For the benefit of those who follow the competition between the handheld makers like sports fans follow the NCAA basketball tournment, PCData has released the retail sales figures for the handheld market for February. Palm still holds a commanding lead with 59% of the market but it dropped two points since January. Handspring was the company that grabbed them, moving to 28% of the market from 26%. Sony has 2%. That means devices running the Palm OS made up 89% of the handhelds sold at retail stores. HandEra doesn't appear on this list because the TRGpro is only available via the Web.

Possibly to fill in the large price gap between the $200 m105 and the $400 m500, Palm is not going to discontinue the Vx. Instead, its price has been reduced from $400 to $350. This is effective today.

Until now, it was considered likely that Palm would discontinue the V series, which is almost as expensive as the m500 but offers a slower processor and less expandability. However, a spokesperson for Palm said his company does not plan to stop manufacturing the Palm V any time soon.

What some people have been waiting for since Palm's CEO hinted about it last fall is finally here. The Palm m500 and m505 are all over Palm's website.

As was learned yesterday, almost all the rumored specs are confirmed. Both devices run Palm OS 4.0 on a 33 MHz Dragonball VZ processor and have 8 MB of memory and Secure Digital (SD) slots. The m500 is $400 and the m505 is $450.

Both are available for sale now on Palm's webstore. The m500 is scheduled to be delivered in the US in late April, with the m500 coming in May. Also, orders made during yesterday's unofficial "sneak peak" are being honored by Palm.

No handheld is complete without accessories and companies have clearly been hard at work developing them for the new m500 series.

Novatel Wireless, developer of the Minstrel line of wireless modems, has announced a model for the m500 series. It will clip to the bottom of the handhelds, leaving the SD slot clear for other uses. It will use CDPD or GPRS, allows pass-through charging, and has a longer battery life than the Minstrel V. Pricing and availability are not yet available.

Palm, Inc. has bought peanutpress.com, an eBook publisher and distributor of an extensive selection of eBooks. peanutpress offers titles from many of the major commercial publishing houses. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal includes a web-based storefront containing a growing list of 2,000 titles from most of the major U.S. publishing houses. It also includes the free Peanut Reader, which runs on Palm OS handhelds as well as on Pocket PC devices. Peanut Reader and peanutpress.com will be renamed Palm Reader software and Palm Digital Media, respectively.

With the tremendous interest in Sony's new device outside of Japan, U.S. residents are forced to depend on websites based in the Clié's home country for information. Fortunately, lots of fan sites have started to apear. One of the best of these, the Clié Users Club, has an extensive gallery of photographs of the handheld stretching over 6 pages. This includes numerous pictures of the Clié, photos of a slideshow about it, and shots of its modem and Bluetooth module.

The Palm webstore is in the process of being updated with the information on their new models, including pages for both the m500 and m505. There are no pictures on those pages yet but the design is described as being based on the V series, so the pictures seen earlier are almost certainly correct.

The product descriptions, though not complete, confirm many of the rumors. Both have 8MB of memory and the Universal Connector. They have rechargeable lithium polymer batteries. The m505's screen displays 65,000 colors. Both are available for order now, though they show up as backordered. The estimated shipping date for both is April 2.

Also already appearing on the site are lots of peripherals, including a keyboard, a backup module, a 16MB memory expansion card, cases, and more. To see all of these, go to the Palm Store and search for m500.

Earlier this week, computer system maker NCR Corp. sued Palm Inc. and Handspring Inc., on the grounds that their handheld computers infringed on two NCR-owned core patents. These are for a ''Portable personal terminal for use in a system for handling transactions,'' and for a "System for handling transactions including a portable personal terminal.'' They were both granted in 1987.

The papers filed said, in part, "Palm and Handspring knew about the NCR patents; however, they chose not to seek licenses from NCR.'' The company asked for a jury trial and demanded compensatory and actual damages. They also asked that both Palm and Handspring be blocked from producing any more of the infringing devices.

HandEra, the new name for TRG Products, is on the list of people with a booth at CeBit next week. They may use this as an opportunity to release their new model, which is rumored to have an improved screen and an updated design.

Samsung has finally posted a picture (left) of the SPH-1300, the smartphone they announced at PalmSource, though they give almost no details. The most interesting thing about it is that it will have a color screen, giving it a leg up on the recently released Kyocera smartphone, which does not.

Due to a rapidly increasing number of worldwide subscribers, we're happy to announce that we've been able to reduce our worldwide subscription cost by almost 20%.

The price of the PalmUser Special Pack (which contains a one year subscription plus all back issues) has also been reduced by a similar amount. Orders can now be placed via our secure online ordering system at the new lower prices.

I was at a Franklin-Covey store today and was shown an internal training memo regarding the announcement Monday of the two new devices. The memo described the features of each device (no different than the most recent reports), but provides independent verification of the specs and release dates. The sales person said they could take pre-orders, but did not have pricing. I guess for those willing to buy at any price.

Announce date: 3/19/01
Availability: m500 4/28/01, m505 5/10/01