"But it ain't soup yet," responded one skeptic in the crowded room.

Many of the technologies needed to create these personal communicators already exist. Participants at the conference bristled with tiny cellular phones, digital beepers, notebook computers, Sharp Wizards or other simple electronic data books, and the occasional old-fashioned paper pad.

William J. Warwick, president of A.T.& T. Microelectronics, showed how he currently uses some of the technology that will be incorporated in tomorrow's personal digital assistants, and it was not a pretty sight. He started by emptying his overstuffed briefcase: a portable computer (with a fax modem), a backup battery, a battery charger, cellular telephone, a backup battery for the phone, another battery charger, some wires for connecting the modem to a telephone outlet, an external floppy disk drive, a digital pager, an AC power adapter, some power cords and the usual paper notebooks.

"What we have today in order to stay connected doesn't solve the problem and doesn't meet the needs," Mr. Warwick said, describing how he has had to crawl around on the floor of a hotel room, moving furniture to get access to power and phone outlets.

The answer floated at the conference is a small, personal, wireless communication device that will be the offspring of three major industries: personal computing, communications and consumer electronics. With so many parents, naturally there is confusion about what to call the baby. Various speakers talked about personal digital assistants (PDA's), picocomputers, personal information devices, mobile digital communicators, digital information appliances, personal communicators, and even wallet computers and wireless widgets.

"Sure, there's confusion," said Richard A. Shaffer of Technologic Partners, a New York-based company that sponsored the Mobile '92 conference. "People know there's something here, but they don't know quite what it is. They're here because there's the smell of money."

The International Data Corporation, a consulting and research company in Framington, Mass., said the worldwide installed base of desktop computers is about 115 million machines, or slightly more than 2 percent of the world population -- not bad for an industry that is a decade old. Yet that pales beside the consumer electronics and telephone markets. A device that crosses the boundaries of all three markets, the reasoning goes, will be embraced by hundreds of millions of people.

New markets are critical if today's computer companies are to continue their heady growth of the last few years. There is some evidence that desktop computer penetration in businesses has been slowing, with much of the sales coming as replacement machines rather than from new customers.