Palm Debuts Two High-End wireless Handhelds

Milpitas, Ca. --- Palm Inc. has introduced two new high-end handheld devices with high-resolution color displays and wireless connectivity.

The Palm Tungsten T, available immediately and priced at $499, has a 320-pixel by 320-pixel color display, Bluetooth support, and runs the company's new Palm OS 5 multimedia operating system on the Texas Instruments OMAP1510 processor, a more powerful processor than Palm previously offered.

The unit also has a sleek new case design, with a slider at the bottom that covers the text-input and control-button area. With the slider closed, the unit is in a mode for reading information, and with the case open, the unit is ready for information input.

The Palm Tungsten W, due to be available in the first quarter of 2003 and priced at $549, is Palm's entry in the marketplace for handheld communicators and smart phones, competing with the Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry, the Handspring Treo, and smart phones from Nokia and other vendors.

Like the Blackberry and Treo, the W comes with a built-in thumb keyboard for text input. It provides wireless e-mail, SMS messaging, mobile phone and wireless Web connectivity, and runs on the GSM/GPRS data network. The units will be available in partnership with AT&T Wireless in the U.S., Rogers AT&T Wireless in Canada, Vodafone in Europe, and SingTel in Asia.

Like the Tungsten T, the Tungsten W will have a 320x320 color display. The Tungsten W runs the older Palm OS 4.1.1 on a Motorola Dragonball VZ 33 MHz processor.

IDC analyst Alex Slawsby said the Tungsten T model is a good product but might be too expensive.

"The design is there, the component technology is there, but the price point is going to be a challenge," he said. "Expect the price point to come down because of the precedent set by the competition."

Pocket PC units with faster processors, more memory, and more expansion options are available now for under $300, he said. The W faces stiff competition from RIM, Handspring, Nokia and others but will prove to be a significant product, Slawsby said. "No one has figured out how to make a home-run product that can be broadly successful in this space," he said.

Meanwhile, research firm Gartner Dataquest said the handheld market grew slightly in the third quarter compared with a year ago, but was down significantly for the first three quarters, year-over-year. In related developments, Handspring cut prices, and Dell confirmed that it's getting into the handheld computing market.

Gartner said worldwide PDA shipments totaled 2.6 million units in the third quarter of 2002, up 0.9 percent from the same period last year, but shipments for the first three quarters of 2002 overall were down 8.3 percent year-over-year.

Palm, Hewlett-Packard, and Sony accounted for 58 percent of all PDA shipments worldwide in the third quarter. Palm was the leader with 30.6 percent market share, up from 28.8 percent in the year-ago quarter; HP had 14.4 percent market share, up from 12.1 percent in the year-ago quarter; and Sony had 13 percent market share, up from 3.5 percent in the year-ago quarter.

Handspring cut prices on its monochrome Treo 180 to $249, down from $349, for customers who sign up for service with T-Mobile or Cingular. Without wireless service, the device costs $449, down from $549.

And Dell CEO Michael Dell said Monday that the company will launch a PDA in the United States, according to Reuters. The device will run Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system. He did not provide specifics on pricing and a ship date.

IDC's Slawsby said the Dell device is expected to be priced under $300.

For more information on this story, go to www.palm.com.

And for more about topics, products and technologies mentioned in this story go to the iAppliance Web Views page and call up the associatively-linked Java/XML-based Web map of the iApplianceWeb site.

Enter the appropriate key word, product or company name to list instantly every news and product story, product review and product database entry relating to the topic since the beginning of the year.