Later this year the concept may finally be emerging from the collective techie imagination. Danger Research, a 15-month-old company based in Palo Alto, Calif., will introduce a wireless gadget that it says will display the full variety of offerings on the Net–from graphical images on the Web to e-mail to instant messages. It’s meant to compete with RIM’s Blackberry pager, which sends and receives e-mail, and devices like the Palm VII, the Compaq iPaq or WAP phones, which download bits and pieces of customized Net content. Danger’s execs claim its gadget will not only display exactly what you see on your Web browser, it will also let users access calendar and contact info on their PCs, open up Microsoft Word attachments and hook up a headset to their device to make phone calls. “We give people a true Internet experience,” says CEO Andy Rubin.
But perhaps the most fantastic part is this: Danger plans to do this with only 48 employees and a mere $11 million in funding from individual investors and Japanese venture-capital firm Softbank. It’s a classic postbubble Silicon Valley start-up–dreaming big, but acting conservatively. For example, Danger isn’t in the hardware business at all; its 32 engineers create the specifications for the hardware, design the software and develop the protocols for the service that will ultimately support the device. The company’s plan is to hand off the actual making and manufacturing of the device to wireless telephone service providers like Sprint PCS and Verizon. These big telcos, say Danger execs, will also do the marketing necessary to launch a new consumer appliance. “We provide a fire hose, and the carriers direct it anywhere they want,” says senior VP Matt Hershenson. Several deals with carriers are in the works but Danger isn’t ready to announce them.
Last month, after more than a year operating under the radar, Danger began showing a prototype of its product to press and analysts. It’s a plastic-encased device with a small keyboard (much like the RIM pager’s) that folds onto a display screen similar in size to the one on a Palm handheld. But all this might change before the device hits stores this fall. The carriers will be allowed to build their own versions of the gadget around Danger’s specifications and even name it. The unit is expected to retail for about $200. The Danger service, hidden on the back end, compresses content such as images and documents, and sends them over the airwaves to users.
The telcos have big incentives to license the technology and make the new devices, argues CEO Rubin, a veteran of Apple and Microsoft’s WebTV division, and a robot hobbyist in his spare time. The industry is committed to high-speed mobile services, whether on so-called 2.5 or 3G networks, which will transmit data at anywhere from four to 10 times current speeds, while allowing devices to stay connected to the Net all the time (as opposed to dialing in, as WAP phones must do). Now they need applications that will drive users to take advantage of it, paying back those investments. The carriers also covet the success of Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo; 50 percent of its users, many of them teenagers, regularly send instant messages from their mobile phones. Rubin & Co. think they can jump-start such a trend here.
Their biggest hurdle may be local competition. Motorola’s Accompli 009, due later this year, looks dangerously similar to the Danger prototype. Another start-up, Next Net Appliance Corp. in Canada, is creating software to enable similar Web-browsing and messaging functions in the current generation of mobile phones and Pocket PCs. Jim Forbes, editor of the DemoLetter Mobile, thinks all these firms are on the right track, finally creating that fabled multi-functional device. “There are a lot of people who would find one device they could use as a cell phone–for browsing, for messaging–to be tremendous,” he says. Let’s hope it doesn’t stay a figment of our imagination.
