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Handspring Files For IPO
William Tanksley writes: "Handspring, the PalmOS licensee started by the inventors of the original Palm, is going public. " Not much information yet -- just stating they've filed with the SEC.
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Freeloader.org - news for nerd. Someone else will do it for me.
In case you hadn't, all the Linux darling have been taking quite a beating as of late:
ANDN's at 23% of it's high
CALD's at 71% of it's high
COBT's at 27% of it's high
CORL's at 23% of it's high
LNUX's at 19% of it's high
RHAT's at 28% of it's high
Where as with the dot com's,
AMZN's at 59% of it's high
LCOS's at 75% of it's high
YHOO's at 68% of it's high
In all those cases of me saying high, i meant 52 week highs...But those are the flagships of the Linux companies and the dotcoms. Hate to say it, but Linux has lost it's ring, it appears. The new trends are PDA's and wireless... Handspring's well poised to take advantage of that infatuation.
I still do wish that Handspring would manage to ship their products in quantity prior to their IPO... Palm had been shipping Pilots for years before 3Com spun them off. Handspring just develops a device and then says "time for the IPO!"
Well, I've got some Palm stock (yes, at the IPO price, so what) and when I think of the Handspring IPO, I'm not so sure about putting any money into their IPO.
I mean, the fact is, that's a lot of debt and while I think it's cool to have cheaper Handspring PDAs, I'm not sure they're not the AMD (Handspring) of the PDA set to the Intel (Palm) main leader. Microsoft is probably the Cyrix of the PDA set.
My point is, I'm pretty sure Palm's going to make money, but I wouldn't bet the farm on Handspring. I might buy a Handspring for my son or just for fun, but if you cut too much profit, you might get killed by the slim margin.
Oh, to the person who asked can everyone get IPOs:
No. If you've got some money, try E*Trade and you might luck out. Otherwise, you'll need an account at a major backer (e.g. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter) with somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in assets (depends on the brokerage house).
And remember guys, these IPOs are risky. Some flop.
That said, even though I'm still frosted at E*Trade, IPOs (especially Linux) have been very very good to me.
Will in Seattle
Actually, if you look at the Palm quarterlies, a lot of licensing revenues are coming in from cell phones, not just PDAs.
Less marketshare for WinCE - this is good.
Will in Seattle
With cool addons like the folding Stowaway keyboard and the upcoming SixPak, Handspring is going to really take off. And what's good for HS is good for Palm.
------
James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
New, powerful hardware?!? Too many (Microsoft) programmers rely on this excuse...which leads to sloppy code (Hey, who cares how many debug lines are left in the release canidate, most hard drives these days are 10 gigs!) or don't worry about cleaning up the memory, most users have 128 MB of RAM! Want to impress me? Write an OS that makes my Pentium 60 useful again - not only as a server.
Rangers Lead the Way!
"M$ generally writes software that exceeds the capacity of hardware, knowing that the hardware will soon be more powerful and cheaper"
- Is this suppose to be a good thing? It's definitely not a reason to support Microsoft and Windoze CE.
Rangers Lead the Way!
I'm impressed by the folks at Handspring, and I think they have a really good product, but I have to wonder about the IPO bit. Those who saw Caldera's IPO a couple of weeks ago probably noticed that it was less impressive. Many investors and analysts are beginning to shift their attention away from upstart companies with only red ink on their balance sheets and are moving money back to those companies who are making real money. Even the Palm IPO was less than spectacular. Is Handspring even profitable yet? Will they profitable tomorrow? Next year? Ten years from now will they still be around? Sure, I'd love to get in on the IPO, but I'm not entirely certain that becoming publicly traded carries the same amount of glitz and glamour that it did a year or two ago. Just some food for thought...
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
(I mean, who _wouldn't_ want to have one instead of two devices in the pockets? A Quartz WID with a Bluetooth headset is the #1 choice for the future here in Europe. I don't know how much of this info has leaked into the US ... )
it's in my head
In light of the torrent of these IPO announcements, all those in favor of a new slashdot section dubbed 'IPO Mania' please vote aye!
-----------------------------------------
Ah, for the good old days of slashdot with links to actual interesting geek sites on the web.
All of your claims are factually incorrect. Look at the Visor product details page.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
You're either a liar, or an idiot. Again, look at the Visor product details page. The Visor Solo sells for $150, the same price as the Palm IIIe. This unit comes with 2MB, and no cradle. For $180, you can get the Visor Solo, 2MB, and a USB cradle. For $250, you can get the Visor Deluxe, with 8MB, cradle, and your choice of colors. If you had bothered to read the URL I supplied, you'd know this.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Uh, have you looked at the current going prices recently? I needed to replace my Palm Pilot because the old one crapped out and was outside of warranty (an entirely different issue that I won't go into here...), and I found that it would have cost me more to get a Visor than to get a Palm IIIe. The only thing the Visor had that the IIIe didn't was the silly expansion port. Oh boy, now I can...what? Add a pager? Play MP3s? Nobody has developed any hardware that would seriously make that thing worth it, and I doubt anybody will anytime soon.
