Unwired Planet, WML Smartphones, and the phcm/swcm Stock Ticker Joke

• 54:31Unwired Planet—a smartphone company in the 1990s with WML browser technology that shipped a billion units.
• 54:56Tim rewrote the browser core and had his code shipped on a billion devices for which he was paid nothing.
• 55:09He tried using WML to get driving directions in 1999 and found the experience so embarrassing he avoided using it.
• 55:31Japanese hardware companies designed the entire UX and sent screenshots; engineers like Tim had to write code matching those screenshots exactly.
• 56:19Tim moved to Unwired Planet, a more sophisticated company that hired people like a former Secretary of the Interior under Carter to schmooze with carriers.
• 56:57Unwired Planet was run by Alain Rossman, a Silicon Valley Steve Jobs wannabe whom Tim describes as looking like a homeless chess player.
• 57:55The company pivoted to creating an alternate cell phone internet world, and Tim made money off technology that ultimately didn't work.
• 58:25The CTO browsed the domain registry and decided to pay fifty thousand dollars to change the company name from Unwired Planet to Phone.com.
• 58:50An internal contest determined the stock ticker symbol; Tim's office mate considered submitting PHCM—pronounceable as 'fuck him'—but decided it was unprofessional.
• 59:19The company went public with stock symbol PHCM ('fuck them'), then merged with Software.com whose symbol was SWCM, creating the perfect unintended joke: everybody's 'fuck stuck fuck them.'
• 59:38The stock peaked at a 10 billion dollar valuation before becoming worthless; Tim sold early and reinvested in Webvan and other dot-com companies, losing money again.
• 1:00:27After the bubble burst, Tim switched companies and considered pursuing independent computer science research, having just married his wife.
• 1:00:46He worked for a Japanese-owned company that had purchased Palm Pilot code, describing the operation as a mess.

Unwired PlanetWebvanAlain RossmanPalm Pilot