More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Sony Exits the PDA Market – For Now

More on the Sony CLIE tragedy, this time from BargainPDA.com: "We had a conference call with Sony last week to discuss what we thought was going to be about the new Clie releases, hopefully something with OS 6. Much to our chagrin, Sony started by reading a very brief statement that clearly indicated their intent to vacate the PDA space in the US for at least the remainder of this year. Sony wanted to be very clear on a few points though:

This move is a re-grouping, not an exit from the market
Sony will continue to sell through stock of current models which could last for several months
Sony will continue to honor all support agreements and warranties
The Clie line will continue to grow and evolve in Japan
They believe wireless is very important to mobile devices. To this end they will continue to work hard in the SonyEricsson partnership to bring innovative devices to market
Beyond wireless Sony feels mobile devices need to be strong in multimedia and gaming

palmOne is now stuck in a very precarious position. They’re now much like the Apple of the computing world - the only major licensee of the Palm OS. Sure there are dozens of other licensees, but combined, they don’t have the visibility or sales of Sony. The exit by Sony will certainly mean a shift in the balance of power to Microsoft. The race between Palm OS and Windows Mobile was so close already, there’s no other reasonable outcome. Surely palmOne will scoop up plenty of prospective Sony buyers, but it’s impossible to capture all of them. With Dell releasing the new X30’s at such an amazing price and HP coming out with 7 new PDAs in the next several weeks, Microsoft has to be feeling very good about their place in this market."

[ Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink ]