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Palm Beyond the Pilot

New Handspring Visor supports Palm OS applications but goes a lot farther.

By Cameron Crouch, PCWorld   

On Tuesday, Handspring will add its new twist to the Palm world with the introduction of the Handspring Visor Solo ($149), Visor ($179), Visor Deluxe ($249), and the Springboard expansion platform.

Based on and supporting applications for the Palm Computing platform, the low-price Visor devices are designed to introduce consumers to handhelds, and to offer uncommon expandability. The Visor offers all you'd expect from the $229 Palm III, plus connection to Springboard modules such as phones, remote Internet access products, MP3 audio players, digital cameras, and smart card readers.

According to Michael Mace, chief competitive officer of the platform group at Palm Computing, there are more than 3000 applications for the Palm and roughly 5 million Palm users.

"The vast majority of Palms are being used for business purposes," he says.

Both Palm and Handspring recognize the potential market for handhelds beyond business. With its entry-level IIIe, Palm hopes to attract consumers, even college students, to the world of personal organizers. Handspring's Visor drops the price still farther and adds expansion capabilities.

With its low price point, Handspring is targeting consumers who might not have considered a handheld because of price, says Ed Colligan, vice president of sales and marketing at Handspring. "There are an awful lot of consumers out there that don't know what a PalmPilot is."

Despite the potential competition, Palm Computing sees Handspring as its ally against Microsoft rather than an adversary. Wary of the licensing prowess of the Windows CE platform, Palm seeks to spread its software to devices other than its own.

"We recognize we're in head-to-head competition with CE today; we know we have to be an open vendor to win in the long run," says Mace. He sees Handspring's Visor as competing more with CE products like Compaq Aero than with Palms.

Handspring is not the first Palm platform licensee. Qualcomm licenses the Palm platform for its pdQ smartphone, and Symbol Technologies for its bar code scanning products. IBM and Franklin Covey carry PalmPilots under their own brands.

How Is It different?

To ease consumers into handheld usage, Visor and Visor Deluxe offer Universal Serial Bus technology for easy desktop synchronization, and an expansion slot for personalized growth.

Expandability is the single biggest differentiation between the Visor and other handheld devices, Colligan says. It gives the Visor infinite potential for add-ons. "It's like the first slot that was ever put into a PC," he says "Sales exploded because it created new solutions no one had dreamed of."

Both the Visor and the Visor Deluxe have the Springboard slot that plugs into Springboard modules. Current Handspring modules include EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Golf module, a Quick Backup module for removable storage ($39.95), and an 8MB Flash module ($79.95) for added memory. Various third-party modules, software, and accessories will be available soon.