Danger has released pricing information on the new SideKick device (previously codenamed HipTop) for the consumer market, as reported and reviewed by the Hartford Courant. This consumer grade wireless phone/PDA/internet connected device will list for $199. Mossberg did a review, ZDNet has one too. On other PDA news, Palm is looking to fund a company split. The handheld maker is in talks to raise money as it seeks to separate its operating system unit (PalmSource) from the part of the company that builds and sells handheld computers. PalmSource CEO David Nagel talks about competition with Microsoft in the handheld market and his company’s planned split with Palm.
New Sidekick Wireless Computer Is A Breakthrough
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Eugenia Loli
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Gotta get me one of those Sidekicks… Best thing is getting rid of my cellphone and Pilot. Mmmmm…. cannot wait…
I think it is a good move by palm to seperate their palmOS and palm hardware as as it seems palm hardware is going to drag down palmOS with it and leave many other pda makers with converting all their existing palm software and palmOS based handhelds to the other os’s out there.
Be Inc. reform!?
That was my first thought as well.
The split will make it possible to avoid problems with where to take the company. The hardware makers can concentrate on their end users, while the software one can concentrate on selling their OS to the hardware manufacturers (since this is a typical OS that comes preinstalled in a ROM). Not that they can ignore the end users, but the focus gets better.
Maybe Apple should think about something similar. I am still sure that nVidia could whip up a good GFX/Chipset for fast CPUs to run MacOS X for, or someone could make workstation class Itanium MacOS X computers (think 2-4 Itanium2-3 and 4+ GB RAM).
This is a great move for the future of Palm. Think of it as they become Microsoft and Dell now instead.
Palmsource has enough trouble on the handheld side. It won’t be reform of be, Inc. I do hope, though, that palm starts branching beyond just PDAs. they need growth and PDAs are just not doing the trick.
danger makes the hiptop, but when companies, like t-mobile in this case, become resellers, they are allowed to rebrand the device as they want.
danger = hiptop
t-mobile = sidekick