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Palm to Buy Handspring
liam193 writes "CBS MarketWatch is reporting that Palm has agreed to buy Handspring for $169M. If you were purchasing a PDA right now, would you choose Palm, Handspring, or avoid them entirely? I guess one of my concerns is that Handspring has some really cool features that Palm may want to keep. Any merger spells elimination of product lines. So what gets dropped? Palm which has probably a nicer "case" style or Handspring with its less desirable case but some features you don't find on Palms."
I have an m125 and love it. Simple, functional, reliable. Now with this, hopefully I get a cell phone/all-in-one with all the goodness of a Palm!
KARMA TAG! You're it.
I don't get it - what does Handspring bring to Palm? Certainly a couple of years ago they had nice features compared to the palms of the time, like expansion ports and such like, but now Palm has that too.
Wouldn't they most likely use the best features from both?
If you were purchasing a PDA right now, would you choose Palm, Handspring, or avoid them entirely?
I would avoid both of them entirely, but not because of the sale, but because of the clunky design, smaller screen size, and general lack of innovation. With Handspring came along, it pushed Palm to adapt and made their products cheaper, and smaller. But overall both of their products we're basically the same. I mean how long did it take for Palm to develop USB functionality, even Handsprings came with it right out of the box?
Then the Palm OS market changed when Sony came along, they pulled the 6 Million Dollar Man on the competitors. They made their handheld, faster, smaller and added functionality the others were lacking. I did my research and at the time bought the Clie PEG-SL10 and I haven't looked back. Palm may of been one of the originators but Sony has been the innovator.
I think this sale is bad for everyone, competition always spurs more innovation.
Mike
A merger doesn't always mean elimination. In many cases there's actual merging.
I don't see why it has to be one or the other. Palm has been smart, and if they continue to be, the features of the Handspring will be added in to the next Palm Pilot revision.
Depends if you want to carry around a little computer or a PDA. No doubt that PPCs have more features, but they are considerably bigger and suck up the batteries much faster. I prefer PDAs as small as possible - I like the Palm V form factor.
Random is the New Order.
This "is a good thing (tm)" for both companies. The major competition for the PalmOS platform is no longer Handspring, but the explosion of PocketPC based products. By consolidating, Palm will be able to avoid brand dilution, and put up a united front against Microsoft in the handheld market. This is very similar to the move Apple made a few years back to reign in the clones.
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Um... no. Handspring was created by Jeff Hawkins (the designer and creator of the original Pilot/PalmPilot), Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan. The Original Three Founders of Palm left that comnpany because 3Com refused to spin off Palm as a separate entity. About a year later, Palm decided to do just that.... Hopefully now, Hawkins will come back into the fold and knock some sense into the gaggle of executives that Palm has acquired over the years...
I'd buy a Zaurus.
This post is dedicated to all of those
Doesn't this make the order of things something like:
- Guys invent Palm Pilot
- US Robotics buy out guys - guys make money
- 3Com buys out US Robotics - guys make money
- 3Com spins off Palm as separate company - guys make money
- Guys leave Palm, undoubtedly with money, start up Handspring
- Palm buys Handspring - guys make money
BTW I'm using the term "guys" generically, I think at least one of the key people was female.a world in progress...
I'm pissed that the springboard slot has been discontinued from Handspring models. I bought mine specifically because of the slot, and I've got several attachments for it. It's by far the most economical way to upgrade a PDA, and they scrapped it. My hope would be that Palm returns the Handspring slot, but I kind of doubt they will.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Well, we have two ipaqs and two Palms. My daily driver is a Palm IIIc, a 20MHz 8MB 160x160 psuedo-antique, while the much newer, faster, hi-rez, 32MB iPaqs sit unused. (The wife has the Zire 71.)
The short answer is, I want what works best on the road for on-the-fly PDA functions. That's Palm. Not Linux, not WinCE, just Palm. And I say this as a developer for all three, whose current day-job is embedded Linux and who has done commercial WinCE work.
