Innovation and acceptance

PalmOne, maker of the Palm and Treo devices, announced last week that it will shut down its Palm.net Mobitex-based Internet service at the end of this month. Those who have not heard the news shouldn't feel too badly about it, because it was easy to miss--the service only has about 42,000 customers.

Yet Palm.net played an extremely significant role in the development of the mobile data market when it was at its most embryonic and most vulnerable stage. Also, it could be argued that Palm.net's demise represents a symbolic landmark in the transition of mobile data from a novelty solution to a mainstream service.

More than five years ago, PalmOne (then called Palm Computer) launched Palm.net to augment the usability of its increasingly successful line of Palm handhelds. It was becoming apparent at that time that e-mail and Internet access were a natural fit for these devices, which were fast being adopted by a group of folks that have since acquired the tag "mobile professionals."

However, in 1999, most cellular networks were not up to the task of supporting data users. All of the heavily-touted upgrades to GPRS and 1X RTT were still in the industry's future, and there were many questions and uncertainties about how soon these upgrades would come and how soon they would pay off for carriers by becoming avenues of mainstream data usage. So Palm.net used packet-based Mobitex to make the point that a small and growing user base did, in fact, exist.

Palm.net's plans for shutdown are helping to underscore a different point. Though data acceptance was slow for carriers in the early going, it is now the fastest-growing line of business for many of them. Users can now get the services from just about any carrier that they once could find only at Palm.net.

Also important, handheld devices such as the Treo, BlackBerry and others are not being left behind, as carriers look to support these devices in an effort to give different kinds of users as much device choice as possible.

Palm.net will be gone soon, but the future that it foresaw is finally here. Its innovations and contributions to the evolution of mobile data should not be forgotten.

E-mail me at doshea@primediabusiness.com