Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Technology

Circus roboticus
A troupe of robots forces audiences to confront the terrors of late 20th century life.
By Mark Gimein
[09/27/99]

Silicon Follies
Silicon Follies
Chapter 56: Barry's requiem -- Bill Gates, golf and marijuana
By Thomas Scoville
[09/25/99]

21st Challenge
21st Challenge No. 26 results
The ultimate high-tech résumé
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
[09/25/99]

Pat McGovern's "Technology Publishing for Dummies"
How did IDG's chairman build a $2.35 billion business?
By Chris Sandlund
[09/24/99]

Cool rules
Why are some of the best minds of our generation working on a better way to send out party invitations?
By Mark Gimein
[09/22/99]

Complete archives for Technology

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Borland/Inprise competed very successfully with Microsoft for more than 10 years, until Microsoft's position in operating systems became so dominant that it became very hard to grow a profitable professional tools business. The main lesson here is to make sure that a new business model remains viable even if a larger competitor expands its share of a related market.

When building Starfish, and now LightSurf, we made sure that we focused on markets that are new, that are growing fast, and where there is an assurance of diversity. Wireless Internet is growing super fast because one of the most desired and popular devices in the world is the cell phone. Within the next three years, most digital cell phones will also be wireless Internet devices. That's hundreds of millions of new wireless Internet devices, and diversity is assured because the wireless world is already diverse with key players such as Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson. Nobody is at risk of establishing a monopoly at this point.

Do you think that the Internet, compared with other markets, is more welcoming to diversity and innovation?

Absolutely. By definition the Internet is an open environment, and I think the Internet will not accept a dominant player. You know, when AOL tries to play tricks with its instant messaging, people say, "Hey, that's horseshit, you can't do that. You make Microsoft look good when you do that." I think the Internet has a global conscience that a closed environment like the PC-world doesn't have. It's going to be very hard for anyone to eat up the Internet market.

Motorola would love to be the monopoly in wireless Internet, and so would Nokia, but they won't be. The pain of switching cell phones is far less than the pain of switching your personal computer.

What else attracts you to the Internet?

It's a technology-driven environment, which some people may forget. A lot of the so-called heroes of the Internet are basically glorified retailers and mail-order catalogs. They're extremely successful financially, but from a technology standpoint there's not much innovation there. But right now, wireless Internet is all about innovation because it's a new frontier. We're talking now about the Internet becoming a complete, empowering, universal way of networking, not just in your cubicle, but anywhere, anytime. I think we're going to see the Internet enable two-way communications in a much more powerful way, with medical applications, sound, images and other applications. We haven't seen anything yet compared to what's going to happen with wireless Internet.

Is your focus on mobile computing a break from your programming and tools background, or was it a logical evolution?

With Starfish and now LightSurf, Sonia Lee and myself looked at the "next step." I like to say that in the 1970s with the Micral, we built the first PC. In the 1980s we brought object computing to the PC with the best rapid application development tools. Now in the 1990s we've focused on the smaller devices and on wireless Internet. My career has always been focused on developing efficient technology that is innovative, fast and compact, which also are key elements to success in the wireless Internet market. It's a very challenging technical world that calls on my entire engineering background, because there are super-scalable server components, ultra-small programs embedded in the devices, and then there's desktop programming to make applications work with Outlook or other systems. So it takes a lot of know-how in many different areas, and that's what makes this world a lot of fun.

What are some of the main obstacles to making the true wireless Internet a reality?

For the industry, infrastructure is the biggest risk, no question. Fortunately, we see billions of dollars being invested in wireless infrastructure worldwide, so the question is not whether it's going to happen, but when. I say certainly less than three years.

We recently saw how expensive and risky the infrastructure market can be when satellite communications company Iridium declared bankruptcy. Was that a company-specific execution problem, or symptomatic of an industry-wide weakness?

I think Iridium never really understood its own business model. There's a tremendous market for the infrastructure they've built, but not the market they decided to go after. Iridium went after businesspeople with a world phone, but the phone didn't work inside any office building because it was line-of-sight -- you had to go outside to get a connection! I don't know what they were thinking there.

But they can still leverage that infrastructure in more specific markets. For example, forget the telephone and look at Iridium's two-way pager application. It's the only global pager you can get today, and that is a tremendous product that they really haven't marketed. I know because I use one myself. I was recently in New Zealand on a snowboarding trip, and I received a page in the middle of the Southern Alps, close to Antarctica. Nothing else could reach me there. I will pay a premium for that, and many other people will, too. Cellular phones are not everything. In fact, I think global wireless messaging is more interesting than cellular phones.

So even with all your interests outside of technology -- sailing, snowboarding, your jazz band -- it sounds like your career in technology isn't ending anytime soon.

I love what I do. My family have been engineers for five generations and I think that we may have had a mutation in our gene pool. But to keep things fresh I'm trying not to do the same thing twice. There comes a time when you don't do things for money, you do them for the fun. It's the same reason, probably, that Miles Davis was playing for so long. Miles didn't have to play trumpet all his life, he didn't have to make a living, but he wanted to play. And I feel very fortunate that that's the case for me.
salon.com | Sept. 27, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon