Portable USA Answers The Bluetooth Call

Like its parent, U.K.-based Portable Plc, Portable USA specializes in the distribution of wireless products and solutions, particularly Bluetooth technology.

"The goal is to be a mobile solutions specialist rather than a distributor," said John Davis, director of sales at Portable USA, based here.

Portable Plc was founded 11 years ago as a manufacturer of PC cards and later moved into the mobile products arena. Eventually, it began to take on other brands as a distributor.

Portable USA is focusing on seven vendors in the United States. It carries Kingston Technology memory and cards, Socket Communications' Bluetooth and 802.11b solutions, TDK Systems' Bluetooth devices, Troy Wireless' wireless print servers and Bluetooth solutions, Red-M's wireless security solution, Toshiba's 5-Gbyte PC card hard drives and Secure Technology's security devices.

"We don't sell commodity products. We're not a broker. We have stock rotation [and marketing funds with resellers," Davis said. "We look to bridge that gap for the SMB reseller. That means providing a solution, not just a part number."

Business Equipment Center of Atlanta works with Portable USA for products not available from other distributors, said Mike Estep, vice president of information technology at the mobile solution provider, which focuses on executive customers.

"[Secure Technology's key drives were a big hit with our executive notebook customers. The challenge they were having is they were keeping financials and confidential information on their notebooks, but the passwords were owned by their network administrators. They were looking to keep that info private. It was a difficult problem," Estep said.

Portable USA hopes to capitalize on what it feels is a technology ready to explode, Davis said.

"In Europe, if I go back eight months, the market was buying zero Bluetooth in terms of enabling PDAs and notebooks," Davis said. "Three months ago, it was up to 5,000 to 10,000 pieces a month of one brand of product. Now we're at 18,000 to 20,000. And over here, we've seen a tripling of business from March to May," he added.

Bluetooth has advantages over other wireless technologies, Estep said.

"Bluetooth, once it's readily available, will become the method [for wireless, especially for executives that don't like carrying sync cables," Estep said. "I don't know if we'll go straight to a smart phone or have the cell phone talk to the PDA first, but once cellular technology comes with Bluetooth, having my PDA talk to my cell phone is a great benefit."

Portable USA has no airs about competing against distribution behemoths Ingram Micro and Tech Data, but it hopes to remain below their radar screens by focusing on SMB solution providers.

Davis said Portable USA's target customers include "the guys doing a [small reseller shop front [as well as the private cell phone stores [with up to $20 million in revenue, with maybe six or eight engineers and 10 salespeople. The sweet spot is the $10 million to $15 million revenue base," Davis said. "It's a hard sell for reseller. What sells Bluetooth is seeing it work, seeing how it is different from standard wireless. A couple years ago people said 802.11b was good but it would never take off. Look at the hype Bluetooth has gotten in the past three months compared with the previous three months. Every week it's coming. All iPaqs, Sony Vaios and cell phones are Bluetooth-enabled."