Until information access is as easy as IC, the market for handheld information access devices will be limited to customers that find the information sufficiently valuable that they are willing to expend the effort to pull it from the Internet or an intranet. The demand for wireless handheld computers will explode when ICs become available.
Here is an example of how IC could work for a business traveler. Mary, a mobile professional, is preparing to go on a trip from San Jose to Atlanta. Her airline and flight numbers for both flight segments have been entered into the desktop PIM such as Microsoft Outlook. Her car rental and hotel information have also been entered into the calendar. On the way to the airport in the taxi, Mary checks the flight departure time in the calendar application of the handheld computer. Next to the flight and hotel information that had been entered into the calendar a week ago, there are a few icons. The airplane icon is green, but the weather icon is red. This means that the flight out of San Jose is on time and that there is a weather alert somewhere along the travel route. Curious, she taps the red weather icon. An alert box pops up indicating an ice storm in the Atlanta area. Now she needs to make a quick decision about whether to go or cancel the trip. She sends a quick wireless message off to her client in Atlanta. Before she gets to the airport, the client replies telling her that the worst of the storm has passed. She notices that the weather icon is now yellow.
As she approaches the airport, she taps the green airplane icon and up pops the latest flight information. Her plane is leaving from Gate A-9 and it is on time. She relaxes in the Admirals Club for a few minutes before boarding the plane.
When Mary arrives in Dallas-Fort Worth (her intermediate stop along the way), she checks the calendar and sees that her next flight has a yellow airplane icon. An alert tells her that the gate has changed and that the flight is 45 minutes behind schedule. She sits down, opens her email inbox, and reads and replies to a half-dozen messages before she boards the plane.
In Atlanta, as she gets into her rental car, she taps the blue road icon. A list of turn-by-turn directions is displayed with an option for text-to-voice. She taps that button and the handheld computer speaks the first direction. After that maneuver, a touch anywhere on the screen results in delivery of the next direction on the route. The directions are available because the rental car information and her hotel were entered in the calendar. IC cells determined the address of the rental lot and the hotel. Another IC pulled the directions from MapQuest.com and saved them "behind" the blue road icon.
Once at the hotel, Mary taps the restaurant icon and selects restaurants within walking distance. She pops up a little map that shows the restaurants within a few blocks of the hotel and decides to head over to Chilies. Because the information had been automatically retrieved earlier, access to the restaurant data was instantaneous.
The next morning, turn-by-turn directions from the hotel to her client's office were ready for her when she got into her rental car.
With IC, information is "pushed" to the customer in the background. Compare this with the traditional "pull" process of using a Web browser. Most people have neither the time nor the desire to browse the Web to collect all the needed information. Using a WAP-equipped digital handset offers little improvement. The necessity to enter addresses and search menus is a significant roadblock for most customers.
I believe that a premium can be charged for IC. IC adds significant value when compared to "free" information on the Web, or through WAP handsets to "free" information services. IC is a service that will sell hardware and create differentiated services that will bring premium revenue to companies that implement it. I believe that the traditional approach of having users "pull" data will be a failure when applied to WAP handsets and palm-size computers.