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Sharp Plans To Pull Zaurus From U.S. Market
Eugenia writes "Facing stiff competition and low sales, a Sharp representative has informed InfoSyncWorld that the company has decided to fully withdraw its Zaurus SL line of Linux-based handhelds from the U.S. market and focus on its home market in Japan. The recent similar withdraws of Sony and Toshiba pretty much left PalmOne and RIM fighting alone HP and Dell in a saturated PDA market inundated with U.S. brands. People don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems, and primarily in the corporate market customers prefer to buy from the same suppliers as for their corporate hardware."
But you need to be ultra competitive feature wise for a Linux enabled pda to take off. I am a linux nut and I see no need for a PDA that runs linux on it. hell maybe if it had a ethernet jack on it and a full size keyboard, oh wait thats a laptop...
keanmarine.com
As stated, people don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems.
Moving people from MS to Linux is difficult enough because of the technical differencesalone, and did I mention the OS is free?
So why would people pay more money to try Linux?
If a PDA costs $400 running Windows, people already have the perception that a Linux-based PDA should cost $200 less because the OS is free.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Any more, most of the PDA's I see people carrying are also cell phones. I see a lot of people carrying Blackberries, Treos, and PocketPCs with phone capability. What is the advantage of carrying two different devices? From what I can tell the sharp line offered no phone capabilities and the wifi option drained way too much power to make it practical.
I heard a few weeks ago that this was going to happen, just could find any information about the discontinuation of the line. From my sources, I have been told that there is another linux pda from another company on the way. I do not remember what the company is off hand, but another is coming.
Persoanl rant
I wish sharp would do this, but o well. I love my zaurus, Just wish there was some linux software for syncing....
The Zaurus is a really really bad pda. Especially if you want to develop for it and you don't run linux on your desktop computer, I would think at least someone would have built some .exe file you can get for free and start cranking out software, but nobody has even bothered with that! Even the TI-83 calculator has development tools available for windows.
It has extremely crappy arrow keys, totally unsuited for any type of games, as well as a cramped keyboard that likes to press neighboring keys. The battery life is terrible, and the battery dies completely if the unit is suspended and kept away from a power source for an extended amount of time.
It has a tiny amount of software available for it. Half of the programs for it either fail if you don't use openzaurus, the other half fail if you do.
It's only useful for playing Day of the Tentacle. That's it.
I had a Zaurus when they first came out over here (5000d) and it was a great little gadget with great potential, but Sharp hardly pushed it over here at all, and never brought over the much nicer and sleeker Clamshell design. You get what you pay for, and you sell what you push. Bye bye Sharp at least one us will miss you.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
I saw the zaurus and I must admit that I was impressed. Unfortunately the price tag wasn't something I could afford. Anyone know a decent low-cost PDA with built-in keyboard, adequate speed/memory/storage, runs linux and can go wireless? Preferrably something that would sync up with kmail or evolution or something like that, too.
I'm in the demographic that can't quite justify an expensive PDA but if there's a relatively cheap one that has all the "geeky" linux capabilities, I'd probably get one.
So is this a replay of the 1970s, where American TV makers outsourced their inventing and manufacturing to rebranded Japanese companies, which then cut out the expense-adding American corporate layer and 0wn3ed the market, through today? Beating away the German (and British, French, etc) competitors? Like cameras before them, and cars after that.
--
make install -not war
Japan get all the cool toys while US (and Canada) markets show 'not enough demand'
/. ers do not buy cool stuff. How often do I see posts like: Macs are overpriced, and can get the parts and build my own PC for much less with more performance ...
... and the average japaneese guy finds having gadgets more geeky than an average american or european. And everybody has the money (or thinks to have it) to afford them, unlike here.
... that makes them even more expensive and unaffordable.
Hm, well when I tell you the truth I get modded down as Troll or Flamebait again (See my recent moderations).
USA is on the decline. You have what, 290 million inhabitants? Japan has 120 million. The "avaraqge" american is poor. The avarage Japaneese is rich, even richer than an avarage european.
Most
Well, I find a Mac more geeky
Most stuff is tailored for teh japaneese market and then adapted for USA or europe
OTOH, the opposite is happening as well, how often did I try to mail order something in teh US which was not available here for an obscure reason. Guess what: they did not even mail it to me!! To much hassle with customs and export laws.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It was real simple:
bad license --> no apps --> no one wants to buy it
Zaurus used the Qt widget library which is under the GPL license. You can purchase a proprietary license from Trolltech, so this shouldn't of been a problem but it was.