The same thing you like about Linux over Windows (excepting open-source, i.e. efficiency, lack of bloat), you dislike about Palm over Linux. It's a specialized system for a specialized purpose, and it works exceptionally well for that. One OS is not ideal for every platform and application!
Palm can provide the upper-class business models (read: expensive, primarily PIM functions, long battery life, sleek design) and sell low-cost models under the Handspring brand (e.g. for students, young adults etc.).
:)
Maybe even Handspring products will focus on multimedia capabilites, personally I think Palm never really quite managed to score in that area.
But then again, things could remain the way they are
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
It's a harsh reality, but with the patents palm aquired with buying handspring, they may just sit on them to ensure no competitors get to use them.
It's happened before, remember SyQuest? They made removable storage similar to the zip and Jaz drives, only theirs were virtually indestructable, and based on tried and tested winchester technology.
When SyQuest finally went titsup.com, its only competitor iOmega bought the patents, and they havn't seen the light of day since.
I'd hate to see another technically superior product get betamaxed by a large company.
Nothing really. Handspring decided to end production of the Visor last year IIRC. The Treo line (smartphones) is what Handspring has been focusing on.
The only overlapping products from these two companies are the Treo 90 (the only non-smartphone PDA in Handspring current product line) and the Tungsten W (the only smartphone from Palm Inc). Both of them are OS 4.1 devices and should reach EOL by the time the merger completes.
As a longtime PalmOS user and a PalmOS developer, I think this is probably a good thing. Palm was just beginning to start producing devices that were for the same market as the new Handspring devices.
Handspring was no longer for me -- they are focusing on devices with wireless connectivity and thumbboards. But it's a style some people like. This gives Palm a wide variety of handhelds, probably a wider variety than anyone else.
This will also pretty much make the competition for PalmOS devices Palm and Sony. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it might not be too bad. Sony is concentrating on PalmOS with multimedia extensions, Palm is concentrating on PalmOS in small, extremely functional devices. There's a lot to be said for both.
My last buy was a Sony NX70. After seeing and using the big screen, it was hard to go to anything else. Still, I can certainly see the alure of the very small TungstenT...
Sean.
Going proprietary is ALWAYS a bad idea for consumer relations. If the Springboard slot had been a compact flash slot you would STILL be able to use that slot. It's a lesson that Apple has learned somewhat, but that Sony is still hardheaded about.
handspring hasn't been doing much the past few years to compete with Palm -- Sony has been pushing the consumer PDA side (and continues to). handspring was focusing on communicators, and thats something Palm is just now getting into, so it made sense to rejoin the groups that had gone separate ways.
Am i the only one baffled at the amazingly Pro-MS sentiment on Slashdot when it comes to handhelds?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Which is why iPAQ (and all top end PDA) sales are falling and the only area of growth is the sub-$150 dollar, cheap and simple end of the market.
I've got a Clie SL10, not very powerful (to say the least) but it does pretty much everything I need (store contacts and appointments, make the odd note, play the odd game to speed the commute home). The only advantage the iPAQ I have at work has is that it can play MP3 and WMA, but the battery doesn't last long so I'd still end up using my MP3 player anyway.
... is completely wrong.
/. article spells that out. Can't we get some kind of co-ordinated outcry from the rest of the tech sector about these kind of layoffs? Why don't we boycott Palm and PalmOS products, until Palm/Handspring management get their heads out of their asses and think about the employees that have been keeping their companies afloat, instead of their own pocket books.
"Any merger spells elimination of product lines."
I'm sorry, but who gives a shit? There is a glut in the handheld market right now - the reduction of products represented in both the Palm and Handspring product lines is beside the point.
The real question is - How many tech workers are going to be losing their jobs as a result of this merger?
According the article on ZDNet, Palm will lay off 125 people - not a huge amount, but after the killing spree that merged tech companies have wielded against their workforce, thats 125 too many.
There are always alternatives to taking jobs away from hard-working people. Why can't management take a pay cut instead? Or, if management is too greedy to indulge in self-sacrifice, perhaps allow everyone the option to take a 5% or 10% reduction in their pay - if they know there will be pink slips in Friday's check if they don't, I can't imagine people not doing it.
The tech industry as a whole has its priorities in the wrong place - the quote I posted from this
I say, F*** Palm and PalmOS, until they rescind their decision to lay off 125 workers. Anyone else out there have some backbone? Lets show some solidarity here. Who's with me?
The only thing Handspring brought to the table was their Springboard technology. I don't know if any of you did any work on it, but it was nice because it used the PCMCIA design, so it was easy to develop.
Now, Sony did do a lot, simply because they hit the market at the right time -- just when colour was about to hit. This meant that their name as a multimedia giant was used to lure people in, plus, they're just damn good at making electronics. I would have really loved to see them go with Pocket PC, but it has helped PalmOS to have such a strong company behind it.
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Wow! They really broke the mold when they created you didn't they!?!
Listen up. The IT (tech) industry is the only industry thats designed to minimize and or eliminiate ITSELF. From the printing press to the cotton gin to the airplane to the computer to the PDA, each technological advance allows mankind to do the same amount of work or more with less people/workers/employees.
Simply put, Handspring is screwing up. They need to be bought or they're out of business. THe only reason to buy them is to gain marketshare and cut expenses. Whenever companies merge there are always redundancies. You don't even know if all of those 125 workers will be tech workers. But does a company really need duplicate anything? Do they need 8 office admins if they previously did fine with 4? Do they need two cooks if they only had 1 before? The same goes for programmers or netadmins. They don't need anymore of those.
Contrary to your idiotic claims there are NOT always alternatives to laying off people. If you are redundant, than you're redundant. Should they keep you on and pay you to sweep the floors instead of eliminating your position? Thats worse than unwise, its insulting.
Perhaps Hewlet-Packard should have just kept bleeding money. Because obviously executive pay always makes the difference. When a company is losing billions of dollars the millions paid out to the top brass REALLY makes a difference eh?
Do you think the technology industry is special or something? That workers in this industry are a special breed of citizen deserving of protections others do not receive? This is what happens to EVERY maturing industry. Consolidation and elimination of redundancies.
DEAL.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Cool way to make profit. (1) Create successful company. (2) Leave company. (3) Create new company kinda like old company. (4) Sell new company to old comapny. (5) Repeat. Based on this scenario, I'd expect the next company to be named "Cash Cow". Or perhaps "Other Handspring".
:-)
No idea about handhelds, but for desktop OS's I think "NeXT would be a good name.
This sounds remarkably like the process that Apple went through. Apple liscensed their OS to compete better with WinTel. After reducing their prices slightly but not really adding innovation, Apple bought the competition. I can't really comment on whether Apple is better off today, or what impact this will have on Palm.
I use mine for the phone book. But, then replaced the scraps of paper I keep for must read books, must see movies and must get record albums. Also, I have software security on it to secure and collect passwords that I use for the myriad of systems I manage and accounts around the internet.
They are truly a useful device. PDA's are backed up on my PC thus if the PC is lost the PDA data isn't OR if the PDA is lost the PC data isn't. Those paper items sometimes disappear.
This looks familiar, and it bodes well. Steve Jobs left Apple (involuntarily, admittedly) and started NeXT, which was bought by Apple. Result of management merger: Apple's current product line. Result of technology merger: Mac OS X.
I'm still pretty darned satisfied with my Palm M500, and I'll happily keep using it, at least until the merger/shakedown results in a new product. As for competitive pressure: Sony, if not others, will still keep Palm on their toes.
A bigger screen is a mixed blessing - on the one hand you can view more information, or run at a larger font size without only being able to read a dozen words on the screen, but on the other hand, it could make the PDA too bulky to fit in a pocket.
I find my Clie's screen (320x320) to be pretty close to a perfect compromise, but I admit I'm used to very small text sizes.