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Motorola To Buy PDA-Inventor Psion For $200 Million

Posted by Unknown on from the end-of-an-epoc dept.

judgecorp writes "Psion, the company which made the first handheld computers in the 1980s, invented the PDA, and launched the once-unstoppable Symbian OS, is to be bought by Motorola Solutions for $200 million. Following a merger with Teklogix ten years ago, Psion has just been making ruggedised business devices, a business where Motorola Solutions also plays — note, this is Motorola Solutions, not the phones division Motorola Mobility, which Google recently bought."

18 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Thank you Elop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Incredible to think Nokia went from the top slot to almost nowhere in the space of one CEO. Not only that, but he's ENTRENCHING himself further in, replacing some of the key staff with his own choices. Elop is to Nokia what Icahn was to Yahoo, a fake saviour that actually decimates the company for their own ends.

    He's going to be difficult to unseat now, well until the company is sold to Microsoft for a pittance, but seriously, can any shareholder say he's done a good job? Nokia could be the major Android player now, Huawai the Chinese maker is growing at a huge rate and came in late to the Android market, yet Nokia's Elop claimed it was a meat market they couldn't make money in???

    1. Re:Thank you Elop by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      Where are the lawsuits?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:Thank you Elop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Incredible to think Nokia went from the top slot to almost nowhere in the space of one CEO.

      Story is about Motorola. Fuck all to do with Nokia. Mod parent offtopic.

    3. Re:Thank you Elop by DrXym · · Score: 2
      Nokia was definitely ailing. It spent a decade fighting itself with various divisions duplicating effort, pursuing lame duck projects, fighting amongst itself, wasting piles of money. It definitely needed to revise it's strategy in numerous ways and it would have meant job losses and most likely the death of Meego and ultimately Symbian.

      But the way they've gone about it is pure suicide. They killed Symbian when it still had life in it, burned any possibility of a migration path and went with the worst smart OS at this present time. Consequently developer confidence has collapsed, consumer sales have collapsed and their entire future relies on their relationship (or not) with Microsoft. They are literally Microsoft's bitch. At the present rate of losses they'll be sold and asset stripped within 18 months. If they're lucky they'll limp along in some form as Microsoft's mobile hardware division. If not, they'll be worth as much as their patents and will be quietly dispatched.

      No doubt Elop will award himself an enormous bonus and finding himself back as a senior VP within Microsoft when it's all done but Nokia is fucked and it's hard to believe that this wasn't all planned from the moment that he was put in charge. Seriously what the hell were they thinking when they hired this guy.

      I don't think it would have been easy if they'd chosen Android for example, but it's also clear how they could have produced a product which would have appealed to existing Symbian users while benefiting from the large Android ecosystem. Hell, they could have even shoved a Symbian or QT runtime on there so that porting apps to the new phone OS was relatively straightforward.

  2. Re:Psion didn't "invent" .... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

    Oh yeah? I'd like to learn more about this. What were some of the model numbers of Toshiba, Canon, and Sharp PDAs that predate 1983?

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  3. Re:Psion didn't "invent" .... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry to reply to my own post, but in looking the answer up to my question I did find an interesting link.

    It may strain your definition of PDA a bit, but the history of these machines is neat.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  4. Re:Psion didn't "invent" .... by evanak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wow .... thanks for posting that .... it's BLATANT PLAGIARISM of my web page from several years ago (see where it says "By Evan Koblentz"? That's me. Whatever site posted it sure as hell didn't have my permission to do so.)

  5. Re:Psion didn't "invent" .... by evanak · · Score: 3, Informative

    PS - The site that stole my work has fine print saying "All rights reserved" on the bottom of their page .... so they steal people's work ... and then claim the rights to it. Nice.

  6. Re:Psion didn't "invent" .... by evanak · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm just mad. I removed the site for (gasp!) a business purpose. Just because something was once online does not mean the world is free to steal it. I'm sure some people will flame me for saying that; they can go right ahead because there's free speech. I'm as politically liberal as anyone, and I'm a strong advocate for open-source. My home computer runs Linux. None of that precludes me from wanting to make a few bucks from (more gasp!) my intellectual property. It's very naive for people to say I "haven't been harmed" and "nothing was taken from me" ... that's bull. If I plan to sell something (in this case, the page is part of a chapter of an upcoming book), and someone else decides it's their right to TAKE it and GIVE it away, then I am directly harmed and losing something -- money in my pocket, and food on my family's table. (Yes, I know there are papers and studies claiming that open-source actually increases sales, blah blah blah ... did you know 80% of all people believe made-up statistics? :) ) Bottom line: just because something is closed-source doesn't make it evil, and just because something is open-source doesn't make it good. (It does, however, feel good to rant.)

