Targus Japan has announced that a version of the Stowaway folding keyboard that works with the new Sony Clié N700C and the older Clié's too will be available in Japan in June. They have not yet released a price. There was also no mention of when these might be available in other countries, which isn't surprising considering Sony hasn't announced when the N700C would be on sale outside of Japan, either.

Targus Japan is already offering the Visor version of the Stowaway and versions for most Palm Powered models are available in the U.S.

During their last quarterly earnings statement, Palm's CEO Carl Yankowski said his wasn't the only handheld company experiencing a slowdown. However, Handspring immediately afterwards said they were on target to meet their quarterly projections and just yesterday the co-CEO of Research In Motion, which makes the Blackberry pager, said, "This sector slowdown is mythical. We didn't see a slowdown in demand."

Whether it has company or not, Palm Inc. is struggling with numerous problems. While it has almost $600 million in unrestricted cash, they will likely spend as much as half of that trying to deal with mounting inventories and slowing demand.

Sprint PCS announced yesterday that it will begin selling the Kyocera QCP-6035 smartphone, which uses the Palm OS, by mid-April for $500. Verizon Wireless began selling the combination cell phone/handheld computer last month. Sprint's version of the smartphone is able to access content from the Sprint PCS Wireless Web via a co-branded MyPalm portal, which includes access to Palm wireless PIM services, personal and corporate e-mail, and e-commerce purchase options, as well as corporate directories and sales tools via the Sprint PCS nationwide network.

Palm announced today that though they will launch the m500 and m505 on time, there will be a delay before they are shipping in large quantities. Palm CEO Carl Yankoski said, "Volume shipments are going to be a few weeks later than we had planned." When they were officially announced last month, Palm said the m500 would ship in April and the m505 in May.

Chief Marketing Officer Satjiv Chahil admitted that they pre-announced the devices early so Palm wouldn't be shown up by its competitors' new models at CeBit last month. "We didn't want the perceived leadership to shift away from us," he said. The m500 series was announced at roughly the same time as the new Sony Clié PEG-N700C and the Visor Edge.

Palm is marking down the prices of almost all their handhelds in response to excess inventory. The Palm Vx is being reduced by $50 to $300, its second price reduction in a month. The Palm IIIc is getting its $30 discount made permanent, so it it now also $300. Finally, the price of the m100 is being cut by $20 to $130.

These cuts were announced today at an analysts' meeting and have already taken effect on the Palm Store.

Palm and Handspring have just announced that Handspring has extended its license of the Palm operating system until April of 2009. Previously, Handspring's licence was due to expire in 2003 after first licencing the Palm OS in 1998. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed so we don't know if the licence fee has changed from its current $8 per device.

"I am very happy that we have extended our licensing agreement for Palm OS, a critical component of our current and future products," said Jeff Hawkins, Handspring chairman and chief product officer. "Extending the license ensures that we can continue to build great Palm OS based products for many years to come. It also guarantees that Palm and Handspring will continue to work together to refine and enhance the Palm OS so that it will meet the needs of the rapidly changing mobile computing market."

Adobe and Amazon.com have agreed to offer nearly two thousand PDF-based eBooks in Amazon.com's e-book store. This alliance was announced at the same time Adobe released the beta of Acrobat Reader for Palm.

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard has been named to Handspring's board of directors. "With his recent experience at the FCC, Bill brings to our board extraordinary breadth and depth in the field of wireless communications, an area of increased focus for Handspring. We're excited about the contribution he can bring to Handspring," said Donna Dubinsky.

Adobe has made Acrobat Reader for the Palm OS immediately available as a free public beta. The product allows users to view files in the ubiquitous Adobe PDF format. It is capable of displaying both text and images and preserves the rich content of files - styled text, images, and bookmarks - and adapts it for viewing on small screens. Users can also search for a specific word or phrase. It includes a desktop application that converts the PDFs for viewing on the Palm and the Palm OS viewer application that lives on the handheld.

The Vianix SASO Digital Voice and Audio Management System is marketed as a digital voice recorder that also plays MP3s. It has 16MB of internal memory and holds 40+ hrs of voice recordings (8 hrs in built-in memory, 32+hrs on SD/MMC card).

It fits together with a Palm III, V, and VII through specially-designed adaptors. Once attached, users can immediately access SASO information through the Palm and even manage and transfer audio files. Tiger Direct is selling the SASO for $400 and the Palm adapters for $40-$50

All subscriptions to PalmUser magazine now get a free CD with more than an hour of multimedia training with advanced sessions to get the most from the 'big four' built-in Palm OS applications, plus 'Working with Applications' and 'Managing your files' and over 300MB of offline Web content and software. -Steve Litchfield

The new shareware app ViziCard is designed to send, receive, and organize graphical business cards. It can beam a copy of itself together with the card, and the recipient may optionally copy the address data from the card to the Palm address book. -Nick Hoggard

No handheld is complete without a few gadgets added on and there are new ones coming soon for the m100, III, and V series, and Visors.

Shinei International is developing two items for the m100 series: the Porteson MP3 player and the 56K clipModem. The Porteson has 32 MB of on-board flash memory and an SD/MMC card expansion slot. Attached to the m100 or m105, users can customize playlists, adjust the equalizer, edit song filenames, access the shuffle/repeat playback option, customize user interface "skins" and control buttons' functions. It can even work independently from the Palm. It is expected to cost $180.