Comments on: Handspring Announces Weak Revenues

Handspring, Inc. has just announced that it had $61.0 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2001. Compared with same period last year, this is an increase of 18%. But compared with its previous quarter, revenue was down about 50%.

The company posted a pro forma loss, excluding special items, of $32.4 million, or 29 cents a share. Analysts had predicted a per-share loss of 32 cents. This doesn't include charges from excess and obsolete inventory of $26.8 million and other costs of of $7.9 million.

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Handspring Is Dead

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 6:00:24 PM #
Palm is Dead. Handspring is now dead. Only Sony can save the Palm OS from dying now. Long live Sony.


NOT!!!

RE: Handspring Is Dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 6:55:24 PM #
Yep.

Get Real!
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 7:36:44 PM #
Oh dear - a bad quarter - and I just threw the baby out with the bathwater! Oh dear!

Seriously, they still have some life in them. Just give them a little time (they have enough cash to make it). Jeff and Crew are smart but they're not perfect (what a surprise!). If they could have forecast the changes that hit them they could've easily cornered the stock market as well.

I wish Handspring well. And Palm. There is a future here, they just have to work for it a little harder.

RE: Handspring Is Dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 7:58:40 PM #
Intel, American Airline, JPMorgan, Sears and AOL/Time Warner all had a bad quarter. By your thinking, all these companies are dead. Yeah sure..whatever.



RE: Handspring Is Dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 11:12:21 PM #
Palm market share goes up from 62.1% to 69.4%. Not bad for a dead guy :P


RE: Handspring Is Dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 9:39:26 AM #
Also note the proforma loss is less than analysts' extimates. Handspring isn't dead yet, nor will it be if it pulls off the rumoured visor twist product. Psion has faltered, but only because they failed to crack the US market and failed to innovate. Handspring and Palm are established in the US and are expanding well in Europe and Asia. What has to happen now is a spurt of innovation that pushes the Palm platform well beyond its current capabilities.
This of course costs money, which will impact the bottom line in the short term but, if they come up with saleable solution, it will pay dividends.

The companies know what they need to improve:

Speed, memory, display, battery life, wireless access,

By doing so they should be able to provide us, the consumers, with low cost wireless terminals that respond to spoken commands, that offer brilliant colour, personal multimedia, location info, and can be used to pay for purchases...

I am convinced that the time will soon be here when the PDA in one form or another is as ubiquitous as the wrist watch... And hopefully Palm and Handspring will be there at the forefront leading sales.



For sure Handspring Is Dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 10:38:38 AM #
No clue about distribution. No idea that they need new markets. No chance in the enterprise world either. They invented the box but now forget how to think outside of it. They are going to die a slow and painful death.

Get with it Handspring

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 6:02:54 PM #
Handspring needs something new...its line is very tired..also a proprietary expansion standard is not looking like such a good idea now...everything costs too much.

RE: Get with it Handspring
superbenk @ 7/19/2001 8:58:40 AM #
I agree, but I expand that to all the manufacturers. It seems like with all the fancy technologies in this world (even quantum computers brewing!) we ought to either (1) make these things cheaper or (2) make more of a margin of difference between generations of products. I mean form factor and expansion slots aren't what I would consider revolutionary breakthroughs. My Palm does enough of what the new ones do to make it an impossible sell to go out and spend a buttload of money for nothing new. If these companies would progress and revolutionize the product AGAIN we might have a reason to dump more cash into their pockets. Face it, the product line is stale - across the board (yes, even Sony).

RE: Get with it Handspring
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/20/2001 5:47:30 AM #
What Handspring needs to do is either 1) add a SD slot (like the Handera 330 which has both SD and CF) or 2) create a springboard module that accepts SD. I don't know if either is possible but if they can do it then at least 3 Palm devices can standardize on SD. I think Sony will always stick with memory stick because it's used in all of their other products (digital cameras, eVilla, etc). But for everyone else, SD will be the compact disc of the handheld world.
AriB

Handspring ought to be dead

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 6:27:26 PM #
Palm owns the OS and has a much larger customer base, so will exist in one form or another no matter what, even if it is through a buyout, which I consider unlikely at this point, especially with the tax hit any purchasing company would have to swallow.

