Q&A with the maker of the Sidekick II

Over at Weblogs Inc.'s electronics site Engadget, my second Q&A with an industry leader just posted: I interview Hank Nothhaft, CEO of Danger, Inc., maker of the new Sidekick II personal communicator. Excerpt:

Nothhaft: The thing that’s really amazing is the messaging activity that takes place [on these devices]. I call them messaging engines. The people who are using IM on these devices are sending and receiving 110 instant messages a day. They’re also doing 25-30 emails a day, and they’re accessing 25 web pages a day. We also support SMS on this, and have a range of around 4 SMS messages a day.

Did you say 110 IMs a day on average?

Nothhaft: Pretty amazing, isn’t it? When we launched in October 2002, we were at seven instant messages a day and we figured that number was sure to go down because we had all these crazy, compulsive early adopters. And just the opposite happened — across all the carriers we have worldwide, the number is now 110.

Wow! That's a lot of thumb action.

For years I've procrastinated about jumping into the wireless palm device market (though I do have a cell phone and laptop), letting others play early adopter. Now that the marketplace -- and these devices -- is finally maturing, I can see getting me one of these babies sometime in the next year. (I got to play with the Sidekick II for only a day before fed-exing it to another reviewer.)