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JavaOne's Palm-sized winner

How 3Com stole the show, palms down

By Mariva H. Aviram, JavaWorld.com, 08/01/99

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The best thing about the recent JavaOne conference in San Francisco wasn't the keynote speeches from industry leaders, or the technical sessions, or the vendor exhibition in the pavilion, or even the food or outdoor concerts or endless parties at night. It was the Palm V, made by 3Com, which JavaOne attendees could purchase for less than half the going retail price. In fact, an attendee would have been a fool not to take advantage of such a bargain. This piece of equipment, normally priced around 00, easily fits in your hand or your pocket, and is the envy of all who do not posses one. Heck, if attendees changed their mind after purchasing one for 99, they could turn around and sell it on eBay for a profit. But I'd be willing to bet my own brand-new Palm V that not one of the 20,000 JavaOne attendees who chose to purchase one did so. That's because the Palm is just so cool -- especially given that Java's now on it.

The big giveaway

The benefits to Sun of practically giving away the Palm V at the conference are clear: Sun gets to show off the power of Java running on a tiny little machine, reward each JavaOne attendee for showing up, and inspire all those developers to attend again next year and see what new goody they'll be getting. All that makes sense. (Word on the street was that Sun paid 3Com full price -- or at cost, at least -- for the Palm Vs and then gave JavaOne attendees the gift of getting them for much less, thereby taking on the financial hit itself.) But what was in it for 3Com? As someone who despises today's ever-increasing barrage of advertising and marketing, I have to applaud 3Com for its forward-thinking marketing technique on this one. The PDA manufacturer aptly realized that the best development tool for the Palm is Java and, having established a partnership with Sun, it needed Java developers -- lots of them, and good ones -- to start making stuff for the device. The more applications available to Palm users, and the bigger the variety of apps, the better place the company has in the market.

Palm Computing Inc., a subsidiary of 3Com, is undoubtedly leading the global personal companion device market, with a 72 percent user share, according to recent IDC statistics. On the developer side, an official at A&R Partners, Palm Computing's public relations firm, says that 20,000 third-party Palm application developers are currently signed up to develop for the Palm platform -- twice as many as last year.

According to Palm Computing President Robin Abrams, "The ability to run Java applications on our products opens up development to tens of thousands of Java developers creating both consumer and business solutions that can now be extended to our platform." Appealing to Java developers was just the next step in growing the massive cult following that the Palm has. And where could 3Com quickly find a large number of good Java programmers? At JavaOne, of course. This was a win-win success all around -- for 3Com, for Sun, and best of all, for JavaOne attendees.

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