a-dozen menus, in the ironically-named “blogger central“. Of course, these “blogs” don’t really look like blogs … they’re difficult to read, difficult to navigate, and (big surprise) it’s a daunting task to even dig up the RSS feed link.

So, instead of capitalizing on the opportunity to introduce the NHL to new audiences via the celebrities and their channels to their own fans, the NHL has once again squandered the opportunity to gain exposure by centralizing everything on its own web site, which of course is almost exclusively (though infrequently) visited by.. you guessed it … existing NHL fans.

So what results are they expecting, exactly?

FIRST: MILITARY SUPPLIES Who Sold What to Iraq? The U.S. aims to hunt down companies that supplied Saddam. FORTUNE Sunday, March 30, 2003 By Nelson D. Schwartz

When the first wave of American soldiers swept out of the desert and headed north toward Baghdad, the Iraqis weren’t the only ones who experienced shock and awe. In the thick of battle, U.S. commanders discovered that the Iraqi army was able to jam the global-positioning systems the military uses to pinpoint everything from cruise missile attacks to the location of troops on the ground. “It was a technological preemptive strike,” says a senior military source.

It was also a prime example of how private companies violated the embargo that the U.S. and the United Nations imposed on Iraq more than a decade ago. Russian firms supplied the jammers to Iraq in the past few years–they didn’t exist during the first Gulf war–prompting a personal protest from President Bush to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The news about the GPS-blocking devices is just the beginning of what’s likely to be a series of revelations detailing how companies–including American ones–helped supply Saddam Hussein’s war machine during the past decade. That’s because in addition to searching for weapons of mass destruction, U.S. forces are scouring Iraq for evidence of who sold what to Saddam. Military sources have told FORTUNE that special teams are already on the ground, sifting through files to determine where Iraq got everything from rocket parts to fiber-optic technology.

Despite both U.S. laws and UN sanctions that prohibited all but a handful of commercial dealings with Baghdad, there have been persistent reports that companies from Russia, France, and China, among others, were breaking the embargo. And when the evidence in Iraq is analyzed, says a top Washington official who deals with trade policy, it’s likely that at least a few U.S. companies will face fines or perhaps even criminal prosecution. “The fact that American companies have broken the embargo with Iran suggests that there will be some leads in Iraq,” adds the government official, who spoke with FORTUNE on condition of anonymity. “Those of us in law enforcement certainly contemplate that things will be found in Iraq.”

Probing the byzantine web of deals that kept technology flowing to Iraq is a complex job. It’s likely to involve teams from the Treasury, State, and Commerce departments, as well as the Pentagon and the CIA. For now the main task is locating the forbidden goods–and their paper trail. Sources say units made up of both military personnel and representatives of the CIA and other agencies have been trained to operate in volatile areas inside Iraq, taking inventory of contraband items and poring over records.

Similar task forces operated after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and NATO’s intervention in the Balkans in the mid-1990s, but this time the job is much bigger. Because of Iraq’s oil riches, Saddam had a far easier time of evading the embargo than did former dictators like Manuel Noriega and Slobodan Milosevic. Fixing blame can be tough, however. Business transactions with embargoed nations are usually conducted through intermediaries, with China and the United Arab Emirates as common transshipment points.

To further complicate matters, U.S. companies might innocently sell something to a Chinese buyer, only to learn later that it ended up in Iraq. For example, says Kelly Motz of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, China’s giant Huawei Technologies is believed to have supplied Saddam’s army with sophisticated communications hardware even as it was doing business with the likes of IBM, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, and Qualcomm. “These companies might have thought they were just selling telecom equipment into an emerging Asian market,” says Motz. “However, it’s been known since early 2001 that Huawei has had dealings with Iraq. So any deals that might have been done since then are questionable.”

If it turns out that companies intentionally evaded the ban, government officials say they are loaded for bear. “We won’t tolerate the breaking of the embargo,” says Richard Newcomb, director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. “If there’s a knowing violation, we would prosecute to the full extent of the law.” In 2001, the Commerce Department hit McDonnell Douglas, a unit of Boeing, with a $2.12 million fine for improperly selling machine tools to China. Fines for dealing with Iraq are likely to be larger. And if evidence turns up that a particular firm knowingly sold items like night-vision goggles or gas masks to Iraq, federal agencies might impose what they call the “death penalty”–a total ban on all exports by the guilty firm. Criminal charges for executives are also a distinct possibility.

