Revolutionary handheld organizer ships today in New York Metropolitan area; Hundreds of content providers to provide web content, e-commerce capability
Santa Clara, Calif., May 24, 1999 - Palm Computing, Inc., a 3Com company (Nasdaq:COMS), today announced availability of the Palm VII™ connected organizer, the newest addition to 3Com's world-leading family of handheld products based on the Palm Computing® platform. The Palm VII organizer uses a wireless connection and the new Palm.Net™ wireless service to enable users to easily obtain information from the Internet, conduct e-commerce transactions and send and receive instant messages. The Palm VII organizer is now available at retailers in the New York Metropolitan tri-state area - including Connecticut, New Jersey and New York - for an estimated street price of U.S. $599. It is expected to be available nationally later this year. While available for purchase regionally at first, the Palm VII organizer is fully functional in 260 of the most populated areas of the United States. The company has designed this phased rollout to ensure world-class service and support for the Palm VII product.
Hundreds of content providers are signed up to provide web content and e-commerce capabilities for Palm VII users. Right out of the box, information from 22 industry-leading Internet content providers is available for web clipping directly from the Palm VII organizer. These include ABCNEWS.com, Bank of America, ESPN.com, Etak, E*TRADE, Fodor's, Frommer's, MapQuest.com, MasterCard, Merriam-Webster, Moviefone.com, OAG, TheStreet.com, Ticketmaster, Travelocity.com, UPS, USAToday.com, U.S. West Dex, Visa International, The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, The Weather Channel, and Yahoo!. Additional Palm VII applications from new content providers including Bloomberg L.P., Excite, Fidelity Investments, Infoseek, mySimon, Prudential, Symbol Technologies with BarPoint.com, United Airlines and others are available for download today at www.palm.net.
A complete solution right out of the box, the Palm VII organizer is ideal for consumers, travelers and mobile professionals. The Palm VII organizer brings a broad range of new functionality to handheld computing, including the ability to monitor and trade stocks, conduct personal banking and pay bills, order movie tickets, locate the nearest recommended restaurant, access driving directions, locate local news, sports scores and weather forecasts and send and receive brief messages. The Palm VII organizer incorporates Palm Computing's renowned commitment to simplicity, compact size and elegant user experience plus all the features of the award-winning Palm III™ organizer. The product features a similar form factor to the Palm III product family and achieves weeks of use on two AAA batteries.
"The Palm VII organizer is the first true consumer information appliance - bringing wireless information access and e-commerce to consumers in one package that is elegant and easy to use," said Robin Abrams, president of Palm Computing, Inc., a 3Com company. "The people who used the Palm VII organizer in our recent field trial are using the device to manage everything from work and family schedules to travel arrangements and personal investment portfolios. We have reached a new level of personal connectivity. Palm intends to continue leading this industry by delivering breakthrough products and services like those of the Palm VII device and the Palm.Net service."
New Palm.Net Service Internet access for the Palm VII organizer is provided through a new Palm.Net service, which allows customers to activate and monitor their Palm.Net service directly from the device. A typical user will pay $9.99 per month for the service. An extended package also is available for more frequent users for $24.99 per month. The Palm VII organizer's activation process is revolutionary in that it is the first wireless device to offer unassisted self-activation. First-time users easily activate the built-in Palm.Net service by entering billing and credit card information into the registration screen that appears upon lifting the Palm VII antenna. Within minutes the device is ready to access the Internet. Subscribers to the Palm.Net service will be billed on their credit cards monthly.
Web Clipping: Fast, Inexpensive Internet Access The Palm VII organizer utilizes 3Com's revolutionary new model for accessing Internet information, called "web clipping." Web clipping differs from contemporary web browsing, which has proven to be slow and cumbersome on handheld devices. It is a means of extracting only a specific set of requested information from a given web site, eliminating the extraneous information inherent in the Internet browsing model, thereby allowing users to access Internet information quickly, in short, frequent sessions during the day.
