3Com "Does something smart"- Jim Seymour, The Street.com 4-16-99 5:45PM
It hasn't been much reported, but the Palm Computing division of 3Com (COMS:Nasdaq) did something smart Monday. At the Demo Mobile '99 conference in San Diego, Palm President Robin Abrams announced that Palm's opening up the Palm market by licensing the right to make Palm-compatibles to other companies.
There are already a few pseudo-clones out there now, such as IBM's WorkPad, but they're all built by 3Com for the private-label market. The first true clones under Palm's new OEM licenses should be out in six to nine months, Abrams said.
This is a critical step in ensuring the survival of the PalmPilot platform. Just as Apple (AAPL:Nasdaq) would have prospered mightily if it had begun serious licensing of the Mac platform years earlier than it did, Palm just couldn't wait any longer. Today Palm faces competition not only from the myriad of WindowsCE machines, but also from low-end producers, such as Royal.
Diversifying the hardware base within the universe of Palm compatibility is a smart, if undoubtedly painful move. And judging by the number of TSC readers who write me to praise their Palms, this is good news for a lot of us on the user side, as well as for 3Com investors.
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