FRAMINGHAM (10-06-95) - Sun Microsystems Inc. is diving into consumer markets as it tries to broaden the scope of its Unix hardware and software business, Sun Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy said this week.
Sun's technology will be embedded in a wide range of products, from TV set-top boxes to Internet devices, McNealy said at Telecom '95 in Geneva.
Some Sun users said they could see the need for handheld devices to access Internet servers. But others view portable Internet devices as little more than accessories.
"There may be a niche for people who just want to read information off the Internet," said Pompi Malik, director of information systems at Brewers Retail in Mississauga, Ontario.
Analysts said the Mountain View, Calif., vendor faces an uphill fight against consumer-product heavyweight Hewlett-Packard Co. HP is expanding its retail presence next year with home PCs, handheld devices and Internet products.
"They're more likely to be outconsumered by HP because HP has the distribution channels," said George Weiss, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc., in reference to HP's printer and PC units. Unlike HP, Sun doesn't sell PCs or palmtop computers.
McNealy offered few details about future products, but Sun this week indicated its expansion in the following areas:
--Sun this week will announce an Interactive Services Group, which will focus on enterprise systems that use multimedia servers to distribute applications on networks.
--Sun's servers are part of a consumer-oriented video server system from Thomson Multimedia, S.A. in Paris that includes set-top boxes.
--Sun is co-developing an Internet-ready handheld device with Toshiba Corp. in Japan. The device would be built by Toshiba but could be marketed globally by both companies, Sun executives said. The device would access Sun's Java applications that run on Sun's Unix servers.
Roger Holtom, a business technology consultant at Ciba-Geigy Corp.'s Chemical Division in Greensboro, N.C., has found a use for such devices. He plans to dial up the manufacturing site's four Sun SPARCserver 1000s, which run Oracle Corp. databases, with a handheld HP 200LX computer and a modem card. He said he paid US$599 for his HP palmtop PC.
"It has a PC [PCMCIA] card slot. I'm going to throw a modem in it and be able to dial straight into the Sun machines," he explained.
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