Price Cuts for the Visor Neo and Pro
Starting sometime this Sunday, Handspring will drop the price of the Visor Pro from $250 to $230 and the Visor Neo from $200 to $170. This follows on the heels of last week's $50 price drop in the Edge.
As usual, Handspring didn't give any reason for these changes. However, the company has been involved for most of the past year in a price war with Palm and Sony that has seen steady drops in the costs of mid-range and low-end models.
Judging from the way Handspring did it last week, these prices will change at some point later in the day, not first thing Sunday morning.
The Visor Pro was the the first Palm OS device ever to ship with 16 MB of RAM. It debuted at $300. The Visor Neo has 8 MB of RAM and comes in three possible casing colors. At its launch it was $200. Both of these models have monochrome screens and were released in September of last year.
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RE: Still overprices
LoL .. I am just talking out of my *** .....
RE: Still overprices
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Mario
PalmInfoCenter Moderator
RE: Still overprices_lets see..which one has accessories
Springboards springboards springboards!
RE: Still overprices
RE: Still overprices
RE: Still overprices
More incremental Visor Price Cuts Coming....
RE: Still overprices
Probably Handspring. They currently have about 15% of the market, compared to Sony's 6%. Almost three times as many people will buy the Handspring.
Sony is not available in as many places, and they really don't have the same PDA name recognition as Handspring does.
Doug
Dinosaur
RE: Still overprices
RE: Still overprices
That isn't true but it's a fairly common misconception. A lot of people have over-reacted to Donna Dubinsky's comment on this and ignored Jeff Hawkins' clarification. He flat out said they are still making the Visor and that the company will continue to do so. In his own words, "Handspring remains committed to producing and supporting our organizer products."
So please, let this be the last time someone says that Handspring has already discontinued the Visor. That isn't the case at all.
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News Editor
RE: Still overprices
Handspring seems to have decieded not to compete in the PDA market.
The Treo is a communicator, its performance as a phone will decide its fate, more so than its PDA
performance. Americans know phones, they dont quite yet know PDA's, present company notwithstanding.
Handspring needs to introduce a new PDA device, not a communicator to show their customers and
developers that they are committed to the Visor.
Without such a tangible commitment, not just words, I will be very reluctant to purchase another visor.
There are too many other alternatives that do many of the same functions.
Selah
RE: Still overprices
Handspring's extremely short on cash on which products they can manufacture. It is certain that they have a lot of hope in those new Treos, and they have to make two GSM versions of it. (One for Asia/Europe, and one for US) They have to have a certain (high) number of inventory across different carriers. It can be anticipated that they will not have free cash flow to manufacture the models who do not make money anymore. (The Deluxes, Neos and etc.) Unless the Treos are a big hit globally, Handspring is strict on cash to manufacturer the new Visors.
Dubinsky speaks from the CEO point of view (cash and daily activity) and Hawkins speaks from the point of developing products (Visors and Treos.)
Or we can say that unless the Treos can earn money back for Handspring, it is not likely we are going to see new Visors coming from them. Remember, Handspring not only needs inventory for Treos, but also parts and components of Treos, given the fact that the Treos' parts may not share with the Visors' parts.
RE: Still overprices
All I'm trying to do is quiet the people who keep saying that the entire Visor line has already been discontinued and will be off the market in the next few months. That is simply not true. Handspring will continue to make the Visor as long as they keep selling.
And forgive me, but that seems to be the policy of all companies, that they will sell their current models as long as they remain popular. The only difference in Handspring's case is it believes that traditional organizers, though popular now, will be replaced with wireless ones. And this isn't just for its own models. From what I've been able to determine, Handspring thinks ALL handhelds will be wireless in the fairly near future. Handspring is trying to be ready for the change.
At PalmSource, there was a speaker from IDEO. One of the points he made is, when designing products, don't look at your current products and try to add new features. Try to look five years down the line, figure out where the market will be then, and begin to move towards that now. It seems to me that is what Handspring is doing.
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News Editor
RE: Still overprices
Actaully Sony has much more regonition than Handspring, Sony only started to sell Palm Device for a little bit more than a year, and their Market share jumped from less than one to 6%, but look at handspring, they only increased by 1% in the past year. if the trend goes on like this we'll see handspring having 17% market share next year if they are lucky, and sony having 11% market share. O well this is a no statistical guess :P but it still shows handspring's slowing down alot.
"All I'm trying to do is quiet the people who keep saying that the entire Visor line has already been discontinued and will be off the market in the next few months."
hey ed, visor will not be off the market place in the next few months, but after ARM based Palm dedvice starts showing up on the market (in less than a year, or u can call it a few months) do you think they can continue to sell the Visor line ?
RE: Still overprices
The ''Commoditization'' of the PDA Market
RE: Still overprices
Treo Competition?
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X64C35C6
Small size, color screens, speakerphone, audio/video clips, built-in camera, PDA...
RE: Still overprices
But a publicly traded company has to be realistic also. If Handspring is continuing losing money, we will not see anymore new Visor models because they DO NOT have any cash anymore, even though they have a design of a killer product. Handspring is like no MS or IBM, which has ton of free cash to but in the R&D department. For a size of Handspring's, they only not have to design good products, but also products that are going to sell well and earn a profit so that they have more money to be invested in the near future.
P.S. By the way, my previous post never state that the Visors are out of production. My point is that the Visors are likely going to be out of product because I believe the Treos are not selling as expected. But let's see. Who knows.
Look at Treos right now. Undoubtedly, that product is a great departure from traditional organizers. But there are more doubts of whether the product will sell well or not. (I don't want to go deep about that because I have to pour a lot of info.)
Look at the so many great companies. They have great designs, but they vanish because the market is not ready to accept these products. Consumer sentiment, network support, business alliance and many more reasons will spell the revival or death of Handspring.
RE: Still overprices
RE: Still overprices
RE: Still overprices
That means you are carrying a Visor+virtual Springboard with you all the time even without actually having a Springboard in the PDA from a size point of view!!!
It is called liquidaition of stock
RE: It is called liquidaition of stock
RE: It is called liquidaition of stock
handspring
What i want to see personally is them just merge with another company. Now that the whole palm has split into two, i dont see why the palm hardware division can't merge with handspring. Then palm can take over the whole PDA bussiness, and handspring can do the whole connected PDA bussiness, but share resources and R&D funding.
This makes a lot of sence to me, but i dont have one of those neat MBA things on my wall like the people at Enron had.
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Still overprices