Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Aug 20, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Aug 20, 2002 |
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Info-Tech
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Hardware Infomart's Kaii to reach out in Oct Chitra Phadnis
BANGALORE, Aug. 19 AN Indian kaii (hand) will reach out to touch the global hardware market when Infomart, a Bangalore-based company, releases a PDA (personal digital assistant) to the developer community in October. The hand-held device named Kaii will be the first PDA to be designed and developed in the country. In an unusual reversal of roles, the hardware design for the product comes from India and the software comes from US-based Lineo. Kaii is based on Lineo's Embedix, an embedded Linux operating system. Infomart is in exalted company. Kaii is only the second product of its kind in the world. The first one happens to be the Zaurus PDA from Sharp of Japan, which has recently become commercially available. The Kaii is pitted against Palm Inc's Palm Pilot and Microsoft's PocketPC. "We are low on prices and high on features," said Mr Devesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Infomart. While the commercial launch of Kaii may only happen sometime in March next year, he estimated that the monochrome version would be available "under Rs 10,000" and the colour version around Rs 15,000. (Sharp's Zaurus retails for $450.) The "pocket PC at the price of a Palm" hopes to sell at least 50,000 units next year globally. It will be more than a consumer device and is being targeted at the enterprise segment, Mr Matthew Harris, President and CEO, Lineo told Business Line. Infomart sees potential customers in vertical markets such as insurance, where agents may need to carry a portable computing device. Compared to notebooks, which are priced upwards of Rs 70,000, the Kaii becomes a significantly low-cost alternative. "We have very aggressive power management features," said Mr C.T. Arul, Chief Technology Officer at Infomart and the brain behind Kaii. The multimedia Kaii is `double byte enabled', which means that it can support any language in the world. Like a laptop, various devices such as printers, keyboards, external hard disk drives and so on can plug into it. The Lineo-Infomart partnership offers another unique feature - that of mass customisation. Users can choose hardware and components according to their requirements, bringing down prices further. What's more, the Kaii could become much more than just a PDA. With the same hardware design, the screen can be customised to create wall-mounted information boards at airports and railway stations, according to Mr Agarwal. It could turn into an Internet information kiosk or even a digital billboard (though a slightly expensive one, he admitted). The original Kaii fits into the hand and is the same size as Sharp's Zaurus. Infomart plans to contract-manufacture it through local and global partners. The second version, a wireless-enabled product with GPRS and GSM built into it, is on the cards.
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