Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Handspring Files For IPO

Posted by Hemos on from the wanting-the-money dept.

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.

3 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Handspring's service problems by William+Tanksley · · Score: 3

    What do you _mean_ a IIIe offers the same stuff? It has six megs less memory -- two megs versus the Visor's eight.

    And it's NOT true that nobody's developed anything for the port; they've developed Bluetooth, AirPort, modems, flash backup, general flash, a pager, two-way pagers, radio, a digital camera, MP3 players (one of which allows you to add up to 128M of RAM to the unit), and more.

    These things have not only been developed, they've been demonstrated. It's true that they're not shipping, but claiming that they'll therefore never ship is royally stupid.

    Oh, and you don't have to buy the cradle seperately; it comes with the unit. Always has. It uses USB, too, so it's a HECK of a lot faster than the Pilot's cradle.

    -Billy

  2. Re:Too little too late? by tomreagan · · Score: 3

    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.
    ...
    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.

    I don't think that this is a question of glitz and glamour, or even a question of the relative value of handspring. I think that the market is just going sour on IPOs b/c of market pressures.

    The announcement the other day that US GDP was up 7.8% in the fourth quarter is going to pretty much guarantee that Greenspan will raise rates 2-4 more times this year. As a result, the market has gone haywire over the past few days, as people are reluctant to hold tech stocks at any price. So, even though companies are growing and the economy is booming, the market is suffering b/c of long term predictions.

    That being said, this doesn't make the IPO necessarily a bad idea. If this is nothing more than a get rich quick scheme, then you are in trouble. If you need to raise capital on a large scale, however, this is the way to do it. And don't forget that companies with solid fundamentals and a hotly-demanded product are still doing well, like IBM and Cisco. At the same time, don't think that prices will go through the roof as frequently anymore, because the market has the fear of Greenspan in them.

    So, all in all, a sound business move, and probably not an extraordinary event.

  3. Palm was like Apple until Handspring by ballestra · · Score: 3
    Palm should welcome the competition from Handspring. It makes the Palm OS more widely accepted, while keeping their feet to the fire on hardware. The result will be the dominance of Palm OS over CE. The competition seems to be quite friendly, since the two product can work together harmoniously. It ends up benefitting consumers as well, by encouraging hardware innovation and keeping prices competitive.

    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.