So where does accessibility fit into this picture?  I think the challenge
of making the electronic world keeps getting more and more immense.

>
>Published Wednesday, July 1, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News
>------------------------------------------------------------
>
>DAN GILLMOR
>
>
>
>By Dan Gillmor
>Mercury News Technology Columnist
>
>THINK laterally, says David Potter, and you realize that technology is
>about much more than personal computers. For evidence, consider a new
>operating-system venture by Potter's company, Psion PLC, the world's
>leading makers of wireless telephones.
>
>Potter is founder and chairman of Psion, a longtime innovator in the
>hand-held computing and communications market. The just-announced venture,
>called Symbian, is a partnership with Nordic technology giants Ericsson
>and Nokia,  with Motorola slated to join soon. It aims to set standards for
>the wireless communications and information devices of the future.
>
>Tellingly, those standards are not the ones being created by Microsoft
>Corp., which wants to put versions of its Windows operating systems at the
>heart of almost every electronic device. Symbian's technology is based on
>Psion's EPOC operating system, now used in Psion's hand-held computers.
>
>The announcement of the venture, in which Psion turned over its Psion
>Software unit to the new company, launched Psion's long-lagging share price
>into orbit. Some British newspapers launched hyperbolic headlines, calling
>the deal a huge blow to Microsoft's aims. "Hand-held wizard pulls mat from
>under (Microsoft CEO Bill) Gates," the Observer's headline proclaimed last
>weekend. The Sunday Times more soberly suggested Potter and company had
>fired a "secret weapon" that "could be a killer."
>
>Potter is at once modest and expansive about the venture, in which Psion
>will hold 31 percent of the shares with Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola each
>holding 23 percent when Motorola comes aboard.
>
>"This is not me or Symbian against Microsoft," he insists at his West
>London office. But he adds, "There's a huge market."
>
>Is there ever. The potential for what Symbian calls wireless information
>devices seems almost limitless.
>
>Today's digital cellular phones handle mostly voice traffic plus limited
>amounts of data. Hand-held computers, so-called palmtop models such as
>Psion's Series 5, the PalmPilot and the first batch of Windows CE machines,
>handle information with limited communications capabilities.
>
>Now think about what you get when you merge them: powerful hand-held
>information devices that also communicate digitally. So far, such devices
>-- the Nokia 9000 in particular -- have not been impressive. They've been
>too bulky, and too limited in their capabilities.
>
>"I'm not a believer in smart phones," says Andy Seybold, a Silicon
>Valley-based wireless expert. He says consumers would rather carry two
>small devices that do their jobs extremely well, and so far he's been
>right.
>
>The pace of hardware progress is letting manufacturers put more and more
>capabilities into tinier and tinier spaces. I'm betting that the
>convergence of hand-held devices and digital communications will be mostly
>about new kinds of devices, anyway. Bolting together a voice phone and Web
>browser isn't the point.
>
>Psion, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola see that convergence and subsequent
>divergence quite clearly, I think. They and other companies making new
>devices will come up with products we can't imagine today. Microsoft has
>this future clearly in mind, too. So the race is on to develop standards
>that will attract the makers of devices and the people who write software
>-- and network-based content -- for those systems.
>
>The partners make no secret about their desire to evade Microsoft's own bid
>to turn wireless information devices, or their like, into just another
>class of Windows machines. Self-defense always makes sense, but many other
>anti-Microsoft technology partnerships have been huge winners to date.
>
>Don't think in PC terms, Potter urges -- and he's not talking about
>political correctness. The genesis of Symbian wasn't in personal-computer
>industry desires, but rather the needs of the mobile-communications world.
>Microsoft may have gained near-total power over desktop computing, he says,
>but it's quite another thing to take control of businesses where
>entrenched, powerful companies see the threat and have a better
>alternative.
>
>Symbian brings genuinely interesting technology to the table. Psion's EPOC
>operating system, by all accounts, is a first-rate product. It runs the
>Psion Series 3 and 5 hand-held computers that have sold well in England,
>although sales faltered when similar devices based on Windows CE hit the
>market. More important to this venture, however, EPOC is well-suited as the
>core of the wireless systems' operations. Among other things, it's compact
>and reliable.
>
>The company is borrowing more than a few pages from Microsoft's book.
>Symbian will create guidelines for hardware and software developers who
>want to create new devices. Taking a page from the Microsoft book, Symbian
>will license the operating system to all comers for about $5 to $10 per
>device. Colly Myers, the company's chief executive, says the partners will
>get no special licensing terms.
>
>Psion's partners have invested about $90 million in Symbian, of which about
>$28 million goes into Psion's coffers. The remaining money will be used to
>finance Symbian operations. The telecommunications partners also are
>lending people and intellectual property to the effort.
>
>Can it work? European companies have some experience in cooperating on
>technology standards. The most notable is in digital wireless service.
>Europe's GSM standard, largely created by the industry and now widely
>adopted around the world, lets Potter carry his phone in many countries and
>know it'll work wherever he is. Try that with an American wireless phone.
>You'll be displeased with the result.
>
>Potter says the first devices based on the Symbian standards should hit the
>market by the end of next year. Even allowing for the usual over-optimism
>of technologists, I can well imagine that he and his new partners will
>prove correct in predicting annual sales of 50 million to 70 million
>wireless info devices within four or five years.
>
>It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft responds to Symbian. I'm guessing
>that many companies planning to make these appliances will play the various
>standard-setters against each other, just as cable-TV operators have been
>making Microsoft and Sun -- the latter with its Java platform -- compete in
>the set-top box arena. Where Sun's pockets aren't as deep as Microsoft, the
>Symbian partners' combined pockets could prove almost as bottomless as
>Microsoft's.
>
>However this turns out, the important message is that the Information Age
>will be about much more than the devices we know today. Thinking laterally,
>and acting on those ideas, we'll soon be seeing devices that change our
>daily lives in ways we can only begin to contemplate today.