Article Re: Palm Computing Exodus from NY Times.
It says that they are starting a company that "will license the Palm operating system." It's not clear, at least to me, whether they will be competing with 3Com by producing a licensed Palm-like product or whether they will be developing software for the Palm Pilot. I would think that they have some contractual restraints from competing directly with Palm Pilot for some period of time after they leave 3Com, but who knows.
DougHboy
Palm Founders to Form New Company
SAN FRANCISCO -- The two founders of Palm Computing, an innovative Silicon Valley company that helped pioneer the market for hand-held pen-based computers, have left the company.
Donna Dubinsky, president of the Palm division of 3Com Corp., the networking giant, and Jeff Hawkins, the division's chief technologist, said Monday that they were leaving to found a company that will license the Palm operating-system software. The two executives said they had not yet chosen a company name or a new location.
Founded six years ago amid a wave of pen-based computing start-up ventures, Palm survived initially because it had two crucial features that other pen-based computers lacked: It fit comfortably in a man's dress-shirt pocket and it synchronized data easily with desktop personal computers.
Creative Strategies Inc., a market research firm, has estimated that Palm has sold 1.6 million Palm Pilots, and Dataquest has reported that the company has a 63 percent market share. |
