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Handspring Delays Treo, Plans To Drop Organizer Line
backlonthethird writes: "http://www.palminfocenter.com has the scoop on Handspring's triple announcements yesterday. CEO Donna Dubinsky says they're dropping "Organizers," (i.e. visors?), and most of their new Treos are going to Europe because of a parts shortage. At least their losses this past quarter aren't as bad as people were expecting--they claim profitability by this Summer. What the heck is going on over there?"
I was at Comdex this year where the Treo was unveiled. It is boxy and not very comfortable to use. The idea is a good one, but it looked like an American car from the 70s next to a sleek Toyota of today.
;-)
Europe is a great market to move this to as folks appreciate the gadgets more than Americans do. Then again, maybe they like the design.
I looked at the Treo device and thought really cool.
But some poster mentioned that the PDA market is collapsing, or the PocketPC is eating everyone's lunch.
Well I do not know. Here is what I do know. Companies are not allowing things like Blackberries anymore (PDA inclusive). I have owned about 5 PDA's in different form factors and the result is that I use none of them.
So I kept thinking why this is the case? The answer is that I have several notebooks and I find the problem with PDA's is that there is simply not enough space. I get quite a bit of email and documents. A PDA just sucks. However, notebooks have become small, work everywhere, etc, etc.
So I think the black knight is the notebook market.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Sure, it's a gamble for Handspring, but it might just pay off. I've used both PocketPC and Palm OS devices extensively and found that if you want a lightweight, mini-pc, the PocketPC is far better suited to this. However, if you want something really lightweight (as in both form and function), the Palm OS is a nice addition to any phone.
In fact, I've got a Samsung Palm OS phone right now and it's a truly wonderful hybrid device - perfect for my needs. I can't wait to see what these new Treo phones bring to the table, especially the color model (should Handspring hang around long enough to deliver it).
DigiSquid Design.
And the funny thing is that they are being killed by a better product.
No, they're being killed by a different product. The Palm OS machines are intended to be inexpensive, practical organizers -- not undersized laptops or $500 status symbols. Palms trade things like MP3 playback and glitzy graphics for battery life, light weight, small size, and low price.
Palm OS devices are incredibly practical to someone who needs a powerful organizer for their work -- which is why medical professionals love them. For some kid that's looking for a fancier version of a Gameboy to impress the other kids, the PocketPC machines may be appealing:
Dudez, im righting this email on my iPaq and listening to a Rancid MP3! iPaqs rule! Palms are seriously gay!
The grown-ups will continue to buy Palm as long as they are available.
Handspring has just destroyed the Springboard and Visor markets with these statements. I am lead programmer for Shine Micro Shine Micro, maker of the SM2496 DSP module for the Visor, and we have been working hard to bring our product to market. Currently it is in Beta testing, but it now appears that we are going to have to redesign for a different platform, or dump the project entierly.
The quote was that the will be exiting the PDA market "but not today". That doesn't provide any kind of reassurance to any of the Springboard deleopers who have invested a great amount of time and effort into what is now a dead product line.
Yes, all product lines are finite. But you usually don't have the manufacturer announcing this fact prematurely. I don't see any reason for someone to buy a Visor or a Springboard module now that they know that the support will not be there sometime in the near future.
It sounds like Handspring is turning into a fancy cellphone company. I don't think that they will survive this move. The Visor and Springboard are a good product and would have carried them far into the future (just look at Palm).
Brian Lane
Lead Programmer
Shine Micro
Maker of the SM2496 DSP module
Remember Lexington Green!
I'm wondering if the purchase of BeOS will help with this.
;).
Since Palm is making their move to the Strongarm processor, and BeOS was touted for having a great interface, cool filesystem, etc (and not having used BeOS before their demise, I can't comment on how good or bad it is), but it should be possible to imagine a Palm system which actually does some cool multimedia, and with the Metadata part of the filesystem, can make things like document editing/mp3 playing, etc a snap for developers and users.
