As 3Com Corp moves to make Palm Computing an independent company (see separate story), ex-Palm employees, Jeffrey Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky have launched a potent challenge to Palm’s handheld dominance. Their company, Handspring Inc has unveiled its Visor range of palmtops that are compatible with the Palm operating system but cheaper and more expandable, claims Handspring.
The three computers in the Handspring range are all reminiscent of the Palm III series. They are based around the Motorola Dragonball processor and use the Palm OS version 3.1 with a grayscale display. However, Handspring promises two months of battery usage, a USB interface, and an expansion port that Handspring hopes will enable a slew of third-party peripherals.
The proprietary ‘Springboard’ expansion slot is perhaps the most important feature of the design. VP of sales and marketing at Handspring, Ed Colligan, describes it as the first truly plug and play peripheral port. Cards developed for the port can hold their own drivers in firmware, meaning that users don’t have to set up each new card. Cards can also have own onboard batteries so that they don’t drain the main power supply. Handspring has signed on 15 companies to develop peripherals for the Visor Range including Diamond Multimedia which is preparing a plug-in MP3 player, and Airtrack which is developing a pager. Colligan said that a two- way wireless telephony unit is also in development. Companies that wish to develop cards for the Handspring range will be able to download a hardware developer’s kit off the company’s web site from today.
Colligan admits that Handspring will have a hard row to hoe going up against Palm. However, he thinks that the Visor range has a good chance in what is an extremely new market. The company is aiming its products at the consumer market and small businesses. Colligan also thinks that Handspring can win out against Windows CE-based devices. The Symbian consortium is still the unknown in the mobile computing device market according to Colligan. It’s hard to comment on something that doesn’t exist yet, he said.
Handspring has started to take orders for the Visor range and will be shipping in mid-October. The standard Visor with 2Mb of memory, a data-transfer cradle and PC synchronization software will be priced at $179. A deluxe version with 8Mb of memory will cost $249. A basic 2Mb version, the Solo, which doesn’t have the cradle or sync software will cost $149.
