Palm Inc. introduced four new personal digital assistants as part of its fall line of products. They include the Palm m100, the Palm VIIx and two versions of the Palm Vx.
The newest device is the m100, Palm’s latest entry-level product, priced at $150. It features custom casings with a variety of colors, as well as a note-pad application for freehand notes, maps or drawings.
The m100 is positioned to appeal to a younger, personal-use consumer more so than other Palm products and is optimized for custom use. Third-party providers such as Kodak, Northstar Systems and others said they will make snap-on cameras, backup modules, MP3 players and modems as add-on accessories to the device.
The Palm VIIx is an updated version of the existing Palm VII embedded wireless access device. The new version features 8 megabits of memory, four times that of the older version, as well as twice as many wireless Internet information channels bundled into the device, totaling 40 in all.
There are now more than 400 Web Clipping applications written to the Palm.net platform not bundled in-box, the company said.
Suggested retail price for the Palm VIIx is $450. The price for existing Palm VII devices will fall to $400, as will the Palm IIIc.
Finally, the two limited-edition Palm Vx PDAs feature two different colors, “millennium blue,” and “champagne” aluminum casings. Available only in the United States, they retail for $400, exclusively through Palm’s online store.
Palm also introduced several peripheral products, such as the Ethernet Cradle and PalmModem Connectivity Kit.
The new line comes just a week after Palm announced a collaboration with model Claudia Schiffer and PTN Media to develop a special edition of the Palm Vx named after the famous fashion model.
Palm also last week announced its planned participation in PCIA’s GlobalXChange in September. It will be the company’s first appearance at the show in exhibits and as a participant in two sessions.
All these recent announcements have given some momentum to Palm, which has been struggling to keep its stock price up since the division was spun off from former parent company 3Com Corp. earlier this year in what was one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in recent memory.
The company’s most significant blow this year was the loud introduction of Microsoft Corp.’s Pocket PC, which threatened to steal some of Palm’s dominant market share in the PDA space. But analysts say Palm has weathered that storm and stands poised to rule the market.
“Now that a number of the negative issues are behind the company, we believe that Palm is positioned to show significant growth in revenues and earnings through the expansion of the Palm economy-its devices and those of its licensees,” read a recent Bear Stearns & Co. report. “We believe that Palm is a category leader in the mobile iAppliance space based on its successful execution in developing and bringing to market elegant devices based on the simple and easy-to-use Palm operating system platform.”
