Sharp to challenge Palm, Pocket PC with Linux PDA
By Bloomberg News
March 5, 2001, 5:20 a.m. PT
news.cnet.com
TOKYO--Sharp Electronics, which leads Japan's market for handheld electronic organizers, said it will challenge Palm and Microsoft 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 PDAs (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 United States 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 and Sony. Last year, Microsoft introduced its Pocket PC technology. 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. "Business chances are growing for Linux-based hardware and peripherals."
Global PDA sales are expected to grow to 33.7 million units in 2004, from 9.39 million last year, according to Gartner research. Palm's operating system, which is also used by rival Handspring, is expected to be found in 69 percent of these, with Microsoft's CE used in 17 percent and Symbian's software used in 14 percent, Gartner said.
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; 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. |
