Handspring Accepts Trade-Ins for New Visors

Looking to upgrade to a hot, new handheld, but not sure what to do with that old clunker you're lugging around?

Handspring today announced its first-ever trade-in program, offering a $100 credit for buyers of its latest Visor Edge model.

Any model handheld is eligible. Handspring owners who trade up to the top-of-the-line monochrome Visor Edge can give their old unit to a friend or family member and still get a credit.

The offer is only good on online purchases made through the Handspring Web site from Friday through July 1.

"We believe we are the first to come out with an offer like this," says Kendall Fargo, Handspring's vice president of electronic-commerce. "It is following the software model, like they do with updates, and as far as I know, this is the first time it's been done with handheld computers."

Also taking a page from software vendors who sometimes offer "competitive upgrades" from rival products, Handspring's offer is also good for competing products. Toward your Visor purchase, you can trade in any handheld that runs the Palm OS, Windows CE, Pocket PC, or Symbian operating systems. You can't get credit for a calculator, but the Apple Newton, Sharp, Psion, and Casio handheld computers are all also eligible.

Rebate by Another Name?

Over at Palm, Greg Rhine, vice president of worldwide sales and service, calls the Handspring trade-in offer "interesting and a little bit unusual" because it could hurt efforts by resellers to market the same product without the trade-in credit.

"If you look at this Handspring program, it's nothing more than $100 rebate. It does represent the fact that they have an inventory problem and the new product isn't selling," Rhine says. "If I were a CompUSA or a BestBuy or some of their other major partners, I'd ask: 'Are you trying to help me, or are you trying to hurt me?'"

Handspring, which is selling the Visor Edge for $399, and other handheld makers have offered discounts on lower-end models and accessories over the past couple of months.

Burn, Baby, Burn

What happens to the trade-ins?

The old handhelds will be disassembled and refined, along with other computer components and integrated circuits. Their plastic cases will be shredded, and the most valuable metals--tiny bits of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from the circuit boards--will be melted down and reclaimed for resale and reuse.

"We are going to recycle them," says Tom Hogye, sales and business development director for United DataTech Distributors, which is handling disposal of the trade-ins. "We're basically going to recycle all these products in an environmentally responsible manner down to their raw material components."

A handheld computer that weighs up to half a pound originally cost several hundred dollars, but it's worth only a penny or two as scrap.

"The plastic market is so low that we'd be lucky to get 3 cents a pound for the plastic," Hogye says. "The precious metals, per pound of circuitry, I wouldn't even think are worth a nickel or 10 cents a pound."

(Douglas F. Gray of the IDG News Service contributed to this report.)