Monday, November 15, 2004

More bad news for the Palm OS…

but good news for PocketBuilder. A recently released study shows that the Microsoft OS has moved into the market share leading position for PDA, with 48.1 percent of worldwide shipments for new units. While Windows moved to 41.2 percent a year ago to 48.1 percent this year, the Palm OS moved from 46.9 percent down to 29.8 percent. This is during a time when the worldwide shipment of PDAs increased by 13.6 percent.

The article also notes that the SmartPhone market is increasing significantly faster than the PDA market, and that the current market leading OS in that space is Symbian. I expect that to change though, much as Microsoft has overtaken Palm in the PDA space. One of the few times you'll find me rooting for Microsoft....

Monday, November 01, 2004

More on the demise of the PDA…

More evidence of the shift from PDAs to the smartphone platform: Zelos Group and other take on the IDC report.

The SmartPhone boom may also be indicated by the renewed interest in that platform as a target for internet based apps. Yahoo has just introduced mobile versions of Yahoo Search and Yahoo Local, responding to Google's support for the mobile platform, particularly their recent introduction of Google SMS.

And as evidence of the growing support for the Windows Mobile platform for the smartphone, there are reports that palmOne may introduce a Pocket PC flavored Treo, which didn't do much to help out the share price of it's corporate sibling PalmSource.

While you may not have a decent keyboard on your smartphone, they do have a mouse for them now.

The down side is that if your phone is from Kyocera you might want to watch out for this. One more good reason to use a hands-free device: to keep you cell-phone from exploding in your ear.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Ok, I’ve been asleep at the switch…

Sybase released PocketBuilder 2.0 on Monday, I just noticed it today. Looks like they timed it to co-incide with the PocketPC Summit 2004 and CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2004 conference. The product won't ship until the end of November though.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

More on the shift from PDAs to SmartPhones

More recent articles on the market shift from PDAs to SmartPhones, including eWeek, The Inquirer and ComputerWeek. Of course, many of those new SmartPhones are Symbian based, but Microsoft and Motorola have indicated that they are working together to make Windows Mobile more dominant.

Monday, October 25, 2004

MobileStar Award

For all you PocketBuilder fans out there, you'll be pleased to hear that PocketBuilder 1.5 was recently awarded the Gold Star (the highest award) in the Developer Tool category by Mobile Village. The iAnyWhere subsidiary of Sybase also received Gold Star awards for SQL Anywhere Studio (Database Category), mBusiness Studio (Middleware), XcelleNet Afaria (Mobile Device Management) and Avantgo (Wireless Web Content Provider). This continues PocketBuilder recognition, which began with PocketBuilder 1.0's receipt of a Jolt Productivity Award from Software Magazine.

Things should really begin to get interesting when 2.0 comes out (RSN) with SmartPhone support. As WirelessNewsFactor recently noted, the PDA market has gone relatively flat largely because end-users are switching to SmartPhones instead.

I'm a convert. I've been using a Motorola MPx200 since February, and am planning on upgrading to the MPx220 when it becomes available (latest rumor is that my provider will announce on Nov 3rd).
Of course, if you must have a stylus, you might want to look at something like the MPX instead, which also has a small keyboard.

Friday, August 20, 2004

Wrap-Up

I guess the question that the folks who didn't attend generally ask is: "How was it?" Unfortunately, I think I was a bit to close to the action this year to give an adequate answer.


Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Enhancement Sessions

Oops! Somebody slipped up here. Major confusion.

There's no indication in the schedule where the enhancement sessions are being held other than "conference center ballroom level". Lots of people wandering around trying to figure out where they're supposed to be.

The tools enhancement session featured Brian Ennis of ISUG and Dave Fish (PB Specialist), Dave Dichman (PowerDesigner Senior Staff Engineer - Product Management), Ian Thain (PocketBuilder Architect), John Strano (PB Senior Systems Consultant) and Jonathan Baker (EAServer, Manager ITSG Evangelism).


Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Tools Keynote

The tools technote opened with a 'birthday cake' for Sybase, which apparently turned 20 years old as of today.


Database Keynote

One big improvement this year. Instead of trying to do the database and tools keynotes in a single session, they split them up this year. The database keynote was on Tuesday morning and the tools keynote will be on Wednesday.

The database keynote was introduced by Raj Nathan, who was followed by by Tom Rabon, Executive VP of Corporate Affairs for Red Hat, who talked about their relationship with Sybase.

Raj delivering keynote

Red Hat speaking during keynote

Irfan Khan, Director of Evangelism for Sybase, then discussed new features and options in upcoming ASE versions such as Dynamic Archiving and Dynamic Auditing. A demonstration of some of those new features was then done by Javier Cuerva, a Sybase Envangelist.

Irfan giving update

ASE features demo

On the iAnywhere side, Dave Nuedoeffer(sp?) discussed new features in a number of the iAnywhere products such as Server Initiated Sychronization. Then Alex Reif(sp?) gave a demo of some of those new features.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Opening Session

They haven't announced exactly where TechWave 2005 will be, but John did indicate during the opening session that we're returning to the west coast.

John Chen, Sybase CEO, laid out some arguments that is finally the year when wireless (unwired) technologies will take off.

John Chen delivering keynot

John Davis, the Vice President for Solutions for Intel, talked about some of the initiative that involve a combination of Inteal and Sybase technology. That involved brining a physician by the name of Juan Jose Ferreris to discuss how he uses a Sybase based technology (MediNotes).

IBM keynote speakers

Brian Vink, Vice President of Marketing for iAnyWhere made the 2004 Innovator Award Winners: Gavril Nanaziashvili of MediNotes and John Greisz of DB Microware.

Cindy Bean, ISUG President, made the 2004 ISUG Achievement Award to Sethu Meenakshisunderam (Sybase director of engineering for the Data Management Group), Luc Van der Veurt (former ISUG president and current member at large) and myself.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Registration

Registration was a piece of cake like last year. The email kiosks are back, as well as the internet hot spots throughout the conference area.

Email kiosks in registration area

Portal application running on kiosk

Getting to TechWave 3

They've added a lot more entertainment to the convention center hotel this year. There's a laser light show in the atrium every night at 9:30 pm. At least when I arrived, there were also a number of entertainers doing performances throughout the hotel. It may have been for the conference prior to ours that was just ending though.

The additional good news is that the hotel internet connection is working well this year.

Getting to TechWave 2

There was some hurricane damage at the Orlando airport. What I saw was broken window around the tram that takes you from the terminal to baggage claim. The convention center itself was unharmed, but there's damage in the neighboring areas, such as a downed tree in the parking lot.

Tree down in parking lot of Conference Center

Or damaged signage at the local businesses:

Damage to local signage

Damage to local signage

The folks from the power company doing emergency repairs were also staying at the Conference Center hotel, so one of the sights we got treated to was a huge line of work crews heading out to do repairs:

Power line repair crews heading out

Getting to TechWave

Comared to a lot of the other folks here, I got in pretty easy. My flight wasn't delayed at all, and my shuttle from the airport to the convention center arrived within minutes of my obtaining the ticket. A number of the other people trying to get here had to take alternate flights into Tamp Bay or even Atlanta and then drive in. I've also heard of people having to wait an hour or more for a shuttle from the airport.

If you're going to be flying between California, Nevada, Georgia, Florida, Mass., New York, Conn. make sure you look at Song Airlines. They're operated by Delta, but there are totally unlike any other airline I've ever flown. Each seat has a tv monitor with a personal choice of 24 tv stations, 2 movies or 24 music channels. You can also play games with other passangers in the plane or get real-time flight information. And instead of a limited choice of meals, they provide you with a menu which you get to select from with rather creative choices.