Customers set to enjoy new communication and computing experience

Following the release late last year of new products in Hong Kong, Handspring wants to make its Visor hand-held computers become new wireless communi cators for the SAR's cellular-phone subscribers.

According to Handspring's local distributor, PacRim Technologies, there are plans to sell the VisorPhone Springboard expansion module alongside the services of Hong Kong's Global Systems for Mobile (GSM) cellular network operators.

Andy Chu, product manager of PacRim Technologies, said talks were under way with several GSM service providers to offer VisorPhone to their subscribers within the next few months.

The bundling strategy was expected to help make the Visor nearly as ubiquitous as the GSM cellphones from Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson.

The VisorPhone, which is expected to be widely available in the first half of the year, is a compact mobile-phone module that extends slightly above and beyond the top and back of a Visor hand-held. The VisorPhone contains a battery, speaker, antenna and three buttons - one to power the module on and off and two that allow a user to switch between voice and text-messaging functions. This voice module sells for US$499 from Handspring.com.

'VisorPhone will bring a whole new voice communications and computing experience to current and future Visor customers and we believe it will truly change the way people communicate with each other,' Ed Colligan, senior vice-president of sales and marketing for Handspring, said at the product's launch in the United States last month.