Thursday, January 17, 2002

Handspring exist Palm market Dubinsky announced that Handspring was looking to get out of the PDA market--good for her. The PDA market is glutted with over capacity that, especially since Sony is in the fray, will not leave. Moreover, the struggling Palm has been very ambivelent about its OS lisensing policy--it's not clear what they will do in the future. And at the high-end, Microsoft is handing out $400 with each WinCE unit it sells, so I don't see any profits appearing in this industry anytime soon. Moreover, I don't see much revenue here either. Compared to the cell phone, the PDA market is finite, with paper providing a reasonable substitute for many people. Hardware prices, while falling, aren't going to reach $50 / unit anytime soon, and so aren't going to drop to the level where a whole new market of folks will appear who would have bought one but couldn't afford it before. And finally, Palms are just too good. I bought a Visor about two years ago and there is no reason for me to buy another one until this one croaks. It does everything I want about as well as can be expected in a world without magic. The biggest hinderance to my PDA experience is that it conforms to Outlook specifications, which suck. So, slow upgrades, no profits, saturated market. Not a good place to be.

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