Handspring has nothing except springboard slots (yawn) and ugly also-ran handhelds. It doesn't have anything that can keep the company afloat should the bad economic times that are hitting everyone, not just Palm, continue on much longer.

RE: Handspring ought to be dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/18/2001 9:02:57 PM #
What a bunch of deeeks!!! If you are so interested in forecasting Palm or Handspring's demise, just go over to one of them thar deek dragging, commie run "pucket Pc" wanna be a handheld sites.

Get off Palm OS back.

Palmmeister

RE: Handspring ought to be dead
Trevethan @ 7/19/2001 9:56:56 AM #
Handspring also has some of the best and brightest people in the business at its helm... and those people own the firm.... Handspring would also be a very attractive buyout proposition if Dubinsky & Co came with the company...

Nick Trevethan

Devon
UK

RE: Handspring ought to be dead
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/20/2001 5:55:19 AM #
You can't yawn over springboard. True, it may not be as future proof as SD (see http://www.sdtrend.com/data/index.html) but you can do lots of cool stuff right now with it.
AriB

Tought times

Neil @ 7/19/2001 10:00:54 AM #
All Consumer Electronics Companies are being hit by the econonomic slow down. Palm and Handspring are effected like everyone else. Palm made an additional gaff by missjudging the effect of pre-announcing the m5xx series when the product ended up significantly delayed. The effect of this delay was additional "older" generation palms were built to fill the gap but never sold in the predicted volumes while people waited for the announced m5xx. The result - over stock of old Palms (like the Palm Vx). Handspring has a different issue. There 2nd generatioin (if you can call it that) product, namely Visor Edge, is equivalent to the Plam Vx machines from Palm and therefore perseived by some as "old school". They need to refresh their product portfolio quickly and I would not beat that we maybe in for some surprises from them.
On the positive side there are some nice machines appearing. The handera with the High res screen and "hideable" Graffiti area is the wave of the future as is Sonys latest round of "Quadruple definition" screens that are now higher res than WinCE machines like the Compaq iPaq (320x320 vs 320x240).
Do not discount Uncle Bill with WinCE. Compaq has proved that despite the balls and chains associated with WinCE, nice machines can be produced, but running on 200+MHz machines you can guess the battery life.
The transition over the next 12-24 months is going to be fun for us all to watch. Will Handspring pull some real stunners out of a hat, will Palm adopt some of the other features that others are innovating (higher res screens, hideable Graffiti areas etc) and what will Handera and Sony do next to innovate this platform. With ARM based Palms around the corner, the Palm concept faces a real challenge. It must continue with it's ease of use, great battery life (that suffers a little in the m505) and thin footprint. At the same time it must fend off the temptation to add bells and whistles that only a few vocal techies (like myeself!) want but the masses don't give two hoots about. Keep the cost of the platform down, ease of use up, whilst improving it's "speed of use" will insure it's continued success. Loading palm O/S devices to the point where it completes with WinCE devices head-on with the same lesser ease of use will likely doom Palm to failure simply as Microsoft has more staying power (dollars) than Palm....unless Sony buys Palm;-) Wireless must play a role in all new devices from all vendors or their products risk being obsolete.
So - all in all, yes a bad quarter, but exciting times for us users and watchers. Some intense (but fun) times for PDA vendors. I agree with some of the other statements that infer that if any Palm PDA vendor bites the dust, the best ideas innovated by that company will continue on in other vendors products. The challenge, as WinCE product vendors have seen is how do you get product differentiation. The advantage WinCE has is that Microsoft does not complete with it's customes in this space (MS does not make a PDA). Palm does. However, without the purse strings of someone like Bill Gates, a Palm O/S (only) Company will need significant investment from all interested parties or never make it past the concept stage (or if it does it is doomed to failure).
I hope my miscellaneous ramblings are of interest. Remember, only the strong survive, and if there are some casualties on the way, it will be for good reasons and we will only benefit as users, unless Microsoft kills Palm (which is trying not to - thanks to the continuing legal issues).
regards
Neil (m505 user, ex-WinCE user, eager for the future).
RE: Tought times
mikecane @ 7/19/2001 11:43:26 AM #
"ex-WinCE" user?! I could understand that if you mean the OS when it was still called WinCE (ie, Nino era) -- but do you also mean you went from a Pocket PC to an m505? If so, from which PPC did you switch? And why?

