Scribbles

Proxim, Inc.—The Mountain View, California-based manufacturer of wireless data communication systems has obtained government certification from the Hong Kong Office of the Telecommunications Authority for its RangeLAN2 product family.

The RangeLAN2 includes PCMCIA and ISA adapters employing the 2.4 GHz frequency band.

Hoping to spread the appeal of wireless technology in Japan, the data communications company has teamed with one of Japan’s leading wireline and wireless networking product companies: NTT Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (NTT-IT).

NTT-IT will market and support Proxim’s popular 2.4 GHz radio frequency wireless LAN products, marketed under the RangeLAN2 brand. In a separate announcement, Proxim has also signed Kanematsu Corp., a major Japanese trading company, to market its wireless LAN products.

Phoenix Technologies Ltd.—Boasting that the market for industry-specific handheld terminals far exceeds the much ballyhooed market for personal digital assistants, the system-level firmware manufacturer released its growing list of industry partners. The move towards a standard PC architecture is one reason for this growth.

Included in the list is Telxon with its PTC-1140 wireless pen computer, Symbol Technologies and the PPT4100, Casio with its EX-800, and Seiko Instruments with the SII HX-1110 Transpad, the wireless handheld trading computer used at the Chicago Board of Trade.

General Magic—After moving to a very spacious new headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, the developer of Magic Cap and Telescript also saw its fortunes picking up a bit as well. The company reported that it had narrowed its loss to $3.6 million from $5.1 million a year earlier.

The company also reported revenue of $4.2 million from licensing its software products, marking the first time it has had revenue in its first quarter.

SunDisk Corp.—When you’re hot, you’re hot. And SunDisk is hot, according to three leading market research firms. In-Stat, Dataquest, and BIS Strategic Decisions independently concluded that SunDisk was the leader in unit and revenue market share for flash storage PC cards in 1994.

As part of the results, BIS estimates that SunDisk shipped 41 percent of all flash storage cards, while In-Stat found SunDisk ranking first in revenue with $30 million.

Geoworks, Inc.—While things are looking up for the Alameda, California-based operating system developer, fourth quarter fiscal 1995 results suggest that things could be even better. The developer of the GEOS system reported revenues of $890,000, up from $605,000 in the fourth quarter of the previous year.

This leaves the company with a loss of $2.4 million compared with $3.6 million for the identical period a year ago. However, year-end revenues were down from $4.4 million in fiscal 1994 to $3.9 million for the fiscal year just ended. Nonetheless, the company feels upbeat about its equity and development relationships with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Novell, and Finish communication giant Nokia.

Nokia—Wireless voice communication keeps booming throughout the coastal regions of mainland China with Finland-based Nokia announcing the latest order. Under the terms of a recent contract, the company will supply GSM-based (Global System for Mobile Communication) digital cellular network equipment to Fujian Province.

GSM is becoming the digital standard of China, as Nokia earlier supplied a GSM network to the Beijing Telecommunications Administration in 1994. Outside of China, Nokia has supplied GSM equipment to operators in 23 countries.

Sierra Wireless Inc.—Betting on the future of modems conforming to the Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) standard, the Richmond, B.C.-based company announced the completion of its second round of financing. The round includes money from Charlie Bass (the Bass in Ungermann-Bass), Sierra Semiconductor, and MPR Teltech, a high technology company owned by BC Telecom.

Sierra Wireless makes the PocketPlus 210 modem that is capable of sending data over cellular systems supporting CDPD at 19.2 Kbps.

Intel Corp.—The giant semiconductor company is perhaps the greatest market cannibalizer of all, continuously striving to better itself and then belittle its earlier products. Perhaps it’s little surprise that the company continues to release technical details about its upcoming P6 processor.

The P6 will feature a scalable processor core and 64-bit packet bus. In addition, the processor will include multiple queues and an overlapped pipeline architecture to further speed along operations. It’s not clear when we can expect to see the P6 architecture available in mobile computing products, especially since the new chip is likely to cost as much as a foreign import automobile and will likely produce a similar amount of heat.

Toshiba—Already a big player in the flash memory business, Toshiba has entered into an agreement with Korean giant Samsung Electronics Co. to jointly develop a 64 megabit NAND-type flash memory chip. The companies plan to complete development by year end, with sample shipments by spring next year.

Toshiba already mass produces a 16 Mb version of the NAND device and will start sample shipments of 32 Mb memories in the fourth quarter of this year.

AeroComm—The Lenexa, Kansas-based wireless developer has started shipping its wireless printer sharing product, GoPrint. GoPrint uses 2.4 GHz spread spectrum communication to connect a mobile or desktop computer to a printer in a radius up to 3,000 feet (914 m).

The company also announced plans for a wireless LAN employing the 2.4 GHz frequency band, expected for under $350 per node. The product, code named ImagiNet, will also use spread spectrum radio technology and should be available by the fourth quarter of 1995.

Advanced Micro Devices—The semiconductor company recently introduced a new family of flash memory cards, known as the D-Series cards, capable of storing as much as 20 MB of data. The new cards conform to the PCMCIA Type I standard making them applicable to the widest possible uses including portable PCs and next generation embedded systems.

ETE, Inc.—The San Diego, California-based wireless communication developer has released its QuickFlight wireless architecture. QuickFlight is a set of cross-platform development tools allowing developers to rapidly create commercial applications that are enabled for wireless wide area communication and satellite-based navigation.

QuickFlight includes ETE’s wireless APIs which can be used with operating systems including the Newton OS, Macintosh OS, Windows, and DOS. For more information, please contact Howard Griffith of ETE at (619) 793-5400.

Data Entry Systems—The Huntsville, Alabama developer of the ScriptWriter pen-based computer has announced the availability of new Windows-based developer tools. The software includes a Form Design module to help developers import the layout of paper forms into the toolkit. Data Entry Systems also revealed new bar code scanning and battery charging options for its ScriptWriter line of products.