Palm Economy
Personal digital assistants allow mobile users to manage a variety of tasks such as schedules, contacts, and business information. Personal digital assistants that were launched between 1989 and 1994 all had quick deaths. This inspired Jeff Hawkins to introduce PalmPilot in 1996. He wanted to make a personal digital assistant that was fast and easy. PalmPilots quickly attained a dominant share of the personal digital assistant market. US Robotics acquired Hawkins company Palm Computing in 1995 and US Robotics subsequently was acquired by 3Com in 1997. Palm Computing was a division of 3Com and was spun off as an IPO in February 2000. Palm Computing was renamed Palm Inc.Palm Inc. was truly a leader in the personal digital assistant industry. After the spin-off, Palm Inc. wanted to focus on the new market segments in the personal digital assistant technology, which were licensing the Palm OS, targeting corporate customers, providing wireless Internet services, and designing personal digital assistant software.
Palm TX
Person with PDA handheld device.
Picture of the EO Communicator (source: the Univer...The personal digital assistant industry is growing fast and is expected to stay that way well into the future. A lot of individuals are purchasing personal digital assistants to organize themselves and to make everything available to them in a hand held device. The personal digital assistant industry is divided into several categories. They are: operating systems, hardware, application software, and hardware accessories. As of 2000 there were three major operating systems: Palm OS, Microsoft's Windows CE, and Psion's EPOC. Palm Inc.'s major rival is Handspring Inc., a company formed by two individuals, one who is Jeff Hawkins who started up Palm Computing.
Alan Kessler, Palm's COO claimed that Palm's goal was to make the Palm OS the standard of the market. He also boasted that he would sacrifice revenues by losing some hardware sales to...