RE: Tought times
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 1:27:53 PM #
PocketPC . . . WinCE . . .

Different lipstick . . . same pig.

;-D

C.


RE: Tought times
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/20/2001 5:58:48 AM #
Neil, PalmOS 5 should support soft graffiti and hi-res screens. Once that comes out, you can assume that every Palm device will have those features without resorting to hacks that may lead to compatibility problems.

Grammar & Spelling

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 11:48:14 AM #
I am an avid reader of this, and other, Internet fora. In particular, I find this forum to be extremely informative. I have a hard time, however, taking seriously the comments of posters with a disturbing inability to spell--and otherwise write--the English language. I understand and tolerate typos, shorthand and limitations imposed by Graffiti (I am writing this my Palm). But comments riddled with ridiculous spelling errors reduce the credibility of the poster.

Thanks for allowing me to rant.

RE: Grammar & Spelling
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 1:47:21 PM #
Dude, you left out a 'with' - can you find YOUR mistake?
are you an english teacher out monitoring web sites?? FREAK!!

RE: Grammar & Spelling
bradleyboy @ 7/19/2001 2:03:11 PM #
I'm sorry to disappoint you, Anonymous, but the above post is grammatically correct. The only "with" problem is the problem with your criticism of the poster. Sorry, Charlie.

RE: Grammar & Spelling
bradleyboy @ 7/19/2001 2:05:46 PM #
Oh, dear. That's what one gets for being haughty. Instant Karma has gotten me, lol. I think I see the point, although, in my opinion, "on" works better than "with" in this situation. You don't write "with" a Palm, you write with a stylus on a Palm.

RE: Grammar & Spelling
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 9:17:18 PM #
This place seems to be filling up with deeks and freaks!!!

Get with some interesting topics or get lost losers!

Palmmeister

RE: Grammar & Spelling
mikecane @ 7/20/2001 9:10:42 AM #
It's too bad more people don't bother to register!

Suprised Handspring is still in the game.

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 12:26:29 PM #
Why anybody would buy a Handspring is beyond me. I was one the first owners of the Visor and
like many people I thought it was a innovative product. But now it seems that Handspring has rested
on their past accoplishments (like Palm) & hoped that their core users would keep buying their product.
Seems now thats not the case. Sony & Handera has passed them by, releasing innovative devices
at reasonable prices. Why would you spend $350-$400 on a edge when you buy a CLIE 610 or a Handera 330?

I think Handspring needs to unveil something innovative quickly or they will be bought out or go under.

RE: Suprised Handspring is still in the game.
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 1:55:03 PM #
I totall agree. Few months ago, there were reasons for buying Visor. My very first Palm PDA was a Delux, and then I upgraded to a Prism, but after Clie N710C came out, I switched to it without hesitatnce (I sold both Delux and Prism). The N710C just kick the butt of other color models, in the mono version, there are many competition and what Delux can offer is the Springboard expansion only (but the modules are very pricy). Edge didn't cause interests. Now two new Sony models are coming out, I think it will be bloody for both Palm & Handspring.

RE: Suprised Handspring is still in the game.
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/19/2001 8:37:22 PM #
One of the biggest problem is lack of upgradable OS...even if a developer creates an expansion module, they have a choice...

1: Ignore backwards compatibility and lose a large portion of legacy owners (ie. memplug)

2: Allow for backwards compatibility, making the product either more expensive or more complicated than it otherwise would have needed to be...

Really, how much more would a flashable OS have cost them? And how much better is an upgradable product compared to a non-upgradable one? Handsping seems to have a strange strategy...first they tout expandability and upgradability of function through springboards, then they go and limit it by using ROM instead of flash....

Bummer

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/24/2001 9:50:15 PM #
This is really too bad. I had high hopes for Handspring. The VDX was a functional, cheap, and good looking PDA. It's only been downhill since then. Unless they come out with a new color model that is competitivley priced, looks nice, has a killer screen, and sells like hotcakes, I think Handspring might not make it out of the slump. Just my opinion, though.
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