Creators Of Popular PalmPilot Leaving 3Com To Form Their Own Venture
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- The creators of 3Com Corp.'s best-selling
PalmPilot handheld electronic organizer are leaving the company to start
a new venture that will make similar devices, The Wall Street Journal's
Interactive Edition reported Tuesday.
Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky plan to leave the Santa Clara,
Calif., company (COMS) at the end of this week to start a company that
will create consumer-oriented products. Dubinsky is president of 3Com's
Palm Computing unit and a vice president of the networking giant.
Hawkins, the device's inventor, works for 3Com part time as chief
technologist for the Palm.
The PalmPilot, which began shipping in April 1996, has been the most
successful entrant in a category that had been written off as dead by
many industry observers and venture capitalists. Last year, more than
one million PalmPilots were sold to distributors. They held a 63% share
of the market for hand-held devices, according to San Jose
market-research firm DataQuest.
The gizmo was the first personal digital assistant, or PDA, to become
a bona fide hit and has become as essential as a wallet for those who
rely on it. Its biggest selling point: the ease with which it can
transfer data to and from desktop computers.
The PalmPilot can access data with a pen-like device, but is
primarily designed as a pocket-size calendar and rolodex, mostly for
information transferred from a desktop PC. The device became so popular
that it now faces competition from a new crop of palm-size computers
that run on Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows CE operating system. The
Windows CE-based computers began shipping in the late spring.
The departure from 3Com is amicable, according to both Dubinsky and
Janice Roberts, senior vice president of marketing and business
development at 3Com. "I'm disappointed that they wanted to leave, but
recognize that not everyone who starts a business wants to run a (big)
business," Roberts said. She added 3Com would consider investing in the
new, and yet unnamed, company once Dubinsky and Hawkins refine their
plans.
The new company, which doesn't have financing or even a specific
product, is likely to have more of a consumer focus than the PalmPilot,
which is targeted mainly at professionals, Dubinsky said. The company,
she added, wouldn't attempt to compete with 3Com. Instead, it will
license back the Palm operating system from 3Com.
Currently, 3Com licenses the Palm operating system to several other
hardware makers including International Business Machines Corp.
Palm Computing was founded in 1992 by Hawkins. Dubinsky was brought
on shortly thereafter as chief executive. The pair developed the Palm
device after venture capitalists had spent hundreds of millions of
dollars on unsuccessful efforts to produce a hand-held computer.
To raise cash, Hawkins and Dubinsky sold the company to modem maker
U.S. Robotics in September 1995 for $44 million. It became part of 3Com
in June of last year when that company acquired U.S. Robotics.
Back in March, 3Com introduced an upgraded version of its popular
hand-held computer called the Palm III, which featured more memory, a
slimmer design and more programs than the PalmPilot. The upgraded model
offered an infrared-beaming technology that allows users to share
records and applications by beaming the data to each others' devices.
Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. |