It’s going to take time to determine just who did business with Iraq. But the military, for one, seems eager to shine a light in some otherwise dark corners. “We will have everything at our disposal,” says Maj. Max Blumenfeld, an officer with Army’s V Corps in Kuwait. Documenting Iraq’s deals, he says, “will justify this operation and show the world what we’ve been saying all along about Saddam Hussein and his efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.” It could also cause a lot of companies to wish they’d never done business with Baghdad.

Canada’s biggest Identity theft? By Drew Cullen Posted: 30/01/2003 at 14:47 GMT

IBM has lost a hard drive containing the records of 180,000 clients of an insurance company. Details include “names, addresses, beneficiaries, social insurance numbers, pension values, pre-authorized checking information and mothers’ maiden names”, according to wire reports. Anything else? Oh yes, their bank account details.

But is it carelessness, or is it theft? No-one knows yet, but the hard-drive was stored in a supposedly secure facility in Regina, SK, at ISM Canada, an IBM subsidiary.

Local police and the RCMP (the Mounties) are investigating. Meanwhile, Co-operators General Insurance Co. has sent a letter to 180K clients this week, warning them of the possibility of identity theft.

And worse could be yet to come: ISM Canada has admitted that the hard drive contains records from other clients. But it won’t say who. So let the Toronto Star fill in some of the gaps:

The Saskatchewan government has confirmed the missing hard drive contained many crucial files.

Workers’ Compensation Board records, thousands of public servant pension statements, bulk fuel rebate applications, SaskPower billings, doctor pay lists and physician service data are on the missing hard drive. ®

———–

By Joe Wilcox Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 6, 2003, 4:00 AM PT

Apple Computer on Tuesday is expected to unveil a new portable product aimed at bolstering the company’s strategy to make itself into a major player in home entertainment, sources and analysts said.

The product, which is expected to be shown off during a keynote speech by CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld in San Francisco on Tuesday, will come with 802.11g and Bluetooth wireless capabilities and serve to make the Mac a more appealing “digital hub” than Windows XP PCs, according to sources. Machines with Windows XP Media Center Edition can be used to record TV shows, similar to digital video recorders (DVR) such as TiVo boxes, and catalog music and video.

What the product does exactly, however, remains shrouded in mystery. Some sources and analysts believe that it will be similar to the tablet computers released by Acer and others late last year. These are full-fledged portable computers complete with handwriting recognition and handwriting input.

Others, however, say it will be a device geared toward playing or capturing video. By incorporating both 802.11g and Bluetooth wireless capabilities, the device could connect to both upcoming Apple PCs (Apple has said it will support the 802.11g wireless networking standard) and the latest digital cameras and video recorders. A standard TV jack would allow the device to be hooked up to TVs as well and function as a DVR or as a bridge to let the TV act like a DVR.

Then again, it could be something entirely different, as the company has proven adept at confounding speculation preceding the convention before. An Apple reperesentative would not comment on new products ahead of the show.

One thing that is not expected at the show are new computers. Because of a relatively modest inventory bloat, Apple is delaying new models, according to sources.

Analysts note that Apple has all the pieces in place to deliver a tablet-like computer. Such a computer, outfitted with Mac OS X 10.2, Apple’s Inkwell handwriting recognition technology, iSync data synchronization capabilities and 802.11g and Bluetooth wireless would be a formidable entry.

Bluetooth would remove the need for a docking station as the mouse and keyboard would connect wirelessly. With speeds up to 54 megabits per second (mbps), 802.11g wireless networking would allow the transfer of large data files or video without the need of cables.

“That kind of device would make a lot of sense,” said NPD Techworld analyst Stephen Baker. “The idea of the digital hub is to try and tie a bunch of different product types together but provide a lot of mobility of your data–your TV entertainment data, your music data, your digital data. This kind of device would have that.”

IDC analyst Roger Kay agreed. “If it were really cool it would generate a lot of buzz and maybe even a few sales.”

A tablet computer, however, would be risky. These devices generally sell for more than $2,000, or more expensive than most notebook computers. Overall tablet sales in 2003 are expected to be fairly small: Gartner projected first-year Tablet PC portable sales of 425,000, or about 1 percent of the notebook market, while IDC said it could go up to 775,000.

Typically, Apple’s “cool” products have done well when they are relatively cheap. The first iMac, targeted at new computer users, and the iPod music player have sold well. The cube, geared for professionals and carrying a corporate price tag, did not sell well. And sales of the the flat-panel iMac, which was unveiled at last years Macworld, have cooled after an initial flurry.

iPod II But some analysts don’t believe the new product will be a tablet, but a successor to Apple’s iPod music player. The new device would have video capabilities and possibly a touch screen and wireless capabilities. As such, the device would be similar to the portable video player unfurled by Intel last year. Sonicblue is currently marketing the Intel-designed device.