Hundreds of Content Providers Support Palm VII Organizer and Web Clipping Many of the world's leading Internet content providers have already made their web content available for web clipping directly from the Palm VII organizer. Hundreds more companies have obtained the HTML development tools used to easily make web content accessible from the Palm VII organizer, and many more providers are expected to be announced this year.
The information delivered from the Internet to the Palm VII device comes from the original content source - the only difference is in the presentation of the information. Using standard web authoring tools, any web content provider can easily make its content accessible to Palm VII users. As more content becomes available, users will be able to download new query applications from www.palm.net or from the content source. For additional information on developing applications for the Palm VII organizer, visit www.palm.com/devzone.
How the Palm VII Organizer Accesses Internet Information To access Internet data on the Palm VII organizer, a user simply raises the antenna, which calls up a list of applications provided by content providers. By tapping an application icon, the user calls up a new screen known as a "query application." The query application allows the user to define the specific type of information desired - such as a stock quote, flight schedule or restaurant listing -- by selecting from pre-installed options. The user can then send the query to the Internet with a tap of the stylus, and within seconds, a web "clipping" is returned - a page of results catered to the user's specified request and specifically formatted for viewing on the Palm VII screen.
Because query applications reside on the device itself, and the wireless radio is not activated until the query is sent by the user, the process of accessing the Internet is done with minimum power requirements, so the product can easily achieve long battery life. The special formatting and compression prevents the consumption of large amounts of Internet bandwidth between the device and the Internet, helping to ensure fast, low-cost delivery of information.
iMessenger™ Software for Instant Wireless Messaging In addition to the web clipping application, Palm VII organizers come with the new iMessenger application for sending and receiving Internet messages wirelessly. The iMessenger application is designed to communicate brief messages to anyone with an Internet e-mail address. Outgoing iMessenger messages are sent instantaneously via the wireless radio. To check for new messages received, the user simply raises the antenna and taps an icon on the screen, and all messages waiting in queue appear.
Palm VII Features and Services In addition to wireless Internet connectivity, the Palm VII organizer delivers the shirt-pocket size, fast data access, long battery life and ease-of-use that has given Palm Computing® platform products worldwide market leadership. The product incorporates 3Com's award-winning, original set of personal information management functions, plus several key innovative features and services unique to the Palm VII product.
A tiny, built-in two-way radio enables the Palm VII organizer to communicate wirelessly via the Internet. Its flip-up antenna serves both as a radio frequency receiver and an automatic on/off switch for Internet applications. The wireless network for the Palm.Net service covers 260 of the most populated urban areas in the U.S. To provide security for electronic commerce and payment transactions over the wireless network such as those provided by Ticketmaster and Bank of America, 3Com has integrated security features at the device, network and Internet server levels. Additional details on the Palm VII organizer technology are available in a technical white paper located at http://www.palm.com/pr/palmvii/7whitepaper.pdf.
The Palm VII Organizer in the Corporate Environment Businesses can also take advantage of the Palm VII organizer's wireless data capabilities for accessing enterprise data within corporate Intranets, as the product was created using standard Internet and data center technologies familiar to web and IT managers. Because it is standards-based, corporate IS departments can easily set up a server outside the firewall that gives Palm VII organizer users access to enterprise data sources such as a mainframe databases or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
The Palm VII organizer joins 3Com's industry-leading family of products based on the Palm Computing platform. Introduced earlier this year, the popular Palm V™ organizer offers a sleek, ultra-thin design with a convenient rechargeable battery and a full line of matching accessories. The Palm V product has an estimated street price of $449. Also introduced earlier this year, the Palm IIIx™ organizer is the newest addition to the award-winning Palm III product line and is designed to meet the increasing mobile computing demands of consumers, the corporate workplace and enterprise applications. The Palm IIIx product offers twice the memory and expandability of Palm III and has an estimated street price of $369. The original Palm III organizer remains available at its estimated street price of $299. Palm Computing platform organizers currently hold a 72 percent share of the worldwide personal companion market, according to IDC (November 1998).
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