Wireless Recap, April-June 2004

Now that I’m settled in my new position at Nokia, I’ve got some catching up to do on my monthly wireless recap posts.

My last installment was in my java.net blog way back in March. What I’ve decided to do to catch up is post this April, May, and June conglomeration, then resume monthly posts from July and August onwards. And since I’ve ramped up my wireless-related blogging on BillDay.com a great deal since March, I’m going to post the original entries here, then link from java.net.

Without further ado, here are some of the major wireless developments and stories from April-June in reverse chronological order:

• The JavaOne conference ran June 28th to July 1st; check out the June bits here, or jump straight to my July JavaOne recap (nested recaps, tres geek chique!)
• Sony announced it will halt Clie sales in the US (another clear sign non-networked PDAs are on the wane)
• Nokia overtook PalmOne in Q1 2004 as the number one seller of “mobile computers”: PDAs are dead, long live smartphones!
• I joined Nokia to head up Technical Services & Consultancy for Forum Nokia in the Americas (admittedly not big news for everyone, but at least it’s worth making the disclaimer so that everyone knows to take my comments in the proper context)
• IDC reported that the worldwide smartphone market grew 85% year-over-year
• Sony ceded the low end camera market to cellcams
• I WAP-enabled my site, again not a big deal to everyone, but it is interesting and instructive to see just how easy it is to enable new access streams when you’re using a good database-backed XML-based content management system (in my case the blog software WordPress) and also to note how WAP access to your site is becoming less and less relevant as more and more handset minibrowsers support XHTML