Remember - Palm did well first because it takes one button to get to whatever you want. If they can use the BeOS pieces to their advantage with the more powerful processors (without sacrificing battery power), the game might still be an interesting one to watch.
I love competition.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I find it amusing that you think that the OS with 80% marketshare is getting 'killed'. Right.
None of that "unfair bundling" crap to complain about.
No, I'll just complain about Microsoft using existing monopolies to create a new one in the PDA OS sector (which is illegal). Microsoft is leveraging Windows by virtue of developer lockin, and is leveraging Office by virtue of proprietary file formats ("view Word and Excel e-mail attachments right on your iPaq!"). I hope Microsoft gets slammed for it.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I can't figure out why handspring would announce this. They have, in the eyes of consumers, obsoleted their entire inventory. What are they going to do with their warehouses full of neos, prisms, and pros? I go to fry's and there are still deluxes piled up everywhere. They're not going anywhere after this. Why not announce a price cut, clear the inventory and THEN announce a product's obsolence. This current strategy places them atop piles of unsellable inventory... not to mention the fact that it kills their revenue stream for the immediate future.
I'll just add something here.
I spose the depends on how you persive perfectly adequate.
My Vx is perfectly adequate, compared to the newer Palms or PocketPCs. But if Palm did something usefull like dump the graffiti area, use a higher res screen, made it even thinner than the Vx, bumped up the RAM, and fixed up some annoying thigs in PalmOS, I would no longer see the Vx as adequate. But have they? No. What am I missing today?
- Poor colour screen.
- Vibrator option that has poor setting (it's either on or off from what I can tell, I don't need a vibrator when my Palm is sitting on the table doing it wake-up call).
- No spare stylus.
- Heavier.
- LED power button.
- A new note app.
- Expantion card, which from what I head has been poorly implemented into the OS.
- Oh yeah, and a basic thing like a pop-up clock, which I solved with better 3rd party SW anyway (PocketWatch+).
Not much really. Like you said, alot of people find there current Palm perfectly adequate. But I don't think Palm hurt them selves by making a product that is perfectly adequate. They hurt them selves by not improving there product. If you build it, they will come.So, mostly they don't bother - they sell all their interesting models everywhere else, and sell a few models in the US that are most easily re-engineered to work here.
My friends at Nokia tell me the phones we have here are 2 or 3 years behind Europe.
The M505 could even use a little shrinking still. PocketPC devices are not addressing shrinking form factor, but rather are adding bloatware bells and whistles. I would not even consider looking at one if I couldn't leave it in my shirt pocket comfortably.
Wow, full circle - This is why I think that Handspring is smart by betting the farm on the Treo. I'm with you - I want my PDA to be small and extremely portable, just like my mobile phone. From what I've read and seen (and from what Handspring claims) the Treo is the smallest of all the Palm devices so far (smaller than a deck of cards) and it's a phone which means I can kill two birds with one credit card purchase. I think a lot of people will be just like me.
This is definitely the area where the PocketPC is going to have trouble following the PalmOS - to this small of a form factor and functionality, which I would venture is much more important than Color/Memory/MP3, etc. "Stinger" cuts too much out of the OS to be a PDA on a phone, I think. But that doesn't matter - it's considered a different platform anyways. I can't write a PocketPC/Stinger application that will work effortlessly like I can write a PalmOS app right now that will still work on the Treo.
The question in my mind is what's going to happen with PalmOS 5.0? Suddenly, the PalmOS is as power hungry as the PocketPC. Will there be a PalmOS 5.0 based Treo? It's a good question. Does this mean that PDAs will all progress to 32 bits, but "Communicators" will be stuck in 16 bit for the time being? Maybe not since there's Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola and the rest of the Symbian group to think about. The Symbian OS is 32 bits and runs on their phones. But when will their "Smartphones" move up to be more like PDAs? (Not counting the Nokia 9210 which is more PDA than mobile phone). And when are we going to see the first Linux based PDA/Phone?
-Russ
Me