A New Kind of Enterprise Tool

The PDA has not had a very successful innings in the market, having not lived up to its potential. After the initial
euphoria, sales virtually nosedived, and a downward slope continued.

However, there has been a recent upsurge in PDA adoption, with an estimated four billion units being sold last year. It is not the pure PDA that is driving this resurgence, but the MPD (Multifunction Personal Device), if I may call it; if the name becomes popular, remember that you read it here first). The MPD is primarily a cellphone and then a PDA. With time, it has become easier to use, handwriting recognition has improved and megapixel cameras have been integrated into them.

Similar to a PC, it is not just hardware, but also changes in software that have made the PDA a more
robust and versatile platform.

Currently, personal preferences and applications are driving the markets for MPD, but the corporate market could soon see a push in this arena, once back-end applications have been mobile enabled.

A rush, similar to that in Web enabling 'legacy' apps in the dotcom era, would soon enable users on the move to access and interact with their enterprise systems using their MPDs. Such interaction is possible today too, but at a fairly basic level and limited to an SMS keyword based query and response system. 

The system that I am talking about would be fully interactive and GUI driven, just like the PC today. An ERP system could very well open up on a similar browser as on PC, but this time running on your cellphone/ PDA
MPD.

All is not fully hunky-dory yet. Global roaming on CDMA is still not easy. Internet on mobile devices also needs serious speed up. We have been hearing about EDGE for some time now, but implementations are still to be seen. But things are moving faster than they have ever before. And, by same time, next year, we will be far into serious mobile computing, than we are today.

In this column, I had once said that the cellphone could replace the PC. We seem to be well on that track with only one twist. The PC has moved to our homes through offices. The MPD too is making its foray into our lives, readying to become part of our enterprise IT infrastructure.

Will this be the end of the PC or the notebook? No. At least not for some time to come.