Palm Funds New SD/MMC Content Publishing Company

Posted By: Ryan Tuesday, October 15, 2002 9:33:23 AM

Palm Inc.'s Solutions Group today announced its investment in and strategic relationship with a new content publishing company. Mobile Digital Media, Inc. is chartered with accelerating the development of content and applications for SD and MMC media cards. It will aggregate, publish and distribute software for handhelds and mobile phones.

The new company is funded jointly by Palm and a group of private investors with extensive publishing experience. Barry Cottle, previously Palm's chief operating officer and head of its Content and Access business unit, is chief executive officer. Barry Cottle was brought into Palm in early 2000 as part of former CEO Carl Yankowski’s "C-team" of executives. Former Palm Chief Marketing Officer Satjiv Chahil has been named chairman of the board. Palm believes Mobile Digital Media's established momentum in an emerging business and its single focus will help it succeed quickly.

Secure Digital SD Cards"Mobile Digital Media will dramatically increase the content available on SD and MultiMediaCard media," said Cottle. "This industry-standard media brings new ways to use mobile and desktop solutions, and new reasons to buy SD/ MultiMediaCard-capable solutions. Our focus will be on leveraging our advantage as a leading publisher on expansion media to attract high-quality content and grow the market."

"Palm benefits from Mobile Digital Media because it will create even more choices for content that exploit the world's most popular brand of handheld computers," said Todd Bradley, president and chief executive officer, Palm Solutions Group. "Palm customers will benefit, too, because their handhelds will become even more attractive and versatile. And our expansive retail and online distribution channels will provide an immediate, established and growing channel."

The investors, including Palm, together hold a minority interest in the new company. In addition, a long-term strategic relationship has been created whereby Palm will provide Mobile Digital Media access to Palm's distribution channel, preferred promotion, and other sales support.

Mobile Digital Media's first products will include pre-holiday releases of the popular Rayman action game and the PalmPak Travel Card featuring Worldwide Cities, with Lonely Planet's City Synch.

About SD/MMC
MultiMediaCard and SD media are postage-stamp-sized cards that are used in millions of handheld computers, smartphones, MP3 players, still and video cameras, and printers worldwide. The media easily stores applications, text, images, video and audio files or combinations of the above. Additionally, SD media includes input/output capabilities that enable small but sturdy digital cameras, bar-code readers, sensors and other devices. Blank versions of both types of cards can be used for storage and backup. Predictions claim that by 2006, the number of handhelds and phones with SD/MMC slots will grow to 350 million worldwide.

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Will this also be an umbrella for their eBook publishing?

Token User @ 10/15/2002 1:58:37 PM #
Just speculation, but this type of company also sounds like an ideal place for Palm to move their aquired Peanut Press group to. They currently fall under the PalmSource group, but this does seem like a better place for them to be - after all, Peanut Press is about content rather than OS.

~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~
RE: Will this also be an umbrella for their eBook publishing
Kesh @ 10/15/2002 11:26:14 PM #
Doesn't look so. Peanut Press just got rebranded to Palm Digital Media officially. Going to their website now redirects you to http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com which is essentially the Peanut site with new logos.

I wouldn't be surprised if they did start offering some new books on SD, but it looks like that may be under the PDM name.

Rayman (and other pre-loaded content)

hkklife @ 10/15/2002 2:08:55 PM #
Makes sense for the PeanutPress division to be moved here....and also for the memory-hogging Rayman game to be put on a card as well. What irks me, however, is that for every title on its own dedicated MMC, we've gotta lug around yet another card (and risk losing it etc). Aside from greed, there's no reason Palm could not consolidate all of their translator, worldwide city guides, e-book collections etc onto one 32 meg MMC card and just sell it as the "mobile library".

To date, the poorly put together (yet wonderful concept) Rand McNally Road Atlas card is the only one I've seen personally that fills up a 16 mb MMC. Yet people still complain about a dearth of interstate exit info due to space constraints. Hopefully next year's edition, if there is one, will max out a 32 mb card.

Why can't Palm release one card, chock full (or at least with several megs' worth) of high quality games. For example, they could put Rayman, the Ludi Games 6-pack and Siberian Strike on a single card with room to spare (there's some games that will convince people that Palms[even OS4 models] are viable gaming platforms!).

Astraware could also bundle basically all of their titles onto a single MMC and charge a nice price for it. For example, I've registered Zap! 2016 but not BeJeweled. I'd have no problem paying a little more for an actual card that could have a ton of games stored on it. The only issue that worries me is updating the games/adding content. The Palm MMC games card shipped with (among others) a terrible memory leak bug in Zap! that has yet to be fixed completely. The executable of Zap that is on the MMC is quite old by now, as the most current revision by Astraware has far better performance and handles low memory situations better as well.


Palms own Bluetooth and WiFi SD Cards!?

pdangel @ 10/16/2002 5:02:35 AM #
Are they going to make there own Bluetooth (Toshiba) and WiFi (SyChip) SD Cards?????

Would be interesting. ;o)

"There are 2 kind of people my friend....those with wires and those without"

RE: Palms own Bluetooth and WiFi SD Cards!?
Token User @ 10/16/2002 12:43:54 PM #
They might rebrand - but remember, the company is a CONTENT company, not a hardware manufacturer.

~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~
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