  7. I have the kiss of death for awesome technology by c.r.o.c.o · · Score: 3, Funny

    A while ago I realized every single manufacturer of electronic devices I loved has either gone bankrupt or shut down that particular division. Here's my list in no particular order:

    - Psion 5, 5MX, 5MX Pro
    - Palm III, Vx, m500
    - Sony Clie NR70, NX70, TH55 and many others
    - Nokia E71, N900, N9

    I hold a particular soft spot for Psion though, as their devices were truly works of art. It took a decade for the same level of integration between the OS and component applications to be matched. The hardware was (almost) bulletproof, with the 5 series sliding keyboard being a truly impressive piece of engineering. However having a battery life measured in DAYS is still a pipe dream...

    I do seem to have a knack for picking dying technologies though. A friend joked that I should be given a free Windows phone, that will certainly spell its demise.

    1. Re:I have the kiss of death for awesome technology by kikito · · Score: 2

      > A friend joked that I should be given a free Windows phone, that will certainly spell its demise.

      Start a kickstarter campaign.

  8. Re:Two Motorolas? by rs79 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "And are these the same guys that make bar code scanners?"

    I'm not entirely certain I'm answering the right question here, but, I used to work for Teklogix, in the 70s and again in the 90s. Teklogix invented the hand held barcode scanner. I wrote the barcode decoding software. And you know that thing where in UPC and EAN you can't tell 1's from 7's ad 2's from 9's? I found a way around that. it was basically an improvement to the IBM edge to edge detection technique. I wrote it up and told my boss we should patent it and he just sat on it till it was too late to patent it. AFAIK those are the only termials that have this, it was to fix Brown Shoe's one in a million scan error problem, and did. That patent would have been valuable to motorola, certainly more valuable than not having one. So, kids, if you hand in something like this to your boss an tell him to patent it, nag him till he does.

    In the 70s Teklogix automated the postal plants and did special effects hardware for camera stuff. We had PDP-11's and Dave Conroy worked at the next desk from me and this is where he wrote his C compiler, which became DECUS C which became gcc.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
  9. Dude, chill. by KingSkippus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dude, chill. Seriously. It's not that big a deal. In fact, if it was copied with your name still attached to it, if anything, it might help you sell more books. You were credited, after all, which is a lot better than some authors receive.

    This offense rates maybe a "slightly miffed" reaction at most. The guy who copied it isn't keeping you from feeding your family. At worst he cost you a few pennies in advertising revenue, except that since you admitted that you took the original down, he's not even costing you that. On principle, you're right, but to be brutally honest, your melodramatic "woe is me" posts are making you come off as a bit of a tool, and thus unsympathetic, in spite of it.

    Every creative person in the world has to live with their stuff being taken now and then. Writers, musicians, painters, future theorists, computer programmers, the list goes on and on. Such is the cost of creating something and putting it out there. Sure, you can wallow in anger and misery, or you can take it as a compliment that you actually created something worth copying, which means that you very likely have the capability of creating something worth monetary value.

    1. Re:Dude, chill. by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      To be brutally honest, you are a patronising asshole. Seriously.

      If you regard copying your stuff as free advertising and a compliment that's weird but up to you, but it's NOT up to you whether evanak is permitted to be angry.

      Dude, chill. Seriously. It's not that big a deal.
      by KingSkippus

  10. Re:Two Motorolas? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    They both use the Motorala trademark at the same time? How does that work out?

    Try asking Rolls Royce.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  11. Re:Psion didn't "invent" .... by cheekyjohnson · · Score: 2

    Some people believe that the GPL is useful as long as copyright exists but that copyright in general shouldn't exist. Also, what do you mean? You're just generalizing. Not everyone feels that way.

    --
    Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
  12. Not plagiarism by SteveFoerster · · Score: 2

    Copyright infringement yes, plagiarism, no. Plagiarism is the use of what someone else has written without crediting them. This site didn't do that. Similarly, one can plagiarize from work that's in the public domain.

    --
    Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
  13. Re:Why so many mergers/splits? by evilviper · · Score: 2

    The great thing about the Series 3 was that you could keep it in your pocket and use it frequently for a couple of weeks on a pair of AA batteries. The Series 5 needed charging overnight.

    I have no idea WTF you're going on about... The Psion Series 5 was advertised as running for a month on a single pair of AA batteries (light usage), and I got about a week per pair of heavy usage, for the duration of the time I was using my 5MX.

    WP lists it as ~20hrs of continuous use, which you most certainly couldn't consume every "night":
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5

    With modern, high capacity NiMH-LSD batteries, or lithium AAs, I'd bet it would really get over a month of battery life with heavy usage, these days.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant