Not good news for HAND..
Sharp to Challenge Palm, Pocket PC With Linux PDA (Update1)
3/5/1 1:10 (New York)
Sharp to Challenge Palm, Pocket PC With Linux PDA (Update1)
(Adds analyst comment in fourth paragraph)
Tokyo, March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Sharp Corp., which leads
Japan's market for handheld electronic organizers, said it will
challenge Palm Inc. and Microsoft Corp. on their home turf by
introducing a device running on the free Linux operating system.
Osaka-based Sharp will be the first major maker of personal
digital assistants to introduce a Linux OS-based PDA, said Hiroshi
Uno, general manager of the company's mobile systems division, in
an interview. The new models will be available in the U.S. and
Europe from October, he said.
Sharp's PDAs, which run its proprietary Zaurus operating
system, face competition in the local market from Palm OS
handhelds made by Palm, Handspring Inc. and Sony Corp. Last year,
Microsoft introduced its Pocket PC. By going abroad, Sharp hopes
to boost sales and to create a market for Linux-based devices.
The Linux-OS based PDA market ``is set to grow,'' said
Katsushi Shiga, a principal analyst at Dataquest, a unit of
Gartner Group. ``Business chances are growing for Linux-based
hardware and peripherals.''
Currently no major handheld makers produce PDAs running the
Linux operating system, which is gaining acceptance in the
computer server market because its underlying code is freely
distributed on the Internet. Palm OS-based handhelds took almost
three-quarters of the global market last year, while Microsoft's
devices increased their share, according to research firm IDC.
``Now that we are putting up a banner that we will go with
the Linux operating system, we hope others will join,'' Uno said.
``Our aim is for Linux-OS PDAs to grab about half of the market.''
Sharp said it hopes to sell 1 million units globally of the
Linux handheld in the year ending March 2002. That's about the
same as the company's estimate of the Japanese PDA market for the
current year to March 31.
Why Linux?
Sharp, which has had little presence overseas while using a
proprietary operating system, picked Linux because of the open
code, which enables Sharp to have more freedom in designing
instructions and programs for users, Uno said.
``We would be restricted to following the style of Palm or
Microsoft'' if Sharp were to use their operating systems, Uno
said. Becoming a maker of their devices would also force Sharp
into price competition, he said.
At home, Sharp has been selling its own Zaurus devices since
1993. Though it introduced a model in the U.S. in 1997 running
Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, the product failed to
gain popularity amid stiff competition.
Sharp is now talking to several non-Japanese companies,
including a chipmaker, to develop a Linux OS handheld, through
which it hopes to attract thousands of application software
developers, Uno said. The target is to have 10,000 software
programs written in the Java computer language by a year from
October, he said.
The choice of Linux won't be a disadvantage because ``there
are more than 100,000 active programmers for the Linux, which is
more than double the number of those for Microsoft,'' said Uno.
Three Models
Sharp is developing three models for the worldwide market.
They are a basic model that can share data between PCs and PDAs, a
multimedia model to enable users to enjoy moving images and music,
and a wireless communication device.
The company plans to introduce the PC-assist and multimedia
models to the U.S. market in October and the wireless handheld to
the European market in the same month, according to Uno. These
will eventually be available elsewhere as local developers modify
the programs for their own languages, he said.
The first wireless model to be introduced to the European
market will be equipped with phone functions, according to Uno.
Sharp will also develop a handheld with a slot for a data card-
type communication system, he said.
Sharp shares rose 7 yen, or 0.5 percent, to 1,399.
--Keiko Kambara in the Tokyo newsroom (813) 3201-8961, or at
kkambara@bloomberg.net with reporting by Kyoko Suzuki in Tokyo and
Paul Horvitz in Boston /jt |