“I think any rumors about a tablet computer are a smokescreen for iPod II,” said Richard Doherty, president of research firm Envisioneering Group.

Technology Business Research analyst Tim Deal agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple introduce an iPod with touch-screen capabilities as well as additional applications to include cell-phone connectability and gaming as it continues to evolve into a fully functional PDA,” he said. “A wireless iPod with bolstered display features would allow users to share and view digital (pictures) and videos on the fly.”

Doherty said Apple has been working on a video-capable iPod-like device for some time. “Originally, Apple had planned to announce iPod II at Expo Tokyo,” he said. In December, IDG canceled next month’s Macworld Expo/Tokyo. “We think the product can be announced, if not shipped now,” Doherty added.

The iPod II, in fact, is one of three principal pieces of hardware in Apple’s labs that Apple has shown analysts but not officially announced yet. The company is also working on computers that will contain IBM’s 32-bit and 64-bit chip and a computer with a 3D screen, similar to the screens recently unveiled by Sharp. Of course, Doherty added that not everything in the lab eventually goes public.

Whether tablet or iPod, emphasis on video would be one of the new product’s distinguishing features, Doherty said. Apple could further advance its digital media strategy around MPEG-4, the successor to the MPEG-2 format widely used for Hollywood movie DVDs.

“Nobody has better MPEG-4 tools than Apple,” Doherty said.

The ripe and the unripe During his keynote address Tuesday, Jobs also is expected to unveil new versions of the company’s digital media programs, or “i” applications. But consumers will have to pay as much as $50 for new versions of iDVD, iPhoto and iMovie, which will be sold together as a bundle. Apple released new versions of iCal and iSync on Thursday.

Bluetooth and next-generation 802.11g wireless networking will be important parts of the Macworld announcements, sources said. Apple plans to release a new version of its AirPort wireless base station using 802.11g, as the company moves up from the slower 802.11b that moves data up to 11mbps.

Meanwhile, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company apparently has delayed launching new Macs ready for Macworld until later in January, while the company sells out stock left over from the holidays, according to sources. When available, some of the new Macs are expected to include support for 802.11g and Bluetooth wireless.

The “quarter’s financial results will undoubtedly show weaker-than-usual holiday sales for Apple,” Deal said of the decision to delay new Macs.

Inventory information from distributors Ingram Micro and Tech Data indicate Apple is sitting on modest inventory–anywhere from one to three weeks–in most product categories. But some products are considerably backordered, such as the 5GB and 10GB iPod for the Mac, AirPort base station and 15-inch flat-panel monitor. Based on similar past situations, the backorders would suggest new products are coming in these categories. But sources said to watch for Apple to drop the 15-inch flat-panel monitor as the company replaces the current 17-inch display and adds a new, 19-inch model. The new monitors could debut on Tuesday, but are more likely to appear when Apple announces new Mac models.

No matter what happens on Tuesday, “The innovation ratio will be much higher than Apple’s 5 percent market share,” Doherty said.

———–

* 2002: The year in technology*

09:00 25 December 02

Will Knight

The entertainment industry upped its attack on the internet file-sharing in 2002 by introducing new and controversial “copy protection” technologies to prevent computer copying of music and movies.

The year began on a sour note when the company behind the Compact Disc standard, Philips, publicly condemned <“>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992271> in certain Macintosh computers, causing them to crash and refused to reboot. A piece of sticky tape or a marker pen was then shown to be enough to defeat another protection system <“>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992464> file sharing networks and connected computers to disrupt infringement. The plans have caused outrage and prompted some researchers to develop pre-emptive countermeasures <saw technological developments that promise to keep computer systems more secure. In May, the first ever commercial quantum encryption device was unveiled by Swiss company id Quantique. By exploiting the quantum properties of photons to transmit information, quantum cryptography can deliver unbreakable encryption keys.

In October, researchers at the UK’s defence research agency QinetiQ demonstrated the same trick through thin air, firing a stream of quantum bits <.”>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993114>. In the same month Austrian researchers demonstrated the first quantum calculation <,”>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991893>, made from a single carbon nanotube, was revealed. With a diameter of only 75 nanometres, the instrument can measure the temperature change that occurs when a few molecules react with one another.

The endlessly versatile carbon nanotube was then shown also to have an explosive side <“>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992389> of computer storage beyond current limitations.

*Number cruncher*

At the other end of the computing scale, meanwhile, the race to build the world’s most powerful scientific supercomputer gained momentum. In April, Japan’s Earth Simulator at the Marine Science and Technology Center in Kanagawa was crowned as the new supercomputing world champion <“>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993080> over the next three years.