When the Zaurus beta came out Trolltech stalled and stalled on announcing the licensing details. I remember thinking "would a proprietary license cost $1000 like the desktop license? Or would it be more sensible?" Turns out it was in a more sensible $50 - $100 range but that one year period of indecision and uncertainty made many developers think twice. I know it influenced me to abort all Zaurus development plans. This blunder could of been easily avoided. Stupid Trolltech. Simply stupid.
The second fatal flaw with the Zaurus is that Sharp decided not to pay Trolltech for proprietary Qt licenses. Sharp should of subsidized the Qt costs for all Zaurus development. That is what Palm and Windows CE do. The PDA developer market expects this, actually it requires it. Kind of ironic that the cost to develop for a Free Software PDA is more than the proprietary ones (Palm and CE).
It was my old Zaurus SL-5000D that taught me one novel way to combine quality time with the family and geekery. I'd run kismet on the Z and put it in my pocket while pushing my 3-year-old daughter around my suburban neighborhood in her stroller. Whenever we'd pass a neighbor proudly polishing his car in his driveway, I'd give a cheerful "Hello!" and my Z would give an equally-cheerful "I found an open AP" bleep.
Hopefully my new SL-6000L will last me a long time...
Tim Fraser
For those bemoning the lack of an ethernet adapter, have a look at the Hawking Technology H-CF686TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet Network Adapter.
Since it is CF based, I would be really surprised if it could seriously keep up with a 100 mbps saturated network stream, but for just about anything else it should work out fine for you.
I have had one for about a year now, and have found that it works without searching for additional drivers, etc.
If you are attempting to sniff a network that is prone to broadcast storms, you will probably want more than a this, but if you just want to plug in, get an IP address to see what network the jack belongs to, and what capabilities the hub or switch you are connected to supports, this CF device and an old 5500 off of E-bay are going to run you a bit less than $200. (unless the news of Sharp dropping sales in the US bumps prices on the older units up as well.)
-Rusty
You never know...
I'm glad someone else mentioned it.
I thought my Palm was the greatest thing ever when I first got it. It was more convenient than a laptop, and my cell phone was bulky and lacked any features.
Now, I have a 12-inch iBook that can come with me almost everywhere I go; my $50 (with 1 year of T-mobile) cell phone, the tiny Sony Ericsson T610, has all of my contacts, my calendar, games, e-mail, stickies, and email, and can synchronize all of these with my laptop using Bluetooth.
The phone does the most important PDA functions and then some for less cost and in a smaller package; everything that needs computing power fits on the very small laptop.
It's not just that the phone is doing everything the PDA used to do; it's that the small, low-cost laptop can replace the PDA as a portable computing device and has enough power to be a reasonable desktop system as well.
There are still special-purpose apps that work best at the PDA level, such as tracking UPS deliveries. Outside of that niche, the PDA is all but dead.
why bother with a big clunky PDA when i can now get the same functionality in my cellphone ?
My reason: my Palm Zire syncs flawlessly with my Mac, while my phone does not. Sure, I can get a USB cable for my phone, but it will cost around $50, and there's no Mac support for it.
Oh yeah, I can also surf the web on my Palm and read ebooks without going blind reading 2 lines of text at a time, and without worrying about killing my battery for making and receiving calls.
And oh yeah, I can use my Palm on an airplane without getting bitched at for cell phone signals and interference and whatnot.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
I was the Developer Liasion at Sharp during 2002-2003 and I wrote a peice in Linux Magazine in May of 2004 about why the Zaurus failed. The short of it? Sharp had no clue about dealing with the Open Source community.
http://www.linux-mag.com/2004-05/hard_01.html
As another person mentioned upthread, there are -other- Linux handhelds in the works, some coming out by major companies. Lets just hope they aren't doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
As a senior software manager, I was responsible for selecting a PDA OS to standardize on at a small university in Boston last year. (I also had the option of deciding that none were good enough yet and examine the market again later.) I looked at the Palm devices and determined they were nice but didn't quite meet requirements. (And, their people didn't return my calls, which does not help form a business relationship.) I was given a WinCE pda/smartphone by the university (free, to keep), winced at how awful the software was, and gave it back. An article here on slashdot mentioned the zaurus, and I found one at a good price, decided that regardless of what would be best for the university, it was what I wanted for me. So, I bought one for me, and used myself as a guinea-pig.
