Next big thing in tech comes out of Lublin
In a bold attempt to recapture the excitement of the pre-bubble era, the firm markets its application for high-end mobile phones, also known as smartphones, under the rather grandiose name of eLeader. Mobile 4G. The marketing looks beyond the yet-unproven third-generation, or 3G, mobile phones, as the company claims to have discovered, "a completely new way to use your phone."
"We want at least one GSM operator in every country in the world to offer our application," says Dobromir Piekarski, president of eLeader, apparently oblivious to the small matter that a different standard is used in countries such as the USA or South Korea.
The technology, trumpeted as allowing for "business process management on the move," provides for quick and secure communications with the company's server via a smartphone. It matches the functionality previously offered by hand-held computers, or personal digital assistants (PDAs) alone, says Piekarski. It could be used by sales reps, insurance agents or by companies that need to repair their industrial infrastructure, such as power transmission lines, to communicate with headquarters in a convenient and relatively unintrusive way.
Although the new product is still at the stage of test runs to smooth out any technological glitches that may come to light, Piekarski is confident that it will prove to be a huge success. He points out that the company's interests go hand in hand with those of handset makers and says that at least one of the global market leaders is sure to embrace the product and splash out on its marketing.
Andrzej Arendarski, the president of the National Chamber of Commerce (KIG), which gave the product an award at last month's Computer EXPO trade fair, says it may prove to be the key that unlocks the door to EU markets for the small Lublin firm. Piekarski says that, in order to succeed, the company needs to move fast before the competitors catch up with its technology and, therefore, needs considerable funds for marketing. He adds that the company is looking for investors, saying that the amount of finance required would be large enough to attract private equity funds, which typically have a minimum investment requirement of zł.3.84 million ($1 million).
But venture capitalists themselves seem to see a long road ahead for the obscure but ambitious eLeader.
"It is an extremely competitive market and in this country alone there are a number of established and successful providers of similar applications," says a telecommunications expert at a leading private equity fund. "No leading company uses eLeader's previous solutions. I can hardly see a bright future for them."
What's more, other industry insiders see the promise of the technology as somewhat less exciting than Piekarski would have it.
"No doubt, the future is with smartphones," says Wojciech Mayer, the president and chief shareholder of Kraków-based Mayer, a firm offering competing applications run on palmtops. He is, however, doubtful about the claim that a smartphone-based application could ensure functionality on a par with that of PDAs. He adds that the Symbian operating system, used by eLeader's application, is quite limited and that few software writers work on it. "It would be difficult to write a terribly sophisticated application on Symbian," he says.
According to Mayer, only a future generation of phones with sufficient capacity to run Windows-based software, such as Pocket PC, will make the promise made by eLeader's marketing a reality. This may prove to be in the not-so-distant future, as last year's decision by Motorola to team up with Microsoft shows.
Motorola, a beleaguered Illinois handset maker, has switched from Symbian, which it developed in cooperation with Nokia and several other rivals, to Microsoft's software in its MPX200 model, soon to be rolled out. At the same time, it is working on a combination of open-source Linux and a Java operating system, called MotoJIUX (pronounced "Motojuice"), to power a new generation of smartphones. If all these moves succeed, Symbian-based applications of the kind offered by eLeader could find themselves out in the cold.
For now, however, the Lublin hopeful sees a bright future ahead. More than ten handset models capable of running the application are already on the market and Piekarski says that another 20 will be rolled out by the end of the year. He also hopes to undercut the competition on price, saying that the implementation of the whole system would only cost around zł.250,000-300,000 for a firm requiring 100 handsets. With the current glutted market, he adds, a client could also hope to get a good deal on prices of both handsets and data transmission from GSM operators keen to drum up more business.
The global search for the 'killer application' is on, but whether it will come out of this country's poorest region is as yet an untested proposition.
"We want at least one GSM operator in every country in the world to offer our application," says Dobromir Piekarski, president of eLeader, apparently oblivious to the small matter that a different standard is used in countries such as the USA or South Korea.
The technology, trumpeted as allowing for "business process management on the move," provides for quick and secure communications with the company's server via a smartphone. It matches the functionality previously offered by hand-held computers, or personal digital assistants (PDAs) alone, says Piekarski. It could be used by sales reps, insurance agents or by companies that need to repair their industrial infrastructure, such as power transmission lines, to communicate with headquarters in a convenient and relatively unintrusive way.
Although the new product is still at the stage of test runs to smooth out any technological glitches that may come to light, Piekarski is confident that it will prove to be a huge success. He points out that the company's interests go hand in hand with those of handset makers and says that at least one of the global market leaders is sure to embrace the product and splash out on its marketing.
Andrzej Arendarski, the president of the National Chamber of Commerce (KIG), which gave the product an award at last month's Computer EXPO trade fair, says it may prove to be the key that unlocks the door to EU markets for the small Lublin firm. Piekarski says that, in order to succeed, the company needs to move fast before the competitors catch up with its technology and, therefore, needs considerable funds for marketing. He adds that the company is looking for investors, saying that the amount of finance required would be large enough to attract private equity funds, which typically have a minimum investment requirement of zł.3.84 million ($1 million).
But venture capitalists themselves seem to see a long road ahead for the obscure but ambitious eLeader.
"It is an extremely competitive market and in this country alone there are a number of established and successful providers of similar applications," says a telecommunications expert at a leading private equity fund. "No leading company uses eLeader's previous solutions. I can hardly see a bright future for them."
What's more, other industry insiders see the promise of the technology as somewhat less exciting than Piekarski would have it.
"No doubt, the future is with smartphones," says Wojciech Mayer, the president and chief shareholder of Kraków-based Mayer, a firm offering competing applications run on palmtops. He is, however, doubtful about the claim that a smartphone-based application could ensure functionality on a par with that of PDAs. He adds that the Symbian operating system, used by eLeader's application, is quite limited and that few software writers work on it. "It would be difficult to write a terribly sophisticated application on Symbian," he says.
According to Mayer, only a future generation of phones with sufficient capacity to run Windows-based software, such as Pocket PC, will make the promise made by eLeader's marketing a reality. This may prove to be in the not-so-distant future, as last year's decision by Motorola to team up with Microsoft shows.
Motorola, a beleaguered Illinois handset maker, has switched from Symbian, which it developed in cooperation with Nokia and several other rivals, to Microsoft's software in its MPX200 model, soon to be rolled out. At the same time, it is working on a combination of open-source Linux and a Java operating system, called MotoJIUX (pronounced "Motojuice"), to power a new generation of smartphones. If all these moves succeed, Symbian-based applications of the kind offered by eLeader could find themselves out in the cold.
For now, however, the Lublin hopeful sees a bright future ahead. More than ten handset models capable of running the application are already on the market and Piekarski says that another 20 will be rolled out by the end of the year. He also hopes to undercut the competition on price, saying that the implementation of the whole system would only cost around zł.250,000-300,000 for a firm requiring 100 handsets. With the current glutted market, he adds, a client could also hope to get a good deal on prices of both handsets and data transmission from GSM operators keen to drum up more business.
The global search for the 'killer application' is on, but whether it will come out of this country's poorest region is as yet an untested proposition.