In terms of price, the Visor cost the same as the Palm IIIe, but you have to buy the Visor cradle separately! In other words, they're not winning any price battles here.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
I read that the reason they (the two Palm founders who left 3COM and started Handspring) left was to be able to build more devices using the PalmOS. The Visor is the first step, but I think they could make a killer e-book. A Steno-pad sized PalmOS device would be a real laptop-killer for most simple uses.
BTW, they make more money and give up less control and ownership with an IPO than with more VC.
two products which are similar cannot
both survive. Look at Coke and Pepsi,
Dell and Gateway, Nike and Reebok, Wendy's
and Burger King, etc.
It will probably help the palm platform to
have two manufacturers of palm hardware.
WinCE devices are manufactured by lots of
companies, and although the OS may be a reason
for poor sales, the fact that those devices all
run the same OS is not.
Sure, 3Com could put Handspring out of business
if it wanted to. 3com is probably
happy to have another company expanding the palm
platform as a whole.
Also, since the creators of Handspring are the original innovators who created
the original Palm, there are
positive social forces working in everyone's favor.
Amazing magic tricks
Isn't everyone able to get at the IPO (Initial Public Offering)? I'm clueless about stock markets.
In case you didn't notice, on Feb 9, 2000, major shareholders of RHAT sold big holdings. They got $90.73 to $95 a share.
Now, Red Hat has done a lot for Linux, and I'm happy the guys who put their sweat into the company got to get rich for real, and not just on paper, but look at the stock. It's now trading in the lower $40s.
I
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Fight Spammers!
The value of a share of a public company is a representation of expected future revenues. It is not a representation of the current worth of an organization. Any modern financial analyst would agree. (see below) Red Hat is at an acceptable level now. The one true disgrace that pops into my mind is VA Linux. It opened at ~$300 on it's first day, and closed ~$150. It was purely a victim of hype and ignorance.
IPOs in technology, communications and biotech routinely open at twice their initial offering price or more. A correction of 10 percent in the tech sector is viewed jubilantly as a buying opportunity. And Internet start-up stocks seem to rise in direct correlation to how much money they lose from one quarter to the next.
All of which, upon reflection, is perfectly natural.
The fact is that the market never really rewards anybody for what they do today. The market rewards you for what it thinks you will do in the future. In a period of relative economic stability, earnings can be viewed as a great predictor of future performance, which is why the P/E ratio has been such an important measuring stick for so long. But in a period of relative market turbulence, like the period we're in now - when there is great consensus that the assets, infrastructure and business models of the future will be radically different than those of today - the earnings you report this quarter may have very little to do with tomorrow's earnings. --Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America
(Remarks to the John's Island Club)
I have a website. It's about Macs.
So you say that anyday now we should expect Palm to drop all their lisencees?
Interestingly, this IPO filing occurs on the same week that they even have their _only_ product in the retail channel (not counting direct mail-order/web sales).
Supposedly Handspring has a few other products in the pipe (from an interview when the Visor was initially avilable). Maybe they need the cash from an IPO to follow through with them. Though I would think that it really woudn't be that hard for them to get most any VC that they need.
-mark
Ok, he may be wrong, I don't know much about the hardware, however, given the fact that the sales are potentially huge for Palm devices and the like, I suspect more the IPO as a mean to position Handspring for the next wave.
BTW, for those looking at cheap WindowsCE handhelded devices, they are near to give one free to each buyer of Linux, any distro, in the computer stores, here. They accumulate dust and are not shown on the front of displays...
With a 0 $ operating system, a company is in pretty good shape to concentrate on hardware and functionality.
The disparaging remarks about the gluttonous IPO mongers are well taken . . . but for god's sake can't we figure out how to take advantage of the moment and leave virtue to the saints? We can join them in their righteous now - or beg forgiveness for our sins from the deck of our party barge somewhere off the coast of New Caledonia, the wine chilling in the hold, the harem toasting on the deck, the resident symphony warming up for their performance of Mahler 5. Serious questions: Should the /. crowd agitate for a cut of the stock in trade for its influencial participation in the technology culture that is propelling palm computing today? What would be an equitable division of shares of a block of stock reserved for Slashdot?
"IPO". The next time I hear this word I think I'm going to be sick.
Don't any of you people remember the lessons of 1929? This insane drive to make as many irresponsible investments as possible, each one based on the "greater fool" theory, is going to send our economy back to the virtual Stone Age if we don't start behaving sanely sometime soon.
