INTERVIEW: Taiwan’s ‘anti-PC’ firm with its head in the ‘cloud’

TT: Your PocketCloud application caught our attention. It only debuted in September last year and the total number of downloads for the iPad and iPhone hit 12,000 this month. Not to mention that it is not cheap, with the retail price of US$30 in the Apple iStore. Can you tell us why?

Maner: PocketCloud is one of the most expensive apps in the iStore, there are so many free apps or those that sell for only US$1. We developed the PocketCloud so that “prosumers” (professional consumers) could access their PCs wherever they are. Take a look at this iPad, if we download PocketCloud the iPad interface is instantly turned into a standard PC interface, making it work as a virtual PC. I am here in Taipei, but now I can connect to my home or company PC in San Francisco and access the information I need.

There is no data stored on this iPad. I am accessing data remotely through cloud computing, probably hosted by servers in New York. So with cloud computing, the iPad is turned from a consumer device into an enterprise device.

If I am a banker, I need not to worry about losing my iPad, as all my confidential information is stored in the cloud.

Also, almost 99 percent of the videos on the Web are Flash-based, which isn’t supported by the iPhone or the iPad. With the cloud solution, I can access Flash videos and graphics on the Web being delivered through PocketCloud.

The Android version of PocketCloud will come onto the market in a couple of months.

TT: How many PocketCloud apps do you expect will be downloaded this year?

Maner: We expect the number to grow exponentially. My goal is to reach 100,000 downloads this year. A growing number of prosumers want to use their mobile devices and be able to connect to a PC.

TT: How do mobile devices create business opportunities for Wyse?

Maner: There are 1 billion PCs in the world today and 3 billion mobile devices. In five to 10 years, we believe there could be at least 10 billion mobile devices. Everyone is going to have multiple devices and that’s why we created the PocketCloud for prosumers.