Palm Inc. still has the lion's share of the U.S. retail market with approximately 50%, according to NDP Intelect as quoted by Cnet. While still a dominant position, this is a lower percentage than the company has enjoyed in the past. Near the end of last year, Palm had over 70% of the market.

Palm's loss is its licensee's gain. In recent weeks, Handspring share of the retail market has been hovering 20% and 30%, which is a better showing than they have made in the past.

Sony, who in the past few months has been moving aggressively into the U.S. retail market, has seen its share rise from just 3% to approximately 10% on the strength of the three handheld models it has released in recent months.

The Sony N710C is now listed as "sold out" on the SonyStyle webstore. According to a source who asked to remain anonymous, this is because Sony will be announcing the N760C in just over a week, which is pretty much the same as the N710C but with OS 4.1 instead of OS 3.5. It will be announced on September 17 and retailers will begin to take pre-orders at that time. It will be available on September 28 for $500.

Last month, details on the Palm m125 were leaked but the rumored release date came and went with no sign of it. Another source, with an excellent track record, now says the m125 will be announced at the beginning of next week.

The Palm Music Connection, which has received extensive coverage in the past, is now officially online. It allows users of the Porteson MP3 player to purchase and download music. -Ed

Handheld Media Group, publisher of Handheld Computing Magazine, will produce a nationwide series of expositions about Palm Powered handhelds. The intent of SyncFest is to bring developers of software and hardware face-to-face with consumers. The first SyncFest event will be held in San Jose, California on October 27. -Kevin Doel

Without any fanfare, Palm today reduced the price of the monochrome m500 from $400 to $330. This price has already gone into effect at the PalmStore. Expect the price to drop at other stores in the very near future, too. There were no changes in the prices of other Palm models.

It is no secret that the the m500 has been a sales disappointment for Palm. At only $50 less than the m505, few consumers saw a reason to not go ahead and spring for the color model.

If someone wants to connect wirelessly to a network with Bluetooth, there will soon be plenty of hardware and software available to allow this. At DEMOmobile 2001, Bluefish Wireless and Pico Communications have both announced Bluetooth network access tools.

Bluefish Wireless introduced its Bluetooth-enabled Access Point. This gives users the ability to use either Infrared or Bluetooth to transfer data to and from their handheld and the Internet or backend databases. It supports up to eight users at a time on a single access point.

SanDisk has announced that within the next two quarters they will begin selling Memory Sticks. In the beginning, Sony will just supply SanDisk with Memory Sticks that it will resell under its own brand through its retail channel. However, the two companies also agreed to jointly develop the next generation of Memory Sticks that will incorporate advanced features such as significantly higher performance and storage capacities.

A reader has reported that the the September 2001 Dell Business Solutions catalog has a picture of the Palm m125 with a price of $250. -Ed

iSilo 3.0 is available for beta testing. This version offers VFS support and numerous other new and improved functions.

Guest reviewer Kevin Crossman, author of the world famous Lip Balm Anonymous site, takes a look at ZioGolf for the Palm OS. ZioGolf is a real-time, 3D golf game for color and monochrome devices.

In their fiscal year that ended in May, Palm's CEO Carl Yankowski had a salary of $666.7 thousand and bonuses equalling $249 thousand for a total of $915.6 thousand. In the previous year, his salary was $281.8 thousand and he received a bonus of $430 thousand for a total of $711.8 thousand.

It should be emphasized that this isn't Mr. Yankowski's current salary, but the one for Palm's last fiscal year and the 137% salary increase came at a time well before Palm's current financial troubles began.

MYLO, Sony's wireless Web service, is available for some Clié owners. However, at this time the only available modem fits the PEG-S320 and the first-generation PEG-S300 and not the N series.

MYLO, which stands for MY Life Online, alows Web surfing, e-mail access, and instant messenging. It costs $40 a month for unlimited access with a $25 activation fee.

ARM has introduced the PrimeXsys Wireless Platform, which aids the development of handhelds and third-generation mobile phones. It is designed to help handheld manufacturers run their various operating systems on ARM chips by delivering pre-validated, application-targeted hardware sub-systems along with all relevant application software. The next generation of Palm OS handhelds will run on ARM-based chips and Palm has already shown an interest in the PrimeXsys Wireless Platform.