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Toshiba Launches Flashy Pocket PC

Notebook giant enters PDA fray with color-display device.

Douglas F. Gray, IDG News Service

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Toshiba enters the competitive market for personal digital assistants today, unveiling a Pocket PC device it will sell in Japan this August and in the United States by the end of this year.

Toshiba unveiled the Genio e550 Monday at Tokyo's Wireless Japan 2001 Expo. It uses Microsoft's Windows CE operating system and comes with both Compact Flash and Secure Digital expansion slots. This lets people use one slot for additional memory and the other for a wireless connection, says Ed Suwanjundar, a spokesperson with Microsoft's Mobility Group.

The device includes a 3.5-inch, 64,000-color thin-film transistor display, 32MB of memory, and support for both MP3 audio and MPEG4 video. It offers up to eight hours of battery life and weighs less than half a pound, Microsoft says. Toshiba hasn't yet disclosed pricing for the product.

"It uses a reflective-matrix display; it looks very similar to the IPaq display," Suwanjundar says. The IPaq is Compaq Computer's Pocket PC device.

The Genio uses Intel's 206-MHz StrongArm processor, the chip used in the IPaq and in Hewlett-Packard's Jornada Pocket PC. Sharp's upcoming Linux-based PDA and ViewSonic's recently announced ViewPad 100 also use the 206-MHz StrongArm.

Pocket PC Growth

Toshiba's entry will bring the number of companies using Microsoft's operating system for handheld computers to 14, Suwanjundar says. Many of those devices are available only in Europe because they use the Global System for Mobile Communications standard, which is prevalent there, he says.

Toshiba will compete with PDAs from the likes of Compaq, Casio Computer, and HP, all of which offer handhelds based on Microsoft's software, and from Palm, Handspring, and Sony, which have systems based on Palm's operating system.

At least one vendor is retreating from the market, however. Psion PLC announced this week that it will move away from the handheld computer market, which is described as "completely saturated," meaning too many vendors are battling for users.

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