Mr. Locklin: CIDCO is a company that provides personal e-mail services to consumers throughout the United States. A couple of years ago, we identified a need for simple, easy-to-use, low cost e-mail via the Internet. At that point in time, the only option that customers had to send or receive e-mail was basically to buy a PC and sign up for Internet access through one of the major Internet providers, such as AOL, at 20-24 a month. We felt there was an opportunity and a need for an e-mail device and an e-mail access service that would be a lot simpler and a lot lower cost than that. So, calling upon our many years of experience in the communications industry, we developed a product called the MailStation, a very simple, easy-to-use e-mail terminal. We offer that with CIDCO e-mail service at under 10 a month, providing our customers an alternative to the current PC-type of approach. It's been very popular, and we're very pleased with the success we've had. We're pleased with the growth of the product and the service subscriber base. So that's basically what CIDCO does, and it's a good business for us.
TWST: How big is the market for what you're providing?
Mr. Locklin: When we entered this business, we initially were focusing
on the population that does not have Internet access and a PC today. If
you look at the roughly 100 million households in the United States,
about 60 million have a PC and Internet access. The numbers will vary
depending on the research report you get, but it's maybe between 50 and
60 million. About another 20 million households that have no Internet
access have expressed interest in getting it, while another 20 million
probably will never have Internet access. So we were looking at those 20
million households that have expressed interest in Internet access but
do not have it today. We think the reasons they don't have access are
that they view the Internet as intimidating, somewhat confusing and a
little bit expensive. If they have resisted all of the advertising and
promotion that's been done by Microsoft, Intel and others to date, those
are probably the reasons. So that was the initial market we went after
and continue to pursue. But starting in Q4 this year, we're going to
expand our service offering to address the 60 million homes that
actually have Internet access, by launching a new product and a new
service we call 'AnyMail Anywhere.' That is a service that will allow
our e-mail service to actually interface with any e-mail account
anywhere in the United States, so that the user can actually pull down
e-mail from another account. So we're expanding our opportunity
dramatically starting in Q4 this year. But we initially looked at those
20 million homes that did not have Internet access as our primary
market.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CDCO
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