Palm Debuts Two Slim, Expandable Handhelds

Partners Prepare Add-Ons

Palm's hardware partners are rallying around the new line. Most Palm add-ons will be available in M500 versions shortly after the April release.

Palm will offer a new Palm portable keyboard, a 56-kbps PalmModem, SD content cards, and cases, Christopher says. Both the PalmModem and Palm Portable Keyboard will cost $99.

Kodak plans to release a new PalmPix camera for the M500 line in late May. The $129 camera improves image quality from the VGA (640 by 480) resolution of the current PalmPix to SuperVGA (800 by 600). The camera also has a folding design for better portability, says Elizabeth Sullivan, a Kodak spokesperson.

Also due in May is the Minstrel M500, Novatel Wireless' Minstrel CDPD wireless modem, for use with popular services such as OmniSky.

"Priced similarly to the Minstrel V, the Minstrel M500 has an MSRP of $369, but carriers could reduce it," says Al Hernandez, a spokesperson for Novatel Wireless.

In April, Shinei expects to ship a new IVox voice recorder for the M500 series that fits over the Palm as a hard case.

"The $50 recorder holds 8 minutes of voice or 99 messages," says K.C. Lim, director of business development for Singapore Shinei Sangyo.

A major SD developer, Panasonic, has announced portable music players, cell phones (in Japan), and projectors. The company expects that SD card capacity will hit 256MB by the third quarter, with 1GB cards due in 2002.

SD: Palm Moves Beyond a PIM

While Palm's SD support may seem like catch-up to Pocket PC and Handspring, IDC analyst Kevin Burden says that Palm isn't merely following the competition. Rather, Palm realizes people want to do more with handhelds than just manage calendars and contacts, he says.

"Palm OS products made up 75.9 percent of the 9.2 million PDAs sold in 2000," Burden says. Pocket PCs had only about 16.5 percent of those sales, but are gaining, he says. Burden thinks Pocket PC sometimes gets the sale because people decide they can't do enough with a Palm. But the Pocket PC's gains also reflect general growth in the handheld market, which can now support multiple devices, he adds.

The capability to add memory and share cradles and accessories among Palms could raise Palm's appeal to the enterprise, where you need enough expansion to support corporate applications, Burden says. But if size and battery life matter, and you like the Palm OS, the new software and SD slot extend Palm beyond an organizer.