Rumors Continue About Palm/Handspring Merger

If I had the power to eject any senior officer at Handspring, Jeff Hawkins would be the first to go. He, much like his company, was grossly over-hyped. His ideas are tired and boring. And he offered little in the way of innovation. Sony bested him in every direction while he held on to outdated products and old ideas.

So much for the "Great God of PDAs".

Actually, By suggesting HS lost it's share value because of the market implies that these companies were valued fairly to begin with. The market was overhyped and overvalued, and now the market has corrected itself towards more realistic expectations.

I always think of the internet firm (forgot it's name) run by a bunch of 20 somethings. They received about 30 million in VC, through a 20 million launch party in Vegas, and spent another 10 million on advertising A sure sign the end was near.

liar

A company is not worth $100 per share just because some fool was willing to pay that much at the height of a speculative mania.

A company is worth $100 a share if it earns sufficient profits to justify that price. Handspring has never made a profit.

One more word of advice: Don't give up your day job.

Why is it "Too bad"? All's fair in love and business.

It's called competition. If your company doesn't offer consumers the products they want, you are going to fail. This is what happened to Handspring. They are selling products that offer no compelling features or value. Just more of the same generic Palms that already flood the market.

Sony has surpassed Handspring as the number 2 PDA maker. There is a lesson here, I think.

so where's Sony's Palm phone? too bad you can't check your email on a Clie

>too bad you can't check your email on a Clie

You mean it's too bad _you_ can't check your email on a Clie. Some of us Clie owners have no need or desire to check email every second of the day, but I can understand how it makes a lot of people feel important to be "connected" 24 hours a day.

Handspring is living on borrowed time. I had my Prism and Minstrel S and was a die-hard HS fan until the present ball was set in motion by Donna's boo-boo about bye-bye Visor and the subsequent phasing out of the springboard [it HAS begun!] and the Visor line.

I picked up a Clie T615 last month, trading up 3 weeks later to the new T665 and am not looking back. My wireless was never really "there" anyway, invariably frustrating me when I most wanted it to work. The Clies are far superior to any of the 3 Visors I owned and helped make the disconnect of my wireless a few days ago painless. Not to mention the fact that I always held my breath hoping I didn't get stuck in a reset loop [aka hard reset] when I switched modules. I don't have to deal with that with my Clie.

They're bumbling geeks in the worst way - they're oblivious to the needs/wants of their users. I can't wait for them to DIE!

Who wants to be like M$ anyway? Do you want to charge your handheld every 2 hours?! I don't and not many other people. Just as many pc users want a M$ handheld to sync smoothly with Windows, mac users want a PDA that does the same on OSX. I don't think it will make a difference whether these guys merge or not. But we don't know what they have up their sleeves either.

Another thing, when did this rumor start anyway? I never read any concrete evidence, just people in forums shooting their mouth off.

Who want's to be like Microsoft?! Who doesn't? They're the most successful software company in history. Whether you think you agree or not, you ALL agree. Raise your hand if you're accessing this site using Mozilla on Linux. Well, congratulations to the five of you out there. As for the rest of you, it sure is easy to bash Microsoft while using their software isn't it!

Don't get me wrong, I have a Visor Platinum, and am thinking about buying a Treo. I'm not talking about handhelds here. The discussion topic is successful (or not so successful) companies. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is much more successful than Handspring and Palm are. Everyone who's using their software agrees with me whether they like it or not.

Interestingly, Donna Dubinski has been at the helm of more than one company hasn't she. Take not as to how each of these companies is doing.

To be fair, MS isn't playing in the entire PDA market. They are targeting the upper half, in which, Sony is the only real competitor. Palm owns the dirt-cheap market and mid-priced market with their products. Handspring's in the gutter with the Neo and Visor products and deluding itself with the Treo priced as it is.

For the nostalgic, they're even using a Palm III stylus with it: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/tiqit83/smallimages/10.jpg

LoL .. I thin it's about time ppl realize that Palm OS is not going to make it in the smartphone business.. Symbian robably won't make it in the PDA business but hell the smartphone market looks much bigger.

Um...How can I sum this up?....OK, in a word, NO!

Heh, like that has mattered in coporate America for a long time... personal whims are what it's all about obviously - and that's why your economy is screwed and you have seen numerous, massive company crashes recently...!

Good 'ole US of A... eh?

Moron? EXACTLY.

Big, beaurucratic companies getting brought down to earth (which is different than "crashing", Mr. Jack*ss), is exactly the economic condition that gives small, smart startups the ability to stay alive, and then thrive.

I don't know where you're from. Your country probably has a lower murder rate than the U.S.....fair enough.

But I guarantee your people *WISH* they had the freedom and happiness that we in the U.S. enjoy. These tough times make us closer, not snottier.

I bet you've never even spent 5 MINUTES trying to think of something that nobody else had!

Enjoy your sick country, you jealous idiot.

They are going all Treo from now on. though I doubt they'll survive this way.
What sells a PDA is price and hardware (honestly not the software). PPC sucked because of it's form factor, it's just too big, and Sony is more than capable of making/selling those Treo 90 like device for like $200-250, how could Handspring possibily survive? With Companies like Toshiba joining the PPC camp, PPC hardware will keep getting smaller and smaller. I could see in the near future it'll be Sony VS Toshiba VS iPaq VS SonyEricsson VS Nokia.

So, you didn't really care for their tooty fruity flavors?