Accelerating Wireless

According to META Group, 50% of enterprises will have wireless e-mail in
place within two or three years, which will spark a run on wireless application
projects. However, most projects will concentrate on some form of targeted
field-force automation (e.g., route delivery, service, field sales, and asset
management) that is an extension of an existing environment, rather than
general-purpose mobile infrastructure.

"Despite the challenges of less-than-universal wide-area wireless
coverage, we have seen a renewed interest in deploying wireless applications
during the past six months, as companies are beginning to spend again,"
said Jack Gold, wireless industry analyst at META Group.

"The downside is that this is putting increased pressure on already
burdened IT organizations to support users on various devices such as notebooks,
tablet PCs, PDAs, and smart phones," he added.

To ease the influx of predicted wireless application projects, enterprises
are considering platform vendors such as IBM, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft to
expedite the processes. However, Gold advises enterprises to implement these
projects with an overall view of strategic architecture and enterprise security
to maximize return on investment.

Home Networking Hits it Big

Home networking entered the mainstream in 2003 and early 2004, as large
numbers of broadband users installed home networks to share Internet connections
and electronics vendors delivered new products to send high-value entertainment
content over the network. According to In-Stat/MDR (http://www.instat.com), the
continued need for broadband sharing and a growing interest in entertainment
networking will drive the total value of equipment with a home networking
connection of some type from $8.3 billion in 2004 to $17.1 billion by 2008.

"The emergence of media networking continues to be the
most exciting part of the home networking market," according to Mike Wolf,
Principal Consumer Connectivity and Content Analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "Many
vendors have announced or released media networking products to connect
entertainment devices to networks in order to share audio and video content
around the home. We expect Microsoft's Media Center Extender technology to
accelerate this trend going forward into 2005."

In-Stat/MDR has also found that Asia will eclipse North
America for the region with the most home networks by 2008, rising from 27% of
all home networks worldwide in 2004 to 36% in 2008, with North America dropping
from 46% to 34% in the same time span.

Hard Drive Possibility for Smartphones

Tiny hard disc drives will allow high-end "smartphones" to reach
their full potential by allowing massive local storage for enterprise
applications, according to research published by IDC.

But the phones using these hard discs will not be for
everyone, as they are likely to be slower, heavier, easier to break and more
power-hungry than their counterparts with flash memory.

Figures from IDC and Gartner also showed that sales of
traditional handheld computers are levelling off, while smartphone sales are
booming.

IDC said that demand for storage on phones will be driven by
increasing network bandwidth with the rollout of 3G systems. Hard discs will
make mobile phones more useful for music, imaging and reference applications.

Team DQ