AT&E Corp shares duly took a hit on Motorola Inc’s announcement that it is developing a wristwatch pager (CI No 1,227), falling $3.125 to $10.375, but the San Francisco company was quick to distance its own product from the Motorola one, saying that it transmits data at 19.2Kbps, while Motorola’s product is based on 30-year-old technology and transmits at 600bps to 1,200bps – in telecommunications terms, it is like comparing the twisted wires of 30 years ago with the fibre optics of today, it said, adding that its own system has been designed to have a capacity significantly in excess of existing paging systems; the downside for AT&E is Motorola’s big existing paging customer base.
