Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Handspring leaves organizers and takes focus off of retail
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 02:00 PM
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:HAND&Feed=RTR&Date=20020925&ID=1952869
Handspring announced today that they were cutting back significantly on their marketing of digital organizers. This will take the focus off of retail since most Treo devices are sold through carriers. They also laid off 20% of their workforce, about 80 people, most of which were in their marketing department for organizers.
Palm OS seems to be consolidating on Palm and Sony organizer hardware. Of course, Palm, Samsung, Handspring and Kyocera are selling "smartphones" which are PalmOS devices with voice added on. Samsung is also selling Microsoft Smartphone 2002 based devices, which is a totally different design geared solely for a cell phone, unlike the Palm OS and Pocket PC Phone Edition offerings.
That really leaves HP/Compaq, Toshiba, Sony and Palm as the big guns in organizers. There are no big guns in PDA-Phone combos or smartphones yet. All of the volumes are too small to say who will be a big gun, though Samsung is the one to watch in my opinion.
Handspring announced today that they were cutting back significantly on their marketing of digital organizers. This will take the focus off of retail since most Treo devices are sold through carriers. They also laid off 20% of their workforce, about 80 people, most of which were in their marketing department for organizers.
Palm OS seems to be consolidating on Palm and Sony organizer hardware. Of course, Palm, Samsung, Handspring and Kyocera are selling "smartphones" which are PalmOS devices with voice added on. Samsung is also selling Microsoft Smartphone 2002 based devices, which is a totally different design geared solely for a cell phone, unlike the Palm OS and Pocket PC Phone Edition offerings.
That really leaves HP/Compaq, Toshiba, Sony and Palm as the big guns in organizers. There are no big guns in PDA-Phone combos or smartphones yet. All of the volumes are too small to say who will be a big gun, though Samsung is the one to watch in my opinion.
