Monday, August 13, 2007
Fujitsu-Siemens Leaving The Windows Mobile Market
Posted by Nurhisham Hussein in "HARDWARE" @ 01:00 AM
"As the saying goes, “All good things come to an end”. And, unfortunately, it seems that it is the turn of FSC’s range of Pocket LOOX handheld devices; FSC has announced that they will be withdrawing from the handheld and handheld navigation markets from the end of 2007."
When this turned up on my RSS feed, it caught me completely by surprise. Given the relative success of the T830, which overcame such barriers as limited marketing and zero carrier support, I'd expected it to be just the first in a line of Windows Mobile phones. This about-face saddens me, as I've been a believer in FSC's approach towards PDAs - full-featured, business-oriented devices. While I'm not surprised that they've left off standalones, the fact that they're not willing to compete in the smartphone space could be a strategic error - certainly other business-oriented PDA brands have looked towards that market as a new growth area (read: Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba). With Dell also having abandoned standalone PDAs, there's hardly a company left in that market segment now. Goodbye, Loox, I'll miss you.
When this turned up on my RSS feed, it caught me completely by surprise. Given the relative success of the T830, which overcame such barriers as limited marketing and zero carrier support, I'd expected it to be just the first in a line of Windows Mobile phones. This about-face saddens me, as I've been a believer in FSC's approach towards PDAs - full-featured, business-oriented devices. While I'm not surprised that they've left off standalones, the fact that they're not willing to compete in the smartphone space could be a strategic error - certainly other business-oriented PDA brands have looked towards that market as a new growth area (read: Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba). With Dell also having abandoned standalone PDAs, there's hardly a company left in that market segment now. Goodbye, Loox, I'll miss you.
