Prolificx sets eastern tack

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Fast-growing Manukau company Prolificx has leaped into competition with Palm Computing, Dell and Sony with a design for a personal digital assistant (PDA) for the Muslim market.

The new Emirate 1 is being marketed by an Abu Dhabi-based manufacturer, Adcom Group, as a computer/cellphone with built-in global positioning satellite (GPS) navigation, which helps Muslims to find the direction of Mecca when they say their prayers.

The company's owner, Ali Aldhaheri, said in Manukau that he aimed to sell "hundreds of thousands" of them around the world.

"This will be in the tens of millions of dollars," he said.

The PDA's designer, Prolificx, is a private company established three years ago by former executives of the multinational electronic components company Avnet, which closed its Auckland research centre after the dotcom collapse in 2001.

Chief executive Selwyn Pellett, who co-founded the IT ginger group NZ Inc in 1997 and later headed Avnet in Asia, said Prolificx aimed to become a US$100 million ($153 million) international company with an eventual listing on Nasdaq.

By the year ending this month it has achieved sales of $7 million by designing electronic products such as a blood pressure meter, a home automation system, a mobile swipe card, an animal tagging system and a device that alerts you when your share prices drop.

Its customers are in North America, Hong Kong and Australasia.

Key suppliers such as Intel provide early access to their new products at good prices so that Prolificx can build consumer products derived from them.

The company's 30-strong Manukau team designed a vehicle-tracking system for Bell Canada, which has bought 6500 units so far. The system monitors where all vehicles are, their condition and whether the drivers are "thrashing" them or over-revving them.

This deal alone has earned $5.5 million so far for Prolificx and a South Auckland business which manufactures the systems, Compuspec.

Pellett said the Emirate 1 PDA, to be released in June or July, would combine GSM cellular phone communications with fast-speed internet, low power consumption, GPS and Bluetooth.

"It will be the highest performing PDA," he said.

Aldhaheri said he found Prolificx through its website and was excited about the PDA project.

"We will do some type of joint venture to develop internationally," he said.

Aldhaheri said the price of the PDA had not been fixed yet but it would be set at an affordable level "to reach the people with advanced technology".

Prolificx will establish a design centre in Abu Dhabi to work with Adcom on further projects.

The company has also bought a design house in Sydney and a "productisation" centre in Hong Kong. Both have been rebranded with the Prolificx name.

"So stage one was simply to get with people who have been good channels and start building a brand in design," Pellett said.

"Stage two is a global rollout. We are rolling out 10 Prolificxes around the world this year. In stage two, we build our own products as well as products for our customers.

"When we start getting significant brand leverage, the products will say 'Sony' as well as 'Designed by Prolificx' and we'll build up our global brand.