Slashdot Mirror
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."
hell maybe if it had a ethernet jack on it
Actually, it's pretty easy to put a CF Wifi card in one (I've got an SL-5500) and use it to surf the web and check email when you're out and about. They're a lot smaller than a laptop and much easier to carry around.
Oh, and full size keyboards are available.
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.
The Zaurus line is a great one; I've had three models (5000D, 5500, 5600). However, my Treo does everything that the Zaurus can do, and comes with a phone! Since the Treo is a non-MS device, it also satisfies my desire not to support Microsoft. Of course, the Treo 650 will be even better. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
I was up till recently a SL-5500 owner. It was a great PDA. However Sharp's software support was terrible. They had great hardware with great function but poor software support.
The OSS community took-up the slack the best they could by releasing revised ROMs and even roms built from the ground up like Open Zaurus.
Another issue I had was lake of sync support. The sync feature was flaky at best.
So I really think it's a bad move on sharp's part to discontinue US sales. The zaurus is one of those devices that almost was and still can be the killer device.
On a side note. The Zaurus is the best handheld I have ever used for WiFi site surveys!
What could possibly go wrong?
One does tend to find PDA use slightly less common behind the McDonald's counter.
why bother with a big clunky PDA when i can now get the same functionality in my cellphone ?
the PDA has now been surpassed,the clever manufacturers discovered that there is no real need for it anymore, need something bigger than a cellphone, then a tablet PC should fit the bill
iam sorry to see PDA's go but thats progress for you
To date, I only have known two people who own PDAs - my boss and one of my friends. I don't even see many people at my unversity who own them - but I know a bundle who are married to their laptops. If they can't sell a gadget to college students, good luck selling it to anyone at all. My money is on pda/cellphone combos and blackberries.
I don't know ANYONE who uses a pda... personally I don't think they're all that useful.
Can't seem to swing a dead cat in my office without knocking a PDA out of someones hand. They seem to like them a lot. I've personally tried several and given them all up in place of a Nokia series 60 smart phone (6620 now... used to have a 3650).
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.
Mail? - automatically notified
Calendar? - I always get my reminders
Contacts? - are you kidding? You gotta have them in your phone anyway
Notes? - voice, text and instant photo notes (very handy when you need to copy something quickly)
Games or web on the john? - no one questions the phone since they never see it (try that with a newspapaper)
I think the real truth is Sharp saw the future and the future is everone having a PDA on their phone. If you notice, PDAs aren't really Personal Digital Assistants anymore... they're tiny computers (litterally with the OQO). The reall PDA market comes with cellular service.
TW
Does this mean that (American) Dell and HP have beaten Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba (Japanese) in selling tiny consumer electronics devices in the US? That market 0wn3rship is being fought out by viciously innovating American competitors? Where are the "American Engineering Extinction" pundits while the new paradigm firmly assumes an American twang?
--
make install -not war
PDA's are just another gadget that gets outdated after a year. Maybe I'm growing old/less competetive, but I don't want to buy these new thingies all the time.
"How long will it last?" is the first question I ask myself, and the faster it will be outdated, the less money I'm willing to spend on it. My previous computer was a dual PII, it cost me a fortune but that money is gone. My last PC was a cheap AMD homemade, it works fine and with the money I saved I bought a telescope. I've always wanted one, and a telescope can last much longer than a PC that loses it's value instantly.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Eh? Cool toys?
Japan has "cool toys" because real estate is prohibitively expensive in Japan. Nobody ever saves for a $250,000 McMansion in Japan because there's no place to build it. So they live in 600 feet square apartments and have lots of "cool toys". Our toys are a new Rototiller and a John Deere lawn mower. I have no idea which is "cooler".
As for me--this is just me, of course--I'd rather own my house than have a Sharp PDA for no other compelling reason other than it runs Linux. Go Japan! That's how you become a world power!
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
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!