When would you say that the first Palm PDA device carrying video conferencing would hit the market?
I can't comment on specific activities of our licensees and partners. However, as a general trend, I would probably expect this kind of capability to show up in smartphones before PDAs, since those devices are more likely to have high-speed network access (3G, EDGE, UMTS), cameras, and microphones. Already, the Treo 600 is doing "voice instant messaging" using the push-to-talk client developed for the Orange network in Europe, and rumors on Palm Infocenter are that Skype will have their Palm OS client for Voice-over-IP available next month.
In practice, I think the Zire 72 could be good a video conferencing client; it has a codec manager that lets it handle MPEG-1 and MPEG-4, and it has an acceptable camera and microphone. However, Bluetooth 1.1 network access may be too slow for a good two-way stream, and there's no way to both see the screen and be on camera. It might work over a PPP on USB connection, like Softick PPP, but that's not very practical.
-- Ben Combee, Technical Lead, Developer Services, PalmSource, Inc. "Combee on Palm OS" weblog: http://palmos.combee.net/ Developer Fourm Archives: http://news.palmos.com/read/all_forums/
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