Megahertz quick to put out faster fax/modem
MEGAHERTZ Corp of the United States will be become one of the first fax/modem makers in the world to come out with a 28.8-kilobits-per-second PCMCIA product when it releases it this month.
The fax/modem will be a first in that it will follow the newly formed V.34 standard of data compression.
Igor Best-Devereux, Megahertz international sales and marketing manager, said the modem would be available in Hong Kong within a few weeks of its release in the US, but its price had yet to be decided.
Megahertz would first determine where to position the previous model, the 14.4-MHz fax/modem, because 'there will be a degree of cannibalising in the 14.4 market'.
He said the 28.8-K fax/modem would be followed within six months by a V.34 Combo - a PCMCIA card that will combine a 28.8-Kbps fax/modem with a network adapter.
Megahertz has just released a 14.4-Kbps version of the Combo. Development of a 28.8-Kbps version will take some time because of the re-engineering required to cope with the larger components of the faster fax/modem.
'The chip set was larger for the V.34 than for the 14.4 modem, so there was no room on the card,' Mr Best-Devereux said. 'The card configuration will need changing.' Megahertz also plans this month to release several products 'with PCMCIA components', many of which are aimed at the corporate market.
'Each of the new products will focus on the mobile networking concept,' Mr Best-Devereux said, adding that telecommuting was becoming more popular among business people and executives.' The aim was to make it easier for laptop users to connect to their headquarters, he said.
Megahertz's market position allowed it to focus investment in niche areas, he said.
'We are watching the market closely,' Mr Best-Devereux said. 'Intel is out of the PCMCIA market, and there have been big price cuts [among PCMCIA products] in recent months.' All the new products will come with Megahertz's patented XJACK - a pop-out device for connecting a PCMCIA modem to ordinary RJ-11 telephone jacks.
The XJACK has been on the market in Megahertz products as well as those of other vendors using Megahertz as an original equipment manufacturer.
The XJACK, which stands for 'extendable jack', pops out of the end of a PCMCIA modem when touched and allows users to connect the devices directly to a standard phone cord without additional cables.
'One of our engineers was trying to work out how to connect an RJ-11 connector to a [PCMCIA] card,' Mr Best-Devereux said. 'He was playing with a pen and thought of the pop-out concept.' Megahertz started up nine years ago with three young men working in a basement. One of them borrowed US$5,000 from his father to help start the company, which today employs about 500 people and focuses almost exclusively on the PCMCIA market.
At one point, Megahertz ventured into the pocket modem market. It made proprietary modems for laptop computers from such manufactures as Compaq, Toshiba and Zenith. It has since focused its attention on the PCMCIA market.
Megahertz makes about 70,000 modems a month at its Salt Lake City facilities in Utah.
'We have remained healthy as a company because of this centralised manufacturing process,' Mr Best-Devereux said.
Megahertz held 45 per cent of the PCMCIA modem market in the US, he said.