Yahoo, Amazon, Red Hat, VA Linux - do ANY of these companies have ANY reason whatsoever to have the stock prices that they do? No. Of course not -- over the long run, everybody who gets stuck holding the bag here is going to get it, and get it hard - and with the current herd mentality, that's going to be a whole bunch of people.
So I'd like to lead the charge for sane investment here - IF THE COMPANY DOESN'T HAVE PROFITS, IT'S NOT WORTH MONEY. Basic, basic math, people - you own the company, if it doesn't make money, how can you?
So shame on Handspring for contributing to the madness, and let's all try to make inevitable bursting of the bubble as painless as possible by curbing this mania that so many people seem to have.
I recently applied to Handspring for a summer internship. Turns out that the only thing I lacked (compared to the people who went on to the "next round of cuts") was that I hadn't developed applications for PalmOS before.
:P
Sucks to know that had I just spent a week or two developing a few apps, I mighta been a lot richer this summer
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
What do you mean, all my claims are factually incorrect? It's not April 1st anymore.
Every single thing I said was true. The Visor comes with 8M and an USB cradle; and companies have developed all of the things I listed. To deny this is to waste our time.
-Billy
Have you looked at the power requirements for even the weakest transmeta chip? It would burn through a battery in only a day. The Visor takes several days of continuous use to use up a pair of AAAs.
Transmeta is WAY cool, but it can't compete against the Palm yet.
-Billy
Good info. Also useful is the Palm Open Source area, att he Open Palm Group</a>; not many compilers, but a lot of good examples.
Also, Quartus Forth isn't open source, but there's a decent amount of open source stuff written for it, and it's easy to work with interactively.
-Billy
I own a Handspring Visor Pro (one of those wicked icy blue ones) and although I'm sure investors are going to go mad over this, I don't know whether I would buy into the company.
:)
What are the benefits of a visor that Palm computing can't replicate? I'm not sure they number above three or four.
1) sane pricing for once (this was my big incentive)
2) cool expansible port
3) the PalmOS rep and the notion that this is what a "pure" Palm should be like
You can bet that (2) will be mimicked soon universally, especially in the beefier WinCE's. I believe Palm Computing is already working on this?
The pricing issue is not a very effective barrier to Palm Computing, since they can easily offer a stripped down version that eats into Handspring's share. Even had the Visor been considerably less powerful, I would still have purchased it due to the pricing. I have just enough clutter in my life to justify a palmtop, but not enough to make the difference between 4mb RAM and 8mb significant.
Finally, I suppose OS is a matter of preference, but there are some functionality problems I've encountered with the version that runs on the Visor. And unlike the hardware extensibility, the OS cannot be upgraded, at least in the current models.
Unless Palm Computing is brainless and doesn't offer a lower end model for entry-level newbies like myself, I don't see how Handspring is ultimately going to differentiate itself. The simple fact is that it is too similar to a Palm to survive.
That all said, I wish I had $500 bucks for a wicked cool WinCE device.... Ooooh! Heresy!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
It's true. Nobody has developed anything for the Visor's expansion port. I feel sorry for all the people who got a Visor thinking they could do cool stuff with new hardware coming out. It'll never happen.
Handspring isn't stupid. They saw how the Palm IPO went and they know Transmeta's Crusoe is going to revolutionize the PDA/Wireless market. Gotta cash out while the going is good.
Rangers Lead the Way!
On the other hand, some extremely important issues in PDA design are useability and user interface, two areas where Linux is behind many of its competitors.
Nobody except Slashdotters want to hack on their PDA. Most people want to bring up some names and addresses, jot a few notes, maybe play a game or read a document, read e-mail, browse the web. The PalmOS currently handles all these things pretty gracefully. Slashdotters, as self important as they are, are not a major market share in the PDA world, and won't make even a minor dent into the marketplace.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Now that Apache has been released for their PalmOS, they have just enough buzzwords in their company description to go public. Today, they obtain: Apache, OpenSource and HTTP. They where really hoping for the buzzword 'Linux', but developers are still working on the port.
CEO Jim E. Prefertion was quoted as saying "Due to the release of Apache, the number 1 web server on the Internet, PalmOS is now going to change direction, go public, and compete head on with the major Internet players, like Sun, Linux and Microsoft."
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
For anyone interested in developing apps for PalmOS, there is a GPL'ed Palm emulator; which borrows code from other neat GPL'ed projects - UAE: The Ultimate Amiga Emulator and WinUAE (the windoze port).
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
But seriously, what's the deal? There have been at least 3 /. articles on the Palm today. Did Andover buy 3Com now or something?
Or maybe Hemos just bought himself a Palm VII, and he's just a tad over-excited about it...
==
==
I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure it means something....
The only advantage that WinCE had over Palm was that there was healthy competition among the hardware makers. That advantage is now gone. (Oh, and color, too)
I predict the HS IPO will be very successful and that HS and Palm will both be very healthy companies for some time to come as they take more and more marketshare away from WinCE.