BY SEAN T. MARZOLA
President and CEO,
Embedded Wireless Devices Inc.,
Pleasanton, Calif.

Despite appearances to the contrary, the wireless-networking industry is not immune from the current downturn in technology. Since the flow of venture capital has slowed to a trickle, startup companies in the wireless-networking market need to concentrate on generating real revenues quickly. Instead of faster time-to-market, the new phrase heard around Silicon Valley these days is faster time-to-revenue.

One fast way to ramp revenue is to refine applications, such as e-mail, that people understand and use. This is particularly important because new apps can take time to develop and evolve, and for startups time is as precious as money. It also means targeting mass-market users rather than early adopters, who are simply too few to support any company's sales requirements. Blackberry's Research in Motion is a great example of a company refining an existing application (e-mail, for example) that already has mass-market appeal by adding value through wireless communications.

Embedded Wireless Devices (EWD) has adopted exactly that strategy in the wireless home networking market. At EWD, our approach is to capitalize on existing markets that have an infrastructure of working technologies and actual sales. Multi-handset cordless phones, for instance, are promising mass-market products that people both understand and use. As an initial market for EWD, building silicon and software solutions for multihandset cordless phones not only lets us generate real revenues today but also offers a foundation for adding value and extending into new wireless-networking applications tomorrow.

By connecting to the copper PSTN network and distributing voice calls wirelessly through multihandset cordless phones, EWD can link with information pipelines like ISDN, DSL, cable and satellite. That means playing a central role in the wireless distribution of various applications and services throughout the home.

MP3 music files are another great example of an application that can be refined for the wireless home. People already download and play MP3 files from their computers, and many record CDs so they can play MP3s in their living room using a stereo system. Now there are stereo components specifically designed to store and play digital music files. It's suddenly a very small leap for people to see the multiple benefits of wirelessly distributing MP3 and other multimedia files between computers and entertainment centers. The same sort of logic can be extended to digital cameras, game controllers, stereo speakers, televisions or any other product/application that people use today and can benefit from using wirelessly.

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