Then there's the whole word-of-mouth phenomenon related to Palm. As the hands went up around the room indicating device ownership, it was clear that 2000 was the year for Palm. At last year's PDMA conference, I ran into half a dozen Palm users. This year, I'd guess that from 15-20% of the attendees already owned one. And the buzz around the tables at the conference session breaks was evidence of the way this growth occurred.

Jeff Hawkin's unobtrusive little operating system stays out of your way so you can just do what needs to be done. And simple is easy to understand. In a complex world where we've come to worry about POP3 accounts, DNS names, USB hubs, conflicting COM ports, and "cookies" stealing privacy, "simple" sells. And, of course, free spoof advertising on Late Night with David Letterman never hurts either!

Speaking of Palm's success, Carl also referred to the recent Palm m100 launch as "the largest launch ever." Impressively, the product designed to target the student segment hit dead on. Some 90% of this fall's buyers had never owned an electronic organizer (that means Palm believes they truly hit the "incremental growth" sales curve, rather than cannibalizing existing model sales), and the vast majority of the buyers were, in fact, college and high school students.

Growing stronger
Palm acknowledges that the recent movement of handheld computing solutions into the enterprise environment will bring increasing requirements on processing capabilities and demand the raw power that new CPUs like the StrongArm processor will provide. Carl said we can expect to see StrongArm "in the next generation." It was apparent Palm believes any technical advancements that can be made transparent to users should be incorporated as soon as they're viable.

Bluetooth products will be on their way, as will "always on" RIM Blackberry-style server-synchronized email functionality (by the second quarter of 2001, according to Carl). Telephony "sleds" for the Palm V family will be arriving in the coming months. Yankowski noted, again, the recent announcement of Palm's plan to start on a clean sheet of paper with Motorola in order to create a new device that will define the convergent category between cellular telephones and electronic PIMs.

Palm's development model is illustrated by the following outline for successive platform development, originally shown on a PowerPoint slide as a series of circles of growing circumference linked from the lower left of the screen to the upper right:

• PIM: the "connected organizer" platform where the original PalmPilot began;

• Web PIM: sharing key information with others, such as coworkers, spouse, family, friends, etc. Think AnyDay.com and Internet connectivity;

• Communication Level I: universal email and server sync (what "wireless" enables);

• Communication Level II: voice recognition telephony. This sounded like it was sometime off, perhaps 18 months away;