VideoAmericans may be a sedentary lot, but not, it seems, at work. How else to explain the many efforts computer companies are making to satisfy the needs of the "mobile workforce"? Laptops and PDAs continue to shrink and get more powerful, cell phones are turning into multifunction devices, and tablet computing continues to attract new players along with the substantial efforts of old ones.
This summer, Microsoft will release a new version of the Windows operating system it developed expressly for tablet computers, one that promises a number of improvements to the tablet's ability to "understand" handwriting and otherwise deal with pen-based input in more user-friendly ways (such as allowing handwritten notes to be embedded in Word documents and other applications). And new entrants to the tablet field will soon introduce cheaper, more-powerful machines that may essentially eliminate the premium that customers currently pay for the ability to use a pen as an input device and enjoy the greater portability of tablets.
Tablet computers come in two forms: slates, which have no keyboard and rely on a penlike pointer for input (think UPS delivery guy), and "convertibles," which have a detachable keyboard and are often dockable on a desktop, making them particularly versatile but usually heavier than slates.
While tablet sales are currently dominated by familiar names (Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and others), new companies hope to make a mark. Averatec will soon unveil a convertible model complete with optical disk drive and built-in wireless capabilities for $1,299. Motion Computing specializes in slate computers aimed at "highly mobile professionals" who need to walk and compute at the same time; field inspectors, health workers, and government employees are among its primary markets. Xybernaut Corp. builds tabletlike functionality into its arsenal of "wearable" computers; in one such application, an Irish company called Adwalker equips its marketing reps with computers and flat-panel touch-screen monitors and sends them out to music festivals and the like, where they conduct research, dispense coupons and other information, and provide an "out-of-home" customer experience to anyone lucky enough to encounter this mobile marvel.
Despite those new frontiers, tablet sales haven't taken off, but the market may get a boost should a rumored Apple model appear later this year.
Ironically, pundits suggest that such a device, aimed at consumers, would allow them to control an array of home electronics without having to leave the couch.
CIOs a la Chart
Counterintuitive factoid of the day: CIOs at small companies now tend to report more often to the CEO, while at large companies it's an org-chart dead heat between reporting to the CEO and the CFO. A recent survey conducted by the Society for Information Management (SIM), a professional organization made up primarily of CIOs, found that at large companies (defined as having revenue of more than $1 billion) the CIO reports to the CEO at 41 percent and to the CFO at 36 percent, with the COO emerging as the CIO's boss 11 percent of the time and various other executives accounting for the rest.
Those figures, SIM says, have been consistent for the past two years. But the most-recent survey found that at companies with under $1 billion in revenue, the CIO reports to the CEO at a surprising 55 percent of responding companies, and to the CFO at 23 percent. Two years ago, the CEO and CFO were equally likely to be the CIO's boss, at 41 percent each.
But Financial Executives International (FEI) found the opposite: in very large companies (revenue of more than $5 billion) the CIO reports to the CEO 60 percent of the time, while in companies under $1 billion, reporting to the CFO is the most common arrangement, with most respondents anticipating no change. The FEI survey base was substantially larger, with more than 600 responses.
Meanwhile, The Hackett Group says that CIOs report to the CFO at 26 percent of companies.
We'll keep looking into it.
A Wi-Fi Bye-Bye
The combined muscle of IBM, Intel, and AT&T proved no match for free service, so last month the would-be Wi-Fi giant Cometa Networks announced it was shutting down. The joint venture had been built around the premise that a nationwide network of Wi-Fi "hot spots" (transmission sites that give users of wireless devices high-speed access to the Internet as long as they are within a few hundred feet of a transmitter) would become a new (and profitable) form of telecom infrastructure. But with Starbucks and other companies offering clients free use of hot spots, winning paying customers has proven difficult.
Even with free access to hot spots, which now number more than 40,000 nationwide, Wi-Fi usage has not taken off. Research firm In-Stat/MDR surveyed business travelers at the end of last year and found that the availability of Wi-Fi or other high-speed Internet connectivity (such as the wired services offered by many hotels) would influence their choice of where to stay or visit — but only if the service were free. The average monthly fee paid by survey respondents for some sort of "visitor-based network" was a mere $12.10. Jasbir Singh, president of Pronto Networks, says Cometa's demise owes more to its failure to build a big enough network fast enough. "They simply ran out of cash," he says, "but this won't affect the Wi-Fi market as a whole."
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