2002 also saw the first match between a world chess champion and the world’s leading computer player since another IBM computer, Deep Blue, defeated Gary Kasparov in a controversial match held in 1997.

In October, the current world champion Vladimir Kramnik took on <.”>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992947>.

One of the more bizarre and controversial technological breakthroughs of the last year involved harnessing a different kind of non-human intelligence. In May a team at the State University of New York implanted radio-controlled electrodes in rat’s brains to create the world’s first radio controlled automaton <“>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992200> to 56.6 million, placing the country behind only the US in terms of internet use. And with a total population of over one billion, China could have an online population of around 257 million by 2005.

The Chinese government also increased efforts to control use of the internet in 2002. In September, the government prevented surfers behind the country’s “Great Firewall” from accessing the search engine Google, which caches many restricted sites. But a reversed version of Google called elgooG <.”>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992449>.

While Microsoft claims this will put security first by controlling what software can be run on a computer, critics allege it could be used <4086 https://ianbell.com/2002/12/18/intel-doling-out-wi-fi-money/ Thu, 19 Dec 2002 03:04:09 +0000 https://ianbell.com/2002/12/18/intel-doling-out-wi-fi-money/ http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1558861 December 18, 2002 Intel Begins Doling Out Wi-Fi Money By Michael Singer

Making good on its promise to spend $150 million on building up smaller Wi-Fi (define) technology companies, Intel (Quote, Company Info) Wednesday said it was investing in two startups.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker said it’s Intel Communications Fund division is plunking down an unspecified amount of cash to help Salt Lake City-based STSN and Bellevue, Wash.-based Telesym develop their products.

Intel has said it plans on making about 30 or so of these investments in smaller companies that have survived after their series A or B funding rounds. The money would come from Intel’s previously established $500 million Communications Fund.

Wi-Fi (also known as IEEE standard 802.11b) is an emerging and increasingly popular technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access in many locations around the world, including airports, cafes, corporate offices, universities, factories and homes.

The Fund now has completed three investments in Wi-Fi companies since October when Intel announced plans to invest in companies pursuing Wi-Fi technology. The first investment was in Cometa Networks, a joint project announced with IBM (Quote, Company Info) and AT&T (Quote, Company Info) back on Dec. 5.

Intel said it intends to use the technology from STSN and Telesym to complement its next generation mobile technology, codenamed Banias, which will be introduced in the first half of 2003.

“Mobile computer users will have real-time wireless Internet access from STSN-enabled hotel rooms and will be able do innovative things like turn their laptops into wireless speaker phones with TeleSym’s software,” said Intel Communications Fund director John Hull.

STSN provides wired and wireless high-speed data communications to hotels and conference centers around the world. STSN’s products allow for high-speed data communications connections in more than 120,000 guestrooms and 4,000 hotel meeting rooms worldwide. Intel Capital first invested in STSN in 1999.

TeleSym develops “SymPhone System” a voice communication software over wireless networks. The company’s software can be used on mobile PCs and personal digital assistants.

Part of the driving force in developing Wi-Fi is the emergence of the commercial hotspots, like those offered by Starbucks (Quote, Company Info).

High-tech marketing research firm In-Stat/MDR predicts the marketplace will expand from 2,000 locations in 2001 to 42,000 sites worldwide by 2006.

———–

NEW YORK (Reuters) – AT&T Corp. T.N , International Business Machines Corp. IBM.N and three venture capital firms including Intel Corp.’s INTC.O investment division on Thursday said they would create a wireless Internet access company targeted at workers on the go.

Venture capital firms Apax Partners, 3i Group PLC III.L and Intel Capital are financing the company. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

IBM said it would provide back office services and AT&T said the wireless Internet traffic would travel on its high-speed network.

The company, to be called Cometa Networks, will aim to increase the number of spots that have wireless Internet networks, such as retail stores and hotels, targeting 50 major urban areas, from Mobile, Alabama, to New York, New York.

An IBM executive said potential users of the Cometa wireless network include so-called “windshield warriors,” such as pharmaceutical sales representatives who work out of their cars.

The reps would be able to access the Internet through wireless networks in retail establishments like a bookstore, coffee shop or gas station, IBM vice president of telecommunications industry Dean Douglas said.

The sales representatives or their companies would pay for access to the network, he said.

The company is headed by Lawrence Brilliant and chaired by Theodore Schell, a general partner at Apax.

———–

SONY/Ericsson support Bluetooth in their current round of phones, Apple has already demonstrated interoperability with them in shipping product, and Apple has mysteriously incorporated robust Bluetooth support into OSX Jaguar.

-Ian.

On Thursday, September 26, 2002, at 04:23 PM, Anson Lee wrote:

> And while we’re on the topic of the phone/pda
>
> An article that claims to have stumbled across the Apple hiPhone.
>
> Nice rendering, but what’s with that Apple logo?
>
> -Anson
>
> http://www.eprairie.com/news/viewnews.asp?newsletterIDA48
>
> Apple, Motorola Avert Confirmation of Unannounced Cell Phone
> 9/26/2002
>
> ePrairie has obtained these three photographs (dated September 2002)
> of an
> unannounced Apple cell phone called the Applele hiPhone R4 CHICAGO
> (Exclusive) – A picture can tell a thousand words. Leaked to the right
> place
> at the right time, some pictures of some products can even tell a
> story of a
> new venture by an unsuspecting company that has decided to silence the
> word.
> Well, at least for now.
>
> Such is the case with Apple Computer – known usually for making
> computers
> and MP3 players and software – regarding pictures of a new Apple cell
> phone
> that have been disclosed to ePrairie. As seen on the right, they sport
> the
> grace and colorful styling you’re used to from Apple’s computers but
> in a
> decidely more mobile fashion.
>
> Upon confronting Apple with the discovery, Nathalie Welch, a
> spokeswoman for
> the company, wasn’t interested in revealing any details. In fact, she
> wasn’t
> even interested in confirming its existence.
>
> “I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that Apple is developing a
> cell
> phone or discuss unannounced products,” Welch said in an e-mail to
> ePrairie.
>
> Representatives from Motorola – a local company that has been known for
> working closely with Apple – also declined to confirm or deny whether
> or not
> the Schaumburg, Ill.-based powerhouse was or will be involved in
> developing
> the phone’s chipset. But several analysts, who say Motorola would be a
> logical partner, also say the release of a cell phone would make sense
> for
> Apple.
>
> “It would fit with Apple’s whole digital universe strategy in which
> the PC
> is the hub of your digital universe and the iPod (Apple’s mobile MP3
> player)
> is a peripheral,” said Kevin Hunt, a research analyst at Thomas Weisel
> Partners who covers Apple but hadn’t heard of a cell phone in the
> works.
>
> He added: “Apple has been very vehement that they wouldn’t get into
> handhelds because they think handhelds will go away and blend into a
> cell
> phone, so it would make more sense to come out with a cell phone.” The
> phones look much like Apple’s older iMacs in terms of the vibrant
> colors,
> prompting Hunt to say: “They do have some of the coolest-looking
> products.”
>
> Other analysts, though, are less convinced: “I’ve talked to some
> component
> manufacturers that say Apple’s going to do this and some that say they
> won’t,” said Dan Niles, an analyst that covers Apple at Lehman
> Brothers who
> has heard conversation of an Apple cell phone.
>
> He added: “I’m not sure how this fits in Apple’s current business
> strategy.
> I don’t view it as synergistic as the iPod. Yes, you can transfer your
> contact list [from your computer] with a cell phone, but it hasn’t
> necessarily been proven that people are using the data capabilities of
> their
> phones anyway.”
>
> Hunt says that Motorola and IBM have banded together to develop chips
> for
> Apple’s power PCs (the G4), and because Apple wouldn’t make its own
> cell
> phone chips, Motorola would be a likely vendor. He adds that the cell
> phone
> would probably be a combination device that has much of the same
> functionality as a handheld.
>
>> From Motorola’s vantage point, the sense is similar to what Apple is
>> saying
> but with the added notion of a sensible synergy.
>
> “I can’t comment on rumors,” said Amy Halm, director of communications
> for
> Motorola’s networking and computing group, “but I can say that Apple
> is one
> of Motorola’s most valued customers and has been for a very long time.
> Apple’s customers are some of the most passionate customers in the
> world.
> Every time Apple introduces a new product, they have the most loyal
> following of any company I’ve ever seen.”
>
> In terms of the chances for success in the marketplace, Hunt says this
> would
> be a very new market for Apple that would complement its own product
> line
> rather than try to compete with the big cell phone makers.
>
> He says Apple – one of the most “tightlipped” companies he’s ever
> covered in
> terms of speaking about products before they’re ready to ship – would
> likely
> begin talking about the phones in the middle of 2003 in anticipation
> for the
> next Macworld trade show. Hunt says the price point for the combination
> device might be between $300 and $500, or that of a higher-end phone.
>
> The pictures obtained by ePrairie named the phone the Applele hiPhone
> R4 and
> were dated with a September 2002 time stamp.
>
> By ADAM FENDELMAN
> Editor-in-Chief
> Reporter’s Beat: Telecom
> adam [at] eprairie [dot] com