The Toronto Star reported on Feb. 8, 1997, p. A7 that Gary Perly passed away. President of Perly's Maps Ltd., he died of cancer on Feb. 6, 1997, at age 53. According to Perly, in 1989 there were 5 companies selling street map books in the Toronto area. The articles quotes him saying "There is no city in the world with that many competitors. There are more street maps sold per capita in this city than any other in the world." I don't know about that, but I do know that maps are another potential use for handheld computers.
When the first Newtons were introduced Fodor published street maps of
major cities. One of the first commercial packages that Microsoft
is marketing for the new Windows CE handhelds is their "Pocket
AutoMap" (reviewed by David McNeill in Pen Computing Magzine,
Feb. 97, p 36). I understand that there have been "shareware" maps
available on the Newton too. I expect that currently handheld computer
maps will not be a high profit market. To sell them, the price has to
be "reasonable". A good map book of Toronto costs under $20.00. One
cannot expect people to pay much more than that for maps of a single
city. On the other hand, the number of sales of such computer maps
would not be enough to support a commercial venture in that kind of
package. It will be interesting to see how a viable package is created
in the future.
[1997/02/23]