Sharp Plans To Pull Zaurus From U.S. Market 302
Eugenia writes "Facing stiff competition and low sales, a Sharp representative has informed InfoSyncWorld that the company has decided to fully withdraw its Zaurus SL line of Linux-based handhelds from the U.S. market and focus on its home market in Japan. The recent similar withdraws of Sony and Toshiba pretty much left PalmOne and RIM fighting alone HP and Dell in a saturated PDA market inundated with U.S. brands. People don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems, and primarily in the corporate market customers prefer to buy from the same suppliers as for their corporate hardware."
Saturation (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Linux is great.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, I got a $99 Palm Zire 21. Meets my needs exactly.
I'd buy a palm IF (Score:2, Insightful)
I just don't feel like buying an old model or paying $300.
I'd rather buy a remanufactured laptop for $300.
Re:Linux is great.. (Score:3, Insightful)
PDA's are old technology (Score:5, Insightful)
why bother with a big clunky PDA when i can now get the same functionality in my cellphone [sonyericsson.com] ?
the PDA has now been surpassed,the clever manufacturers discovered that there is no real need for it anymore, need something bigger than a cellphone, then a tablet PC should fit the bill
iam sorry to see PDA's go but thats progress for you
Trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely a saturated market (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Linux is great.. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Build a product
2) Make it run Linux
3) ??
4) Profit!!
I don't understand how it failed.
You know... sometimes a pocket sized pad of paper (Score:2, Insightful)
No batteries. Inexpensive. High resolution. Withstands 6 foot drops and coffee spills. Easy to see. Integrated stylus drawing surface. No messing around with handwriting recognition that only works 90% of the time. No pokey built in keyboard. No need for an external keyboard. Tabable pages. Can use any stylus: ball point, gel, or graphite.
Paper pad cost: 75 cents
PDA cost: $50 to $400 plus $2.25 for batteries.
ack, free market fails me again (Score:1, Insightful)
I hope it is still possible to import them with english OS.
Definitely a niche product but not sure what to replace it with that isn't mostly closed-source.
If only Apple made an OS X tablet or handheld.
Re:Saturation (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't seem to swing a dead cat in my office without knocking a PDA out of someones hand. They seem to like them a lot. I've personally tried several and given them all up in place of a Nokia series 60 smart phone (6620 now... used to have a 3650).
Advantage of the phone? It's always with me. I never seamed to have my PDA when I needed it the most, but since my cell phone is always in my pocket and connected to the net in some fashion or another (argue symantics all you want, but I'm always on the GSM network) I'm now always able to get the PDA data I need when I need it.
Mail? - automatically notified
Calendar? - I always get my reminders
Contacts? - are you kidding? You gotta have them in your phone anyway
Notes? - voice, text and instant photo notes (very handy when you need to copy something quickly)
Games or web on the john? - no one questions the phone since they never see it (try that with a newspapaper)
I think the real truth is Sharp saw the future and the future is everone having a PDA on their phone. If you notice, PDAs aren't really Personal Digital Assistants anymore... they're tiny computers (litterally with the OQO). The reall PDA market comes with cellular service.
TW
Re:Trend (Score:3, Insightful)
US 1, Japan 0? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Usefullness of PDAs (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:US 1, Japan 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
A new one every six months? (Score:5, Insightful)
"How long will it last?" is the first question I ask myself, and the faster it will be outdated, the less money I'm willing to spend on it. My previous computer was a dual PII, it cost me a fortune but that money is gone. My last PC was a cheap AMD homemade, it works fine and with the money I saved I bought a telescope. I've always wanted one, and a telescope can last much longer than a PC that loses it's value instantly.
Re:You know... sometimes a pocket sized pad of pap (Score:4, Insightful)
For you maybe. I cannot read my own handwriting 80% of the time. If electronics could get close that would help. And since I can see instantly that it gets it wrong I could correct the mistake then when I still knew what I meant to write. Course I don't trust hand writing recognition to understand my scratching.
I tried a paper organizer once, ended up knowing that something once started between 9:00 and 10:30. Maybe, unless I crossed it out, hard to tell. I wasn't even sure where, 1.5 hours is a long time to spend wondering the halls, examining each conference room to see if someone realized I was wondering if this was the right one, knew I should be there, and told me to join.
Eventually my school tested me. They found that at best I can write like a second grader. That is at best. Don't tell me to practice, that is about as useful as telling someone in a wheelchair to walk. I physically cannot do better.
Re:Trend (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh? Cool toys?
Japan has "cool toys" because real estate is prohibitively expensive in Japan. Nobody ever saves for a $250,000 McMansion in Japan because there's no place to build it. So they live in 600 feet square apartments and have lots of "cool toys". Our toys are a new Rototiller and a John Deere lawn mower. I have no idea which is "cooler".
As for me--this is just me, of course--I'd rather own my house than have a Sharp PDA for no other compelling reason other than it runs Linux. Go Japan! That's how you become a world power!
Re:US 1, Japan 0? (Score:3, Insightful)
-1. Living on another planet (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is of course, why SUV sales are at an all time high, and people are moving into $300,000 homes in suburbia in high quantities.
Re:Linux is great.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a Linux nut and see no reason to run a proprietary OS that requires large, expensive development cycles such as Palm OS/Win CE/etc. when a perectly good embedded Linux platform exists which can run thousands of apps already written with minimal or no changes.
Re:Linux is great.. and cheap! (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, where Sharp could have sold an iPaq-equivalent for hundreds less, they chose to use the money saved by using Linux to add extra hardware features to the device. Thus, rather than a $100-$200 device with functionality equivalent to an iPaq, they delivered a $500-$600 device with functionality and raw performance equivalent to an iPaq, with many extra fancy features such as a full VGA display and the built-in keyboard. Nifty, but this may have been the death of them.
Re:A new one every six months? (Score:1, Insightful)
The value it brings me is more than the cash investment I put into it, and so I consider it a net gain in worth. Even if it's only worth, what, forty bucks on eBay right now, its value to me remains greater than the laptop sitting upstairs.
My day has finally come. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the PDA market is finally dying...maybe Apple will bring back the Newton...after all, they did take it off the market just as the market was becoming ready for the PDA.
Sigh...I wish Apple would release the newton in the form factor of a palm...I'd buy it no matter what the cost.
WHAT! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:incorrect license caused Zaurus to fail (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:-1. Living on another planet (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't stand my cell phone.. PDA? Hell no (Score:2, Insightful)
I would have no life left if I was dicking around with all of these no ROI having POS machine's. I don't need it, don't want it, and would rather make my family or friends a nice supper instead.
Gadgets are for people waiting to interact with the world. It's not the same thing as being part of it.
Re:PDA's are old technology (Score:1, Insightful)
And the point is wrong, some folks like having two devices, personally I like being able to look at the screen and talk on the phone at the same time.