I loved it. It was GREAT! In addition to being plenty fun for me to toy with, it was everything I wanted our students to have, and then some. I figured I'd toy with it a while longer before putting in the order for thousands of units... and then it broke.
Okay, these things happen. It was just a hardware button not working. That's repairable, right? So I sent it in for warranty service. I figured, this is just an opportunity to see how fast their repair service is before placing the order. I guessed the contacts were probably just corroded from the humid salt air of Boston, and this would be a good simple test of their repair department.
They sent it back to me un-fixed. Oh, and they'd wiped my data. (Fortunately nothing important was on it, I was more toying with it than anything.) So, I phoned to complain. They basically told me, in very polite language, that nothing was wrong with it and I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to use a button. But, there it was, in my hand, and the button still didn't work.
Sharp lost an immediate sale of 3500 to 4000 units, plus ongoing sales for incoming students, faculty, and staff, plus an ongoing repair contract with the university.
I took a jeweler's screwdriver and disassembled the relevant parts of the unit. The problem turned out to be corrosion on the contacts for the button. 20 seconds with a pencil eraser and it was fixed. Yet, Sharp repair apparently couldn't find that problem. Oh well, their loss.
And the university? Well, since I'd decided that no PDAs were yet acceptable, they bought some faculty and some staff Windows XP tablet computers... which I didn't like, but which did meet the requirements.
Sharp has some great tech. I'd LOVE to have one of their 3D displays, and a newer model Zaurus... but this is not the first time I've had a nasty run-in with their repair department, so I'm not going to be buying anything from Sharp any time soon. I can't say if I'm a representative customer or not, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if lack of repeat business is a substantial part of why Sharp isn't doing so well in the US computer market.
While the Open Source community did significantly hurt the user experience of the Zaurus, in all fairness some of that blame also belongs to Sharp. For example, they left the power button exposed and uncovered by the flip-down visor, which often results in the Zaurus getting turned on while it's still in your pocket and the battery being kaput the second you whip it out.
I think that whether future handhelds will be successful depends on whether they are "Linux Handhelds" guided primarily by Unix design values or "Handhelds That Just Happen To Run Linux" that are guided primary by PDA/Ergonomic values.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
> Advantage of the phone? It's always with me. I never seamed to have my PDA when I needed it the most, but since my cell phone is always in my pocket and connected to the net in some fashion or another (argue symantics all you want, but I'm always on the GSM network) I'm now always able to get the PDA data I need when I need it.
Well, that you forget your pda but not your phone has all to do with you and nothing whatsoever with advantages of a cellphone.
> Mail? - automatically notified
Over gsm? You sure you arent meaning gprs here? or do you use a permanent data connection over gsm, that must cost you...
Just a suggestion, at least here in Europe, there exist combined wifi/utms/gprs cards, they connect your pda to the net directly no matter where you are, if you really need that )I use bluetooth and the gprs connection of my phone instead)
> Calendar? - I always get my reminders
Why would that be different with a pda?
> Contacts? - are you kidding? You gotta have them in your phone anyway
Uh no you dont.
I have a Palm Zire 72 and an old Ericsson T39m phone and a headset, all linked together with bluetooth. I can tap a number on my pda, my phone will make the call without having to take it out of my pocket, and the headset will do the rest. No need to store my contacts on my phone at all, and my contacts are nicely synced with my pc.
> Notes? - voice, text and instant photo notes (very handy when you need to copy something quickly)
Which I can do with the Zire pretty well, it even has a much better camera then the average phone. I can also send the pictures by email directly from it (a lot cheaper then sending them with short message service also)
Now, what does a pda offer over a phone?
- a MUCH better screensize, so you can actually properly see the picture you are going to send, or actually read that webpage etc.
- Better integration with software on a desktop pc
- Dont have to turn it off in places where I am not allowed to use a cellphone (airplanes for example)
- Causes way less annoyance among people around you because it doesnt look like you are swapping text messages all the time.
- A lot easier to use while on the phone (for writing down that info the person on the other side is giving you for example)
- Much much much better software support, ie, having a pdf reader, tools for managing and manipulating trees of html files, decent picture editing, and even the possibility to work with MS Office documents on the way.
And the list can be made a lot longer depending on your situation.