Hand Held (XP/LINUX) Computers - PPC competitors?

[Gen-M]

We are beginning to see a healthy set of contenders for the space between the laptop and the PDA. The segment is being validated.

Sony is the latest entrant http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Style-a/Product/U/index.html to ship in Japan 5/29/04

TIQUIT is still in the looking for a customer stage http://www.tiqit.com/

FlipStart http://minipc.vulcan.com/default.asp will ship in the US in Q1, 2005

Antelope http://www.antelopetech.com/en/index.aspx has been shipping for several months now - Enterprise Evaluation Kits only, although their site has been updated to show component prices.

The ARCHOS AV500 http://www.archos.com/press/press_releases/archos_cebit2004.180304.en.pdf will ship by the end of the year

And, of course, OQO http://www.oqo.com/ in 2nd half 2004

It will be an interesting 6-12 months to see if all the promises can be kept.

They all focus on a slightly different sets of features.

How much advantage will first to market have?

What kind of pressure will they put on the PDA market?

:devilboy: :devilboy: :devilboy:

[twalk]

How much advantage will first to market have?

Not much. If you need this kind of functionality, then you probably have some sort of solution in place already.

What kind of pressure will they put on the PDA market?

Against Palms? Not much. Most Palm users are looking for cheap/simple.

Against PPC? Potentially a lot. Many/most PPC are sold to corps. They then have a choice of either a small XP device, or a smaller & cheaper PPC. An XP device gives basically the same platform that is on all the desktops, PPC means another platform to be supported. That's big, especially if the company has a lot of custom apps. Besides, MS makes $60+ for each copy of XP, and usually plus Office, while they make about $10 per PPC.

[Kacey Green]

I wouldn't count the OQO until it is being unloaded on the loading docks of my local retailer, or I see pictures of it in reviews.

[jake080]

The price of these XP handhelds is the question... and like no one knows it seems. Will they really be worth the wait, or shall we just continue to embrace our new x-scales and VGA, and all our faithful companies' new WM2003se devices?

What to do?!? sometimes i feel like its a PC game, and it would just be better to have a saved game file from the end of the game, so all the things are available... like now, if only technology would be 100% achieved, and there be nothing better, then we .... well i guess that woud be all boring... that sucks!!! no way to win with this stuff!?!?!?!?!

~Jake

[Kacey Green]

Yeah, I agree, I think :? , but it would be nice if these things happened at a slightly faster clip, not much but enough you didn't feel MAJOR gadjet lust if you miss a generation, that way the manufacturers and MS would see an even more stedialy rising constant stream of purchasers and upgraders. Plus more people would upgrade so MS would see a bigger income, but the OEMs would have to entice us into a new device (read make more and more worthwhile devices)