Handspring leaves organizers and takes focus off of retail

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:HAND&Feed=RTR&Date=20020925&ID=1952869">http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:HAND&Feed=RTR&Date=20020925&ID=1952869</a><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.

[ojlittle]

That's too bad. I really like my Treo 90. I recently went on vacation & would have been lost without it. Yea yea yea, I could have used my iPAQ (3955) but the size difference was just too much of a factor. I also needed a decent "Money" program & travel planner. TwoPeaks Traveller crashed every other time I used it & PPC Money never synchronizes my accounts correctly. It always says I have less than $1,000,000 when I know I must have more! Ha.

[pt]

i saw this over at http://www.f*ckedcompany.com (you'll need to type the real url folks, sorry.

if you look at the story, phil kaplan uses a pocket pc phone edition, very cool.

cheers,
pt

[Ed Hansberry]

That's too bad. I really like my Treo 90.
The 90 is a nicely sized device. I wonder if it can survive though. Are people like CompUSA and BestBuy going to fool with a single device from Handspring? I know they sell the Treo 180 and higher, but those come from Sprint/Cingular/whomever. Handspring would be another vendor with only one offering. Not a good candidate for big retailers.

[ojlittle]

I wonder if it can survive though. Are people like CompUSA and BestBuy going to fool with a single device from Handspring?

Actually, all of the stores in my area (Best Buy\Circuit City) have already quit carrying the Treo 90. They quit stocking it when the backlight problem arose. According to a sales drone the returns on the units were like 80%.

CompUSA still has them, but they are 60+ miles away from me.

So, I guess the answer to your question is no, they probably won't mess with a single device.

[mookie123]

PPC should have a machine as small as treo90, I think it would be nice, just basic low end 300Mhz Xscale. Nothing fancy but something comparable to E310 maybe even with smaller screen dimension with SD slot. It doesn't have to be as thin, slightly thicker is ok.

If it goes for $250-300 it will sell like peanuts, specially if people can buy sledge for it too. (add battery, wireless, CF)

[ThomasC22]

OK, isn't this EXACTLY what caused them all the problems before?

Anyway, this seems like marketing speak for "we still aren't doing as well as we thought we would"

Handspring has promised profitablity a good 5 times at this point and I think they're finding they really need to hit it this time if they plan to have any clout with Wall Street (at least that's probably what their new CFO is telling them).

As far as the product itself goes, the Color Treo's stand a chance but are still pretty low end for their price tag.

[JonnoB]

The Treo devices just haven't had that sexy look of the xda or for that matter of the Sony based Palm PDAs. The changing color faceplates of the Nokia phones shows that looks matter. If Sony made a Palm based phone, that could be a compelling device even if I now despise the PalmOS.