Handspring, Palm, Frontpath Hone PDA Focus

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September 27, 2000 (5:58 PM EDT)

By Mark Hachman,

So how does one tailor a PDA to a specific market, while selling as many products as possible?

Vendors attempted to answer that question today at the PCIA GlobalXChange show in Chicago, with Handspring Inc. (stock: HAND), Frontpath, and Palm Computing Inc. (stock: PALM) all unveiling efforts to focus their products on a particular market or application.

For Handspring and Palm, which are attempting to address the mainstream consumer and business markets, respectively, that meant colliding within a medium used for both business and leisure -- wireless communications.

Handspring, Mountain View, Calif., announced a slew of partnerships to bring CDMA, CDPD, and wireless technologies to the Visor, while Palm, Santa Clara, Calif., announced plans to tailor the Palm operating system to a Motorola (stock: MOT) wireless phone.

Frontpath, meanwhile, has chosen to sidestep the mass market altogether for a series of products oriented on vertical markets like banking, health care, and hospitality services like hotels.

While the Billerica, Mass., company plans to address the consumer market in 2001, the new ProGear line of "Web pads" will be originally marketed and sold by partners like CyberPixie Inc., a Chicago startup.

Palm, like Frontpath, counts its software as the key differentiator, and the company has licensed the Palm OS to a number of different vendors, including Handspring and Sony Corp. (stock: SNE).

Palm said it had licensed Motorola, Schaumburg, Ill., to use the operating system in a new cellular phone using the tri-band GSM protocol, building on Motorola's 1999 investment into Palm.

The new phone will have a color screen that is larger than other cell phones, the company said, allowing it to display more information and use the Palm OS and Motorola's Starfish TrueSync software.

The so-called "Stinger" phone from Microsoft Corp. (stock: MSFT), Redmond, Wash., also uses an above-average screen and color display.

"With premier licensees, over 100,000 developers and about 70 percent share of handhelds, the Palm platform is a driving force in the growth of the mobile Internet," said Carl Yankowski, chief executive officer of Palm, in a statement. "Motorola's expertise in providing elegant, smart mobile devices will provide both consumer and business users with smart phone products that offer seamless integration of wireless data and voice access."

Handspring has chosen to let the hardware design of its Visor set itself apart from Palm.

After disclosing plans to manufacture a cellular phone module for the Visor's Springboard expansion slot, the company announced a slew of partnerships to let other companies in on the game.

Three companies will allow Visor users to roam wirelessly, using different data protocols. AirPrime Inc., a provider of CDMA wireless-access solutions, announced its SB1000 wireless CDMA. Tellus Technology Inc. introduced a complementary WipClip module, using the CDPD standard.

Finally, Sierra Wireless Inc. (stock: SWIR), in conjunction with GoAmerica Inc. (stock: GOAM), said that a new Sierra wireless adapter module would be in deployment during the first quarter 2001 using the GoAmerica service.

Arkon Networks Inc., meanwhile, announced a cordless telephone module. The Paraphone, as Arkon calls it, grants the Visor cordless telephone capabilities when plugged in.

Frontpath, the wholly owned subsidiary of S3 Inc. (stock: SIII), also disclosed some details of its first Transmeta Corp.-based Web pad, part of the ProGear line of products.

The pad, which is designed around a 10.4-inch SVGA or XGA-based TFT panel, contains a 400-MHz TM3200 Crusoe processor, according to Ward Williams, the company's director of product marketing.

A typical configuration, which would include an 8-Gbyte 2.5-inch hard drive and an accompanying PCMCIA slot, will cost about $1,500, he said.

Williams and the Transmeta platform are competing against devices powered by the Geode processor from National Semiconductor Corp. (stock: NSM), Santa Clara, Calif., which Williams called "crippled."

"None of these devices, these so-called Web pads, are ready for market," he said.

National, meanwhile, has said General Electric Co. (stock: GE), New York; 3Com Corp. (stock: COMS), Santa Clara; and Honeywell plan forthcoming products, and the jointly designed America Online/Philips Consumer Products AOLTV set-top is in pilot deployment in five U.S. cities.

"We're defining a new category of information appliances," said Janet Leising, Frontpath's general manager, in a conference call. "It's true that it already exists, but it hasn't been defined. An information appliance is a portable appliance that has information that you want."