Word: flipstart
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...mobile devices are getting better. As if BlackBerrys and Treos weren't hard enough to put down, Apple will start selling the iPhone in June, and the new category of ultra-mini PCs like the FlipStart and the OQO2 is threatening to make computers as portable as cell phones. Two, wi-fi is becoming ubiquitous. Google and Earthlink have a deal in place to supply all of San Francisco with free wireless Internet access. Philadelphia, Anaheim, Calif., and Madison, Wis., already have it, as do dozens of other cities and towns. Within 10 years, most of urban and suburban America...
...received funding from Paladin Capital Group and Motorola, spent hundreds of hours designing and refining prototype keyboards. Theirs is more about thumb typing than table typing. They obsessed over the mini-mouse device that controls the cursor, called a "trackstick," trying to make it feel, in their words, "buttery." FlipStart took a more-is-better approach, incorporating both a trackstick and a touch...
...broader challenge for FlipStart, OQO and their rivals is establishing a market. Although 228 million computers were sold worldwide in 2006, and a billion mobile phones, demand for ultra-mobile computers may not even reach 150,000 in 2007, according to Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology consulting firm in California's Silicon Valley. Bajarin expects that mini-PC sales won't near the million-a-year mark until 2009 and may fall far short if prices don't drop fast. "To get into the millions of units, they'll have to sell for no more than...
Some analysts are skeptical about the whole category. "Not everyone is keen on the idea of thumbing his way through life," says Shiv Bakhshi, a mobile-device expert at IDC, a Massachusetts research company. An early review from eWeek derided the 1.75-lb., $1,999 FlipStart as "the three C's: cool, clunky and costly," while Infoworld called it "flat out unusable for work." Using it is a lot like handling a laptop with a shrunken screen and keyboard; it's fine for a few minutes, though you'll feel cramped working for a longer stretch. But there are strengths...
...iPhone, he could use that slimmed-down version for other mobile devices. Apple could employ flash memory instead of a standard hard disc, extending a mini Mac's battery life and allowing it to start up quickly, like a phone. A Jobs subnotebook would likely be bigger than FlipStart's but smaller than a laptop. Apple would have a distinct software advantage, given its focus on nongeeks...