A new kind of enterprise tool

The PDA has not had a very successful innings in the market, having not lived
up to its potential. After the initial euphoria, sales virtually nosedived, and
a downward slope continued.

However, there has been a recent upsurge in PDA adoption, with an estimated
four billion units being sold last year. It is not the pure PDA that is driving
this resurgence, but the Multifunction Personal Device (MPD), if I may call it;
if the name becomes popular, remember that you read it here first). The MPD is
primarily a cellphone and then a PDA. With time, it has become easier to use,
handwriting recognition has improved and megapixel cameras have been integrated
into them.

Similar to a PC, it is not just hardware, but also changes in software that
have made the PDA a more robust and versatile platform. Currently, personal
preferences and applications are driving the markets for MPD, but the corporate
market could soon see a push in this arena, once back-end applications have been
mobile enabled.

A rush, similar to that in Web enabling 'legacy' apps in the dotcom era,
would soon enable users on the move to access and interact with their enterprise
systems using their MPDs. Such interaction is possible today too, but at a
fairly basic level and limited to an SMS keyword based query and response
system.

The system that I am talking about would be fully interactive and GUI driven,
just like the PC today. An ERP system could very well open up on a similar
browser as on PC, but this time running on your cellphone/ PDA MPD.

All is not fully hunky-dory yet. Global roaming on CDMA is still not easy.
Internet on mobile devices also needs serious speed up. We have been hearing
about EDGE for some time now, but implementations are still to be seen. But
things are moving faster than they have ever before. And, by same time, next
year, we will be far into serious mobile computing, than we are today.

In this column, I had once said that the cellphone could replace the PC. We
seem to be well on that track with only one twist. The PC has moved to our homes
through offices. The MPD too is making its foray into our lives.

Will this be the end of the PC or the notebook? No. At least not for some
time to come.

KRISHNA KUMAR

(Sourced from PCQuest)