Sony Exits U.S. Handheld Market

Niaomaline

New member
Good thing I did not replace my T3 with one of the new Sony PDA's....

Think it's bad news since competition and choices always benefit the consumer such as AMD and Intel.

http://www.rabroad.com/article/sayonara_clie?site=Palm

Today Sony announced that it will no longer develop and sell Clie handheld models to the United States market, at least for the foreseeable future. However, it also stated that it remains strongly committed to wireless mobile devices, including cellphones and communicators manufactured under both the Sony and Sony Ericsson brands and its PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld gaming device.

While Sony claims that it is simply reassessing the conventional PDA market and will continue to manufacture Clie models for the Japanese market, several industry insiders had recently predicted attrition among the ranks of the handheld manufacturers, primarily due to flat overall sales in handhelds for the past two years.

According to Dave Limp, Senior VP of Corporate and Businesss Development at PalmSource, Sony's decision came as no surprise. "While we are disappointed to see Sony exit the space," Mr. Limp said. "We respect its decision and hope to continue to work together in the future."

Mr. Limp told rabroad that this simply continues the trend toward consolidation of marketshare in the traditional PDA business to two major players, HP in the Pocket PC arena and palmOne in the Palm OS arena. "The market is in transition from a standalone PDA market to a wireless communicator market," said Mr. Limp. When asked whether Sony would be releasing a Palm OS-based communicator in the future, Mr. Limp said "there are no guarantees in this world."

Sony entered the handheld market in 2000 with the release of its Clie PEG-S300 handheld, a thin, lightweight competitor to the popular Palm V handheld. Although critics called the device "underwhelming" for its lack of multimedia (something expected from the entertainment giant) and its plain design, it still managed to grab a sizeable portion of the market. Over the next three years Sony released nearly twenty different Clie models, breaking new ground in the area of design with its innovate NR and UX series. In early 2004 it released its final U.S. model, the Clie TH55.

Sony will continue to support all current customers worldwide for the life of the warranties on their handhelds.
 
My first reaction was EXACTLY the same thing . . . don't let the door hit you on the way out . . .

However, Sony did provide a lower price alternative with great display if you wanted Palm OS but were "steamed" at palmOne; I agree that Palm's the way to go and if they're bowing out, fine. But it's one less Palm OS Platform carrier; this may indicate the encroachment of Windows CE in all handhelds . . . and that's NOT good riddance.
 
I'd have considered a Clie except for the proprietary memory format and problems getting non-Sony PDAs to sync with Sony's desktop and vice versa. Maybe if they hadn't fiddled with the desktop so much and maybe if they hadn't introduced so darn many new models in the last couple of years, they wouldn't be in this mess.
 
It is probably true that Sony had too many new models. I, too, don't care for Memory Stick. However, I'll give them credit for helping palmOne and the other Palm OS developers realize the real potential of the Palm devices and the presence of the Clie's added a source of motivation in developing the technology. If it weren't for Sony, the T3 would still have a monochrome screen, no bluetooth, only 2MB of ram, etc. Before Sony entered the market, Palm was acting like it was taboo to add new features. They wanted to keep everything simple.
 
Personally I couldn't agree more - Look at Intel and AMD as a perfect example. If it wasn't for AMD you can bet you would still be paying $500 for 1GHZ Intel Pentium CPU and now AMD has leaped over Intel with desktop affordable 64 bit CPU's.

Sony's Clie line offered built in WiFi and I believe the first digital camera long before either was available in any Palm series PDA.
Ultimately the news that Sony is bowing out could cause Palm to be less aggressive with new products since they have lost most of their Palm OS competition in one whole swoop and last but not least this opens a market for Window CE to slide in.

Either way looks bad to me.
-KimH
 
"My first reaction was EXACTLY the same thing . . . don't let the door hit you on the way out . . .

However, Sony did provide a lower price alternative with great display if you wanted Palm OS but were "steamed" at palmOne; I agree that Palm's the way to go and if they're bowing out, fine. But it's one less Palm OS Platform carrier; this may indicate the encroachment of Windows CE in all handhelds . . . and that's NOT good riddance."



Yeah, I kinda noticed that too. So like I said... good ridens. muwahahahahaha. (I am a ppc owner... you can tell by my sig)
 
A list of what Sony bought to the Palm OS:
-MP3
-Color Screens (I think;))
-320 x 320 hi rez display
-320 x 480 display with VG
-Bluetooth and Wifi in the same model
-Direct reading of memory cards as a drive on the PC.
-Integrated camera
-Expansion card slot (I think;))
-voice recording

Abid
 
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