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Danger Planning New Devices

Techstination feature for Friday, December 6, 2002

How dangerous is Danger? Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Danger is the name of a little company that makes a combination cell phone, web browser and PDA... being sold under the Sidekick name by T-Mobile. It has a relatively big screen that flips around revealing a thumb keyboard. What makes it dangerous to Palm and Pocket PC devices... .is the price... under two hundred dollars. And T-Mobile has priced an unlimited data plan with a bucket of 200 standard talk minutes at an affordable 40 dollars a month. Danger's new CEO Hank Nothhaft...

"Well we have a zero margin device strategy which means we're not trying to make any gross profit margins off the device itself. And so it has a very low manufacturing cost, we don't mark it up at all. Carriers buy it directly from the manufacturer. We make the money off the software and the applications that make the device perform so well. So we've got an unfair advantage when you compare it to the other handset manufacturers."

It's a gee whiz device... that would be even more so if it had a color instead of a monochrome screen. Nothhaft says that upgrade is in the works...

"The device was designed with color and other future capabilities anticipated so keep your eyes glued because I think you'll be seeing a development in that area fairly soon."

An improvement in the radio in the device is needed as well. Expect Danger to be working with other carriers and expanding globally in the year to come. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.