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Philips to Stop Making Palmtops, Focus on Mobile Phones
By Adri den Broeder at Bloomberg News
07 October 1999
Royal Philips Electronics NV, Europe's largest consumer electronics company, said it will stop making palmtop computers and integrate some functions into its mobile phones as the technologies converge.
Philips will stop making its Nino line of palmtop computers, which it introduced under the name Velo three years ago. Philips' palmtop computers run on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows CE software. The news that Philips would stop making the Nino product was previously reported by the online edition of Dutch paper Automatisering Gids.
The company will integrate functions like Internet connectivity and a larger screen and memory into its mobile phones instead of continuing to produce a separate palmtop computer. While sales of the Nino haven't been disappointing, integration makes sense as computers get smaller and mobile phones get smarter, said Philips spokeswoman Marijke van Hooren.
"The functions of devices like Nino are also showing up in other devices like the mobile phones," said Van Hooren. "We've just integrated the activities of the Nino group into our mobile phone group."
Van Hooren said the company will introduce a phone that can access the Internet on Wireless Application Protocol technology next year. There's no prototype yet. Philips' latest phone, the Xenium introduced in August, weighs 95 grams and has a larger screen than most, plus voice command capability.
3Com Corp. is the market leader in palmtop computers, selling more than 5 million of its Palm devices since their introduction in 1996. 3Com cut prices as much as 22% this week as competition increased. It cut prices on its newest product, the Palm VII, with which users can buy merchandise from Amazon.com Inc. and trade stocks with Fidelity Investments over the Internet.
Psion, Europe's largest maker of palmtop computers, said this week it will start selling a pocket-sized product called the Revo with wireless connection to the nternet using a mobile phone or a modem, as a rival to the Palm series. Psion's Epoc software is a rival to the Windows CE platform used by Philips and others.
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