Thursday, June 26, 2003
CeBIT America, Part 1: Overview
Posted by Janak Parekh in "EVENT" @ 07:30 AM
OK, so I'm back from my trip out to the netherlands of midtown, Manhattan. That's right: I have pictures from CeBIT! And much, much more. Here's part one of four -- an overview on what I saw and heard.
The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center from the outside.
CeBIT America was held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which is located at 35th Street and 11th Avenue. Many big conferences, including PC Expo (the traditional annual technology conference in New York) are held there. For those of you who don't know New York, it's notable that it's well out of the heart of midtown, not near any form of subway service, and as such it's a pain to get to. Most people either suffer with the shuttle buses (slow), take a taxi (expensive), or walk. And for PC Expo, I'm indeed accustomed to seeing streams of people walking along 34th, 35th, and 36th Streets all three days of the conference.
Therefore, it was somewhat ominous when I noticed the streets were at their usual levels of desertion in the no-man's land on the west side. Maybe it's because it's the first year CeBIT America was held, or maybe it's the fact that we're in a slow economy, but the conference was not heavily attended. For those of you who have attended PC Expo, you know that it occupies most of the main show floor and the walkways between booths is absolutely packed, much like NYC streets. This was not the case at CeBIT. The floor was fairly quiet, and was about 25% smaller than last year's PC Expo. The keynotes were also sparsely attended (I attended the PalmSource one, which was filled to about 40% capacity, and the PeopleSoft one, which was perhaps 70% capacity). We toured the show floor in only about two hours, and this included spending the time to take pictures.
Javits' impressive-looking entrance area. Note that the registration lines are empty. Admittedly, this was late Wednesday afternoon, but the area was still very quiet!
Nevertheless, there were some golden nuggets at the conference. First, I had the fantastic opportunity to hook up and privately interview Mike Wehrs, Director of Technology and Standards in Microsoft's Mobility Group. As such, he's very involved in the high-level aspects of Pocket PC, Smartphone and related technologies and how they fit into the cellular and handheld industries. He is very knowledgeable and I was able to ask him about some of the hard questions: the availability of Smartphones in the US, Bluetooth in Pocket PC Phones and Smartphones, ActiveSync and more. Stay tuned for part three, where I discuss this interview.
Second, I was able to attend David Nagel's PalmSource keynote on Wednesday evening. This will be the basis for part four of the series, where I analyze what he said in detail, but it's very clear now that Palm has set its sights on the enterprise market and is working aggressively to play catch-up. I'll leave most of my insights for later, but in short, the keynote was very well-organized and David and his partners touched upon a number of important issues, including wireless data access, device management, enterprise application integration and more. (The one exception was the Sony part -- they focused entirely on multimedia, which has its niche applications, but ignored the rest of the issues raised in the keynote.) It will be interesting to see how far Palm can carry its vision; they have a long way to go, but they finally realize it.
But first, the gadgets! Part two of my series will be a photo tour of the show floor. While the show floor was small, as I previously mentioned, my colleague Suhit Gupta and I were still able to take over 150 pictures of various technologies. I'm still sorting through the pile to pick out the gems. In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures to whet your appetite. :)
Part of Sprint's current and upcoming phone lineup; from left-to-right, the Samsung SPH-i330 PalmOS smartphone, the Samsung A500, Toshiba 2032SP, the Samsung N400, the upcoming Samsung SPH-i500 PalmOS smartphone, the Treo 300, the upcoming Hitachi G1000 Pocket PC Phone Edition, the Hitachi P300, the LG 5350 and above the Sanyo SCP-5300, the Sprint camera and various Aircards.
The upcoming Handspring Treo 600. I'm still not quite sure how easy those buttons will be to press; they didn't have a unit outside for us to play with.
The Activu dual-display screen. I'll take one for my living room, please. :lol:
The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center from the outside.
CeBIT America was held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which is located at 35th Street and 11th Avenue. Many big conferences, including PC Expo (the traditional annual technology conference in New York) are held there. For those of you who don't know New York, it's notable that it's well out of the heart of midtown, not near any form of subway service, and as such it's a pain to get to. Most people either suffer with the shuttle buses (slow), take a taxi (expensive), or walk. And for PC Expo, I'm indeed accustomed to seeing streams of people walking along 34th, 35th, and 36th Streets all three days of the conference.
Therefore, it was somewhat ominous when I noticed the streets were at their usual levels of desertion in the no-man's land on the west side. Maybe it's because it's the first year CeBIT America was held, or maybe it's the fact that we're in a slow economy, but the conference was not heavily attended. For those of you who have attended PC Expo, you know that it occupies most of the main show floor and the walkways between booths is absolutely packed, much like NYC streets. This was not the case at CeBIT. The floor was fairly quiet, and was about 25% smaller than last year's PC Expo. The keynotes were also sparsely attended (I attended the PalmSource one, which was filled to about 40% capacity, and the PeopleSoft one, which was perhaps 70% capacity). We toured the show floor in only about two hours, and this included spending the time to take pictures.
Javits' impressive-looking entrance area. Note that the registration lines are empty. Admittedly, this was late Wednesday afternoon, but the area was still very quiet!
Nevertheless, there were some golden nuggets at the conference. First, I had the fantastic opportunity to hook up and privately interview Mike Wehrs, Director of Technology and Standards in Microsoft's Mobility Group. As such, he's very involved in the high-level aspects of Pocket PC, Smartphone and related technologies and how they fit into the cellular and handheld industries. He is very knowledgeable and I was able to ask him about some of the hard questions: the availability of Smartphones in the US, Bluetooth in Pocket PC Phones and Smartphones, ActiveSync and more. Stay tuned for part three, where I discuss this interview.
Second, I was able to attend David Nagel's PalmSource keynote on Wednesday evening. This will be the basis for part four of the series, where I analyze what he said in detail, but it's very clear now that Palm has set its sights on the enterprise market and is working aggressively to play catch-up. I'll leave most of my insights for later, but in short, the keynote was very well-organized and David and his partners touched upon a number of important issues, including wireless data access, device management, enterprise application integration and more. (The one exception was the Sony part -- they focused entirely on multimedia, which has its niche applications, but ignored the rest of the issues raised in the keynote.) It will be interesting to see how far Palm can carry its vision; they have a long way to go, but they finally realize it.
But first, the gadgets! Part two of my series will be a photo tour of the show floor. While the show floor was small, as I previously mentioned, my colleague Suhit Gupta and I were still able to take over 150 pictures of various technologies. I'm still sorting through the pile to pick out the gems. In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures to whet your appetite. :)
Part of Sprint's current and upcoming phone lineup; from left-to-right, the Samsung SPH-i330 PalmOS smartphone, the Samsung A500, Toshiba 2032SP, the Samsung N400, the upcoming Samsung SPH-i500 PalmOS smartphone, the Treo 300, the upcoming Hitachi G1000 Pocket PC Phone Edition, the Hitachi P300, the LG 5350 and above the Sanyo SCP-5300, the Sprint camera and various Aircards.
The upcoming Handspring Treo 600. I'm still not quite sure how easy those buttons will be to press; they didn't have a unit outside for us to play with.
The Activu dual-display screen. I'll take one for my living room, please. :lol:
