Handspring Announces Weak Revenues

Palm is Dead. Handspring is now dead. Only Sony can save the Palm OS from dying now. Long live Sony.

NOT!!!

Handspring needs something new...its line is very tired..also a proprietary expansion standard is not looking like such a good idea now...everything costs too much.

Palm owns the OS and has a much larger customer base, so will exist in one form or another no matter what, even if it is through a buyout, which I consider unlikely at this point, especially with the tax hit any purchasing company would have to swallow.

Handspring has nothing except springboard slots (yawn) and ugly also-ran handhelds. It doesn't have anything that can keep the company afloat should the bad economic times that are hitting everyone, not just Palm, continue on much longer.

All Consumer Electronics Companies are being hit by the econonomic slow down. Palm and Handspring are effected like everyone else. Palm made an additional gaff by missjudging the effect of pre-announcing the m5xx series when the product ended up significantly delayed. The effect of this delay was additional "older" generation palms were built to fill the gap but never sold in the predicted volumes while people waited for the announced m5xx. The result - over stock of old Palms (like the Palm Vx). Handspring has a different issue. There 2nd generatioin (if you can call it that) product, namely Visor Edge, is equivalent to the Plam Vx machines from Palm and therefore perseived by some as "old school". They need to refresh their product portfolio quickly and I would not beat that we maybe in for some surprises from them.
On the positive side there are some nice machines appearing. The handera with the High res screen and "hideable" Graffiti area is the wave of the future as is Sonys latest round of "Quadruple definition" screens that are now higher res than WinCE machines like the Compaq iPaq (320x320 vs 320x240).
Do not discount Uncle Bill with WinCE. Compaq has proved that despite the balls and chains associated with WinCE, nice machines can be produced, but running on 200+MHz machines you can guess the battery life.
The transition over the next 12-24 months is going to be fun for us all to watch. Will Handspring pull some real stunners out of a hat, will Palm adopt some of the other features that others are innovating (higher res screens, hideable Graffiti areas etc) and what will Handera and Sony do next to innovate this platform. With ARM based Palms around the corner, the Palm concept faces a real challenge. It must continue with it's ease of use, great battery life (that suffers a little in the m505) and thin footprint. At the same time it must fend off the temptation to add bells and whistles that only a few vocal techies (like myeself!) want but the masses don't give two hoots about. Keep the cost of the platform down, ease of use up, whilst improving it's "speed of use" will insure it's continued success. Loading palm O/S devices to the point where it completes with WinCE devices head-on with the same lesser ease of use will likely doom Palm to failure simply as Microsoft has more staying power (dollars) than Palm....unless Sony buys Palm;-) Wireless must play a role in all new devices from all vendors or their products risk being obsolete.
So - all in all, yes a bad quarter, but exciting times for us users and watchers. Some intense (but fun) times for PDA vendors. I agree with some of the other statements that infer that if any Palm PDA vendor bites the dust, the best ideas innovated by that company will continue on in other vendors products. The challenge, as WinCE product vendors have seen is how do you get product differentiation. The advantage WinCE has is that Microsoft does not complete with it's customes in this space (MS does not make a PDA). Palm does. However, without the purse strings of someone like Bill Gates, a Palm O/S (only) Company will need significant investment from all interested parties or never make it past the concept stage (or if it does it is doomed to failure).
I hope my miscellaneous ramblings are of interest. Remember, only the strong survive, and if there are some casualties on the way, it will be for good reasons and we will only benefit as users, unless Microsoft kills Palm (which is trying not to - thanks to the continuing legal issues).
regards
Neil (m505 user, ex-WinCE user, eager for the future).

I am an avid reader of this, and other, Internet fora. In particular, I find this forum to be extremely informative. I have a hard time, however, taking seriously the comments of posters with a disturbing inability to spell--and otherwise write--the English language. I understand and tolerate typos, shorthand and limitations imposed by Graffiti (I am writing this my Palm). But comments riddled with ridiculous spelling errors reduce the credibility of the poster.

Thanks for allowing me to rant.

Why anybody would buy a Handspring is beyond me. I was one the first owners of the Visor and
like many people I thought it was a innovative product. But now it seems that Handspring has rested
on their past accoplishments (like Palm) & hoped that their core users would keep buying their product.
Seems now thats not the case. Sony & Handera has passed them by, releasing innovative devices
at reasonable prices. Why would you spend $350-$400 on a edge when you buy a CLIE 610 or a Handera 330?

I think Handspring needs to unveil something innovative quickly or they will be bought out or go under.

This is really too bad. I had high hopes for Handspring. The VDX was a functional, cheap, and good looking PDA. It's only been downhill since then. Unless they come out with a new color model that is competitivley priced, looks nice, has a killer screen, and sells like hotcakes, I think Handspring might not make it out of the slump. Just my opinion, though.