Until recently, the company had no direct competitors for its product, and most retailers filled shelf space next to Cybikos mainly with GameBoys. But in the summer, Tiger Electronics, a unit of Hasbro, introduced my.data, an electronic organizer with a calendar, phone book and two games. And next month, Kessel Electronics, a maker of communications toys, will introduce W.A.V.E.Back, a Palm-like hand-held organizer that can transmit audio, video and text messages but is not interactive.
Toy industry experts say the evolution of such devices for teenagers is natural. "They're emulating their parents," said Maria Weiskott, editor of Playthings, an industry magazine. "They see their parents' Palm, and they want it, naturally. This market is going to grow to meet that." Ryan Slate, vice president for marketing and sales at Kessel, said: "Everybody's fighting for the same shelf space. In this retail climate, we're all up against each other."
Wisniewski disagreed. "This is a stand-alone product, and frankly, I really don't think we have anybody else that's doing what we're doing."
Emulating mom and dad
At Concordia University in Oak Park, Illinois, during breaks from their 3-D animation project at summer computer camp, Zak Ross, 10, and Mike Schulz, 11, scrambled from their computer pods to grab the magenta and blue Cybikos.
"It's like a Palm, but it's not," Zak said. "It's just really cool. Pretty much this is a Palm for kids, but it's much better."
Mike had already started to play Reversi 31, an electronic board game, on his Cybiko. "They're fun and can do a lot," he said, pulling up the antenna on his Cybiko as it started to beep. "If I want to talk with him," he said, referring to Zak, "all I have to do is walk near him and my Cybiko knows he's there." The beeping means that another Cybiko user is nearby.
The games enticed Sami Masri, 12, a camper who was gulping down Orange Crush while he played with a Cybiko. The company has almost 430 free games available for downloading from its Web site. "What's awesome is the games are free," said Sami, who received his Cybiko last Christmas.
During the company's second round of financing in December, two venture capital funds, the Vesta Group and SUN Capital Partners, joined AOL in taking a substantial stake. Cybiko would not disclose terms, but New Media Investor, the financial publication, put the new money at US$16 million.
Teenagers in Russia may still have a long wait before they have Cybikos in their hands, because they are expensive by Russian standards. Yang says that day is coming, but he would not be more specific.
Until then, the lucky few that land positions as game testers can sit in a room next to the inventors' office and, with furrowed brows and sore thumbs, search for glitches in the software. They can earn up to US$1 for each one they find.
In September, Cybiko was introduced in Britain. And maybe someday, Russian programmers in Moscow will compete in a game of Cybiko pinball against their marketing co-workers in Bloomingdale.
But before that happens, Yang plans to have Japan's store shelves lined with Cybikos, possibly by the end